In the footsteps of the French fortkeeper

High above one of the most scenic drives in the world is a secret path, made by the wind and the rain and the long-ago footsteps of forgotten people.

            Chapman’s Peak Drive’s hidden but most beautiful twin threads in and out of cool, shady ravines, hugging the mountain over cliffs and through fields of everlastings and watsonias.

            Whenever I walk up here on the contour path, I often think of my imaginary Frenchman. He would have been the fortkeeper of the Eastern Fort, where we start the walk just after Chapman’s Peak drive leaves Hout Bay. He was probably there alone, with only the smoke of a far-away fire on the other side of the Hout Bay beach for company. I fondly call him Monsieur Chap (pronounced shhap, you know, like the French). I imagine he was a member of the French regiment who built the fort in 1792, but stayed behind to look after it. Naturally because he loved the mountain so much.

One of Monsieur Chap’s most important jobs would have been to walk up the mountain to go and fetch water from the stream that always runs down Blackburn Ravine. This would not be a chore, but an event much looked forward to, I’m sure. Next to the stream he would sit, like us, drinking some tea in the shade as the water splashed the small ferns and big flat stone next to the path.

            This Sunday I again imagined Monsieur Chap as the southeaster howled around us. He would have weaved his way through the proteas and I’m sure he would also have stopped to look at a sugarbird flapping with its long tail above a yellow pincushion and would have said out loud: Il est magnifique!

Then, back at the fort, he would take out his quill and his ink pot and write to his beloved Madeleine, who probably lived alone in a farmhouse in the rural district of Gers: “Dear Madeleine, I wish you could see this place, it is the most beautiful in all the world. The wind chases foam like small white horses all over the bay in front of me. Behind me the mountain pulls the earth up into the sky to fill it completely. Oh Madeleine, if only I could send you a painting.” This was, of course, in the days before Facebook, when Monsieur Chap could simply have uploaded a pic on his cellphone. Ah well.

More than two centuries later, we walked in his footsteps and the world immediately around us had not changed much at all. The southeaster still created a green wave of fynbos that danced to the wind. The sugarbird still flapped his tail above the pincushions and the mountain…well, it still fills the sky completely.

This Sunday we had an important mission. We had to introduce someone new to this beautiful place. Someone who had never seen it before and didn’t even know it existed. Okay, she is only three months old and this was Freya’s first time on Chapman’s Peak, heroically carried all the way in her kangaroo pouch by her mother Martine.  Freya fell asleep as soon as we started walking and opened her eyes at Monsieur Chap’s stream, as if to agree, magnifique! then promptly fell asleep again.

When it was lunchtime under the summer-dry waterfall halfway to the peak of Chapman’s Peak, Freya’s dad Heine showed her what the mountain looks like up-close and she clearly took it all in.

From Chapman's Peak's secret path you can see a million miles out to sea and the Sentinel looks as if it may slide into the water while holding its pointy head up high.It's one of my favourite walks and maybe one day it will be one of Freya's.

The Feast of Crassula

For a long time I thought Crassula was just the name of a street in the suburb of Devils Peak. But no, it is not. Crassula is a red thing of beauty that flowers in bright blotches on the driest slopes of Table Mountain in the most arid month of the year: January.

As usual, the Afrikaans name says it much better. Klipblom. Stone flower, because that’s where it grows. On the tiniest scrap of soil in the crevice of a rock it shoots up into a thick fleshy stem with a crown of a dozen tiny scarlet blooms winking with their white eyes in the wind.

And now is the time of the Feast of Crassula. On Sunday, our first hike of the year, we chose a route with an appropriate name for getting back in the saddle. It’s called, well, the Saddle. The Saddle is the neck below Devil’s Peak that connects it to the front face of Table Mountain. It’s easy, less than three hours and a gentle way to the top if you walk along the contour path and scramble up over Oppelskop Ridge.

Long ago someone had the job of manning an outpost on this ridge. The roof is long gone and the wind and rain have nibbled away at the edges of the walls, but the view remains majestically unnibbled. To the left the wall of Table Mountain. Lion’s Head grabs a chunk of view over there. Cape Town Stadium looks like a huge oval UFO that landed in Green Point. Robben Island sits in its frill of white breakers a distance out to sea.

