Strolling the pipe track

Pipe Track Hike

The pipe track, above Clifton and Camps Bay, can be a leis­urely stroll or a strenu­ous jog, depend­ing on your needs or your mood of the morn­ing. It is easy to reach, easy to fol­low, rel­at­ively easy to walk (depend­ing on the pace of your hike) and great for kids.

It is also one of the most soci­able hikes I've been on. It is very sim­ilar to the Constantia Nek con­tour path from Constantia to Kirstenbosch – a hike with very few ups and downs, and extremely pop­u­lar with loc­als and their dogs. If you walk it on a week­end expect to pass or be passed by another party at least every five minutes, if not more fre­quently, espe­cially if you're on the pipe track around mid­day. Continued

Follow the yellow brick road – the yellow route at Helderberg Nature Reserve

Helderberg Reserve

Lying at the foot of the Helderberg is a large nature reserve. But this moun­tain does not stand alone. When one takes in the vista from the reserve, you are prac­tic­ally sur­roun­ded by moun­tains — testi­mony to the fact that the Helderberg Nature Reserve lies enshrouded by the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve and its incred­ible range of moun­tains. Both of these reserves can be found in the north west­ern reaches of Somerset West.

The Helderberg Nature Reserve, access­ible via Verster Avenue off Reservoir Road, is a per­fect space for pic­nics. Just after enter­ing the gate of the reserve (you'll pay a R10 entrance fee per head) you'll see the start of pic­nic blankets and bas­kets as they lit­ter the large expanse of lawn, and a jungle gym in the upper reaches. In sum­mer, I'll wager the place is packed. Even on this, a sunny winter's morn, fam­il­ies with chil­dren are gathered here in fair num­bers. Continued

The Botterboom Hiking Trail

Botterboom Hike

The Botterboom Hiking Trail is, in its entirety, a two and a half day hike and was designed to give adven­ture to both ser­i­ous walk­ers and cas­ual out­door enthusiasts.

The region, steeped in his­tory, is excep­tion­ally pretty and the trail takes in all aspects of this; so there’s a little bit of some­thing for every­one.  The trail takes one back to 1870’s when the first rail­road to the north was con­struc­ted through the moun­tains of the Hex River Valley — this became the main form of trans­port to Kimberley for the Diamond Rush period. Continued

Walking above St James – a perfect child-friendly Cape Town hike via the Old Mule Path

Kalk Bay views

I'm hope­less with a map. Whilst someone in the know can under­stand that little yel­low lines close together indic­ate steep­ness, I go into fuzz land when faced with similar.

It goes back to school Geography, where the sight of a map used to send me into par­oxysms of anxi­ety only evid­enced by those who knew that sweat on my brow fol­lowed by my con­sist­ent fum­bling as I turned the map upside down in a bid to 'see' was an indic­a­tion that I was just not get­ting the picture.

And the map we use is really very help­ful. If you look closely it even tells you where there are steps and where it is stony or smooth – kind of them, hey? Continued

A walk at Silvermine — so much more than a breath of fresh air

Silvermine Gate 2

Beautiful Silvermine nature reserve forms part of Table Mountain National Park and hugs the greater part of the Cape Peninsula moun­tain range from Constantiaberg to Kalk Bay. Whilst most Capetonians know gate one — on the right-hand-side of Ou Kaapse Weg when trav­el­ling towards Fish Hoek — very well, where one can pic­nic, walk around the dam or join the hike to Elephant's Eye, fewer people know that there is also a second gate, on the left-hand-side on Ou Kaapse Weg when trav­el­ling in the same direction.

For those with any sense of geo­graphy, this is also known as Silvermine east, but since I struggle to dis­tin­guish my right from my left on a good day, using this ter­min­o­logy is Greek to me. Suffice it to say, it's on the other side of the road as you come around a bend, so look out for the left-turning arrow on the left that indic­ates that a road joins Ou Kaapse Weg, and you shouldn't over shoot it! Continued

Walking on clouds: Hiking in the Drakensberg

Drakensberg Hike

Not far from Johannesburg and Bloemfontein lies South Africa’s most majestic moun­tain range. The Drakensberg has for cen­tur­ies cap­tured the ima­gin­a­tion of South Africans and has become a haven away from the city noise. With many lodges, hotels and camp­ing sites you can choose your retreat and become part of this world for a few days.

There are many activ­it­ies such as horse­back rid­ing, hik­ing, climb­ing and cyc­ling on offer. This time we choose a day hike that we end up doing in two days because of the beauty we find on the moun­tain. Sentinel Peak is a hike we do at least once as a group of friends that sel­dom finds time to meet dur­ing busy year ... Continued

Yellowwood trail, Kirstenbosch

Yellowwood Trail

If you're look­ing for a not-so-taxing, can-do-on-extremely-hot-days kind of hike, then the Yellowwood trail at Kirstenbosch is def­in­itely up there on the list, along with strolls through neigh­bour­ing Cecilia forest and Newlands forest.

