Road Trip to the Mother City #9: Boland visit

On Saturday, our last day in the Cape, we decided to actually NOT spend it in the Cape, or at least not in Cape Town itself, but headed inland to Worcester, to an old friend of mine who has moved there this year.

Rather than taking the Huguenot Tunnel on the journey up, I took the old duToit’s Kloof pass – something I have not done for many years. The weather was clear and warm and we enjoyed spectacular views of Table Mountain and the Paarl Valley as we travelled. I say the day was clear – and it was – but the lack of wind meant that there was a rather nasty smog cloud across the peninsula. Still, despite the black smear, the mountain looked beautiful.

It’s when you look out over that kind of landscape that you understand just why people flock from all over the world to spend just a few days here in South Africa, and more particularly the Cape. And sometimes those of us who live here every day take that for granted.

Having negotiated the pass, and taken untold number of photographs, Ulricha and I stopped for a coffee at the du Toits Kloof lodge, where we sat next to the Molenaars river, flowing forcibly after the recent (lengthy) rainy season in the Cape.

The day was rounded out with an amazing afternoon spent catching up with old friends and reminiscing and swapping blogging hints and tips. Arthur writes his own blog too, Online Trek, and so it was fun to exchange blogging stories with him.

Our trip back to Cape Town in the evening was uneventful. But that didn’t matter – we had truly had a wonderful day out in Worcester, and a dull drive back was just what the doctor had ordered!

Road trip to the Mother City #8: Taking to the Air

Today (Friday) we went up, up, up and away as I contacted the local Flying Club at the Cape Town airport and arranged for a flight around the peninsula. Unfortunately my original plan of taking myself and two passengers fell through as the clubs aircraft are quite small training planes, and so myself and Ulricha joined Gareth the instructor and we set off.

Having already flown in both London and Johannesburg, and with around 10 hours of training experience behind me, this was not something new to me, but it was new, or at least different to Ulricha who had not flown in such a small light plane before. Nonetheless, we joined the taxiway behind a commercial plane and set off.

Our first destination was the Cape Town city bowl, and so we headed West from the International airport, over the “Cooling Towers” of the Athlone power station and the over the harbour. It was an exquisite day for flying, calm and clear, though with an inversion layer at around 1,800 feet which caused a bit of cloud cover and haze in the later part of our flight.

Once we had cleared the power station, Gareth handed the controls over to me, and for the first time I flew a passenger that wasn’t my instructor, as we headed over the harbour, the Waterfront and then the Green Point Common, site of the new 2010 World Cup Football Stadium – a MASSIVE building amongst much smaller buildings that really stands out on the common. I was amazed at just how mammoth it was by comparison to its neighbours.



Then I turned us south and followed the coast line toward, Clifton and Camps bay. To be honest, I didn’t notice if there were people on either of those beaches – I think I was too preoccupied at keeping us “straight and level”. The Sentinel at Hout Bay looked magnificent, and we rounded that and then headed along Chapman’s Peak, seeing the construction over the road way from a new perspective.


The flight continued uneventfully, as we followed the coast past the Kommetjie lighthouse and the Cape Peninsula Nature reserve. Just before we reached the Point itself, the cloud layer at 1,800 feet thickened slightly but I kept us just below that level, giving a very eerily feeling as the clouds passed just above our heads.

We rounded the Point which was looking quite stunning, and then we found what Gareth had been looking for – whales! And not just one, but 3 at first, as as we continued along the False Bay coast line, a few more.

We crossed the coastline at Muizenberg and I found myself taking a route that I had often taken by road, but now was taking by air, as I followed the Main road north, passed Wynberg and slightly east over the Kenilworth race course.

By the time Gareth took control of the plane we were nearing the International Airport once more and negotiating our way amongst commercial jet traffic that was taking off and landing.

All in all I had another hour that I can add to my flight experience for my Private licence, but the experience was fantastic! I am now looking forward to taking Ulricha up over Johannesburg once we get home – and hopefully we will have some Johannesburg aerial photographs too!

Magic with PaintShop

I am amazed....

I am by no means a graphic artist or in fact an artist of any kind. But with a little, OK, a LOT of help from the latest version of PaintShop and some reading of the instruction manual (yes, for a bloke to read an instruction manual is not bad!) I have managed to create a little piece of art...

On Tuesday we took some pictures of the sun setting as we drove back from Franschoek. The original picture looked like this:


I decided to have a go at manipulating it and doing a bit of "cosmetic surgery"... After a few hours of fumbling through different experiments and trying a few things along the way, I managed to produce the following photograph:


Now if I, with no experience or knowledge of how to do these things, can remove an entire electricity pole from a photograph, just imagine what these professionals are doing to the images we see in magazines!

Reasons to be cheerful

Regardless of what you might decide as to where you want to live, or what you think of London, Cape Town or any other place on Earth, I defy you to find a place that offers such brutal and beautiful scenery as the Highveld of South Africa.


Last evening Ulricha and I went out to a lovely dinner, at a restaurant that had a westward facing balcony, facing the setting African sun. I couldn't help but take a photo of the skyline as the Evening star appeared, watching over us like some kind of terrestial guardian.


And this morning, on the way to work I had to stop just to take an image of the City of Gold as sun rose at around early. This is the view that I have around me on my commute to work, and no matter how awful the traffic is each morning, somehow the soul and mind are soothed by the golden hues of an African sunrise.