The small view is another matter altogether. You can only experience the Feast of Crassula if your feet are actually on a mountain path. Then you start spotting the red jewels. One just next to the path, another three stems shooting out of a rock above you, two more over there, another clump of crassula on the edge of a small ravine.

At the top of the Saddle is a huge all-weather rock that can shelter you from the southeaster if you sit in front of it and from lashing winter rain if you sit behind it. Sunday morning was so perfect that for once we sat next to it, on boulders along the stream that runs through the Saddle and has cut a deep gorge from there on its way down to the ocean. A tranquil little stream can do that if you let it run for thousands of years.

We drank our tea and we ate our rusks while the tranquil stream tinkled. Behind our big rock stood an agapanthus with rolled up petals of sky-blue promise and a patch of pink ericas spread like a dusty plumped up duvet along the stream.

What a mountain to come home to after a holiday. What a feast to enjoy after the festive season.

Sunday morning falling down

Today I fell down Table Mountain.

It all started so well. I had a lovely to-do list for the day: fetch my bokkie at the airport late this afternoon; a birthday celebration of a long-lost friend at noon and a long walk on the mountain before then. With a song in my heart and a flask of coffee in my daypack, I was at the bottom of Kasteelpoort in Camps Bay at 7.30.
Yes, it’s a trudge to the top. But because I started early I had shade all the way. After all that rain last week you could still hear songs of water threaded all over the mountainside, rushing down in secret little streams under grass, glistening over rocks and gushing into small pools.
On the famous flat rock almost at the top of Kasteelpoort I stopped for coffee. I had forgotten my cup at home, but not to be defeated, I poured it into the margarine tub I had packed my rusks into. It doesn’t matter how you get your caffeine in when you’re climbing a mountain.
Kasteelpoort is a majestic name for a majestic place. When you reach the top, the buttress rises like a huge sandstone castle to your right, with another buttress on the left and you walk through this portal to the kingdom that is the top of the mountain. I thought of Anatoli Boukreev’s words: “Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambitions to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
At the entrance to the Valley of the Red Gods I discovered the cathedral’s inner sanctum. Under a small dome of rock, fringed by green ferns, was a tiny mountain pool. A frog sat at the edge and went plop. A sandy beach, as long as my leg, curved around it. At the far end the water tinkled away through brown reeds and echoed against the rock dome. A dry white flower petal drifted on the water. In this small world all was perfect.

From the western lip of the Red Gods’ valley I dropped down into Porcupine Ravine and was filled with the joy of the day. Now the heat was rising from the ground and the fat, round smell of fynbos hung in the warm air. All the way down Diagonal Route I scattered confetti bushes, brushing my hands in their buchu sented leaves as the tiny white petals dropped like snowdrops on the ground.
It’s a treacherous way down with lots of wet and loose rocks and I picked my way down with extreme care. At last the path flattened out a little and I was almost on safe ground. Then I saw the Yellow Flower. It stood on a slender stem against a rock, its closed buds wrapped in the outside-red of its petals. I took a picture of it and admired it in the playback. So delicate, so beautiful.
…And stepped backwards over a rock. They say most accidents on the mountain happen in a fall of no more than three metres. Now I understand why. As I lost my balance my arms groped in mid-air, looking for something to hold onto. There was nothing. I kept thinking, oh, now I’ll regain my balance. I didn’t. I tumbled down the cliffside, thinking, now I’ll stop, oh no, I’m still rolling, still rolling down. It probably took as long as it would take you to say: one thousand and ten, two thousand and ten, three thousand and ten.
And then I stopped. I was lying face-down with ground in my mouth and in front of me sat a bright-green praying mantis, staring at this apparition that had just fallen out of the sky. I stood up. Strangely, I didn’t even think that I might have broken something. I just stood up.
I was so lucky. I had chosen a very well vegetated and cushioned little cliffside to drop over and had come to a stop in a patch of plants and one of those thorny bushes. Bruised, scratched and shaking, I sat in the shade and poured water over my wounds.
The day had changed completely. It went from gold to grey. I suppose I was in a state of light shock. Even as I write this, nine hours and numerous classes of ice-cold Coke later, I feel weird.
It’s as if the mountain I love so much just flicked me off its arm like an insect. The message is clear: I may be your cathedral, but I’m a wild place. To which I can only answer: All the more reason to love you.