It's also a great hike to do with chil­dren as it's man­age­able within a couple of hours, or can extend into a whole morn­ing of it as the delight­ful pools along the way are invari­ably filled with tad­poles or pebbles and a lit­any of other amuse­ment options. Continued

Take a walk on “The Wild Side of the Drakensberg” — Wartrail Skywalk

Wartrail Skywalk

Since 1996 top ath­letes from South Africa and bey­ond have ven­tured to the little-known Eastern Cape Highlands to par­ti­cip­ate in what is prob­ably one of the toughest adven­ture races in the coun­try – The Salomon Skyrun. Starting in the pic­tur­esque town of Lady Grey, armed with their own sup­plies, a GPS and a map their aim is to run 100km across moun­tain peaks to fin­ish at Tiffindell Ski Resort. The top run­ners fin­ish in approx­im­ately 14 hours, ori­enteer­ing them­selves across the dra­matic route through day and night.

The guest house own­ers of the Wartrail and New England val­leys real­ised that it would be a trav­esty for this excep­tional route to be the sole pre­serve of extreme ath­letes. Thus, the little sis­ter to the Skyrun, the Wartrail Skywalk was devised to give us ordin­ary mor­tals the oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence the high moun­tain wil­der­ness at a more leis­urely pace. Continued

Suicide Gorge – the ultimate kloofing experience

Photo © CapeNature

We would have chosen the hot­test day Cape Town has exper­i­enced in years to attempt the legendary kloof­ing in Suicide Gorge in the Hottentots Holland Mountains near Grabouw. We had only looked for­ward to the hike for the bet­ter part of a week, and had done all the right pre­par­a­tions like get­ting our per­mits, set­ting out early, ensur­ing we had plenty of water and sun­screen, and trav­el­ling light, bear­ing in mind that this would be a strenu­ous day of it.

And then the forty odd degree day hit us with a ven­geance .... Continued

The Swellendam Hiking Trail — a 6-day hike in the Langeberg mountains

The first time I went to Swellendam I ended up in a Native American sweat lodge.  Yes, I know that sounds like an excuse that you’d usu­ally hear from a guy try­ing to explain to his wife why he’s been out drink­ing all night, but this is true. Honest.

Our hol­i­day in Swellendam had star­ted very nor­mally. We had booked into a small cabin over­look­ing the kind of lush, peace­ful val­ley that one dreams about when star­ing at the 177^th email of the day.  We’d unpacked the stuff from the car and had tried to take in some of the tran­quil still­ness that sur­roun­ded us, but we are city folks and are rest­less by nature and so needed a little time to get into coun­try life ... Continued

The Strandloper Trail in South Africa's Eastern Cape

There’s a lot to be said for hik­ing. It’s a good way to exer­cise whilst sav­ing you from the exotic body odours and dubi­ous clean­li­ness of gym chan­ging rooms. It forces you from out behind the latest Youtube video of a cat fall­ing off a TV and into the great out­doors where our ancest­ors once roamed freely without the help of GPS.

And roam they did, par­tic­u­larly in Southern Africa where being a nomadic tribes­man was the “in” thing for thou­sands of years. Maybe, as a South African, I’ve never really lost the desire to walk long dis­tances for no real reason and reg­u­larly under­take to explore the out­doors on foot. Whilst for most the word ‘hik­ing’ con­jures up images of high moun­tain passes, there sev­eral trails in South Africa that have a more coastal fla­vour. One such is the Strandloper Trail in South Africa’s Eastern Cape ... Continued

The Swartberg Hiking Trail

"Die Top"

I’m not a born hiker. Some people seem to have a nat­ural inclin­a­tion to walk­ing long dis­tances, over uneven ter­rain, car­ry­ing heavy weights and call it leis­ure time. Myself, I’ve always thought that since our ancest­ors had no other option but to leg it every­where, we owe it to them to make use of the won­ders of man­made tech­no­logy as often as possible.

That said, I’ve slowly been com­ing round to the idea that scram­bling over rocks, with noth­ing but trail­mix and water as fuel, can actu­ally be a reward­ing and even enjoy­able exper­i­ence. The hikes I’ve done on Table Mountain, in Ceres and in such fantasy novel set­tings such as Hogsback have proven to me that there is much more to hik­ing than aching legs and blisters on the feet ... Continued

Hiking in Hogsback

Our roadtrip up South Africa’s east coast had already been filled with adven­ture (and a few mis­haps) by the time we reached Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. Situated in the Amatola Mountains and named after three ridges which (appar­ently) look like the bristles on a hog’s back, Hogsback turned out to be one of my favour­ite places on our east coast trek.

Although there is plenty in Hogsback to amuse and delight, includ­ing The Labyrinth and the Eco shrine, our primary goal was to do some ser­i­ous hik­ing and take in the truly spec­tac­u­lar land­scape that the area has to offer.  With so many trails on offer we were at some­thing of a loss as to which hikes we could safely and com­fort­ably do in the two days that we were going to be there ... Continued