Photographs and copy © Judy van der Walt

Singing in the rain

Today was a perfect day for walking. Yes, I know it rained. It is still raining as I write. But if you have invested a few hundred rand in excellent waterproof gear, like Jan and I, you are only too pleased when you have the chance to wriggle into it and be the only ones on the mountain.
So it was that we drove up to Kloof Nek like two gladwrapped sausages, waterproofed from the hooded tops of our heads to the tips of our goretexed toes. Low granite-grey clouds flew over the nek. It was a wild afternoon.
I remember once reading a description of a woman in a book that said she was the kind of person who walked in all weather. A rather staunch type. Well, I may not be that staunch but I love all kinds of weather. Fast winds, driving rain, hot sun. I love plunging into the elements, whatever they are. Give it to me, baby. Ok, maybe I am a bit staunch.
We launched ourselves onto the pipe track at Kloof Nek. Now the rain fell horizontally in fat drops and tree branches arched heavily above the path. The water treatment plant above Camps Bay floated into view through a curtain of mist, like a fairytale castle. This red-brick building is one of my favourites in Cape Town.
We didn’t walk very far. But just being in the freshest of fresh air, blowing in all the way from far over the Atlantic, was like a new beginning at the end of the weekend. It made me feel better about the chocolate tart I ate this afternoon and the several glasses of red wine I had at dinner last night.
We sat on a bench under dripping trees with the mist swirling over the ocean below. Raindrops plopped on my head with the sensation of small feet dancing. All around us happy wet frogs croaked in joy.
How can you not sing in the rain.

One golden afternoon

The afternoon held a golden promise untouched by the icy southeaster that chased empty chips packets down Kloof Street. The sky was swept clear blue and Table Mountain’s western edges stood there shining in the sun.

Five minutes from lounge to mountain is an old story, but after so many years every quick and easy escape feels like the first time. I had my boots on and was on the mountain quicker than it would take most farmers to get into their bakkies and drive to the nearest nice – and I mean very nice – place to walk.

Often I drive to Kloof Nek and let my car decide which way we’re going. Today it was Kloof Corner, the edge of Table Mountain above Camps Bay. The pelargoniums along the path sang in full-throttle purple and a wisp of cloud brushed the top of the mountain.The sun put on its best show. Everything glowed: the stones on the path, the solitary tree blown sideways and the grasses bending in the wind. Even the chipped and peeling old white beacon on Kloof Corner glowed.There I lay down on my back on a terrace of stone and stretched my arms out. The mountain bent over me and swallows dived full-speed into cracks in the rock. Full body contact with old stone makes me happy.
Kloof Corner had two shows on. To the one side lay the city of Cape Town and the blue curve of Table Bay.

To the other side the ravines and buttresses of the Twelve Apostles stood in light and deep shadow between sea and sky. This was the wild view I preferred.

By the time I walked down the path again the glowing afternoon had become liquid gold that spilt into the world around me. The golden light poured off the mountain, washed the sky and splashed and shimmered in the sweet pink sea far below.
And the after-glow lasted until late in the night.

A birthday walk

A birthday walk on Sunday, a weather forecast gone very wrong and a pack of dogs scaling a mountain. Just another day on Table Mountain.
It was Mike’s 60th and although he seemed to start off a bit gloomy, the mountain soon had him in birthday mood.
The weather forecast was way off. The Sunday newspaper said 27 degrees, but you only had to look out the window to know that forecast was for another city in another hemisphere. Never be under-equipped, is Jannie’s mantra and I know not to argue with him. But gloves! Which mountain was he preparing for?
As it turned out, Table Mountain. Halfway up Constantia Corner the weather turned icy. More like -27. OK, 16 degrees. Mist swirled in, the sun disappeared and so did the people and dogs just ahead of me on the path.
Karen was leading our pack of (unsubservient) humans and (subservient) dogs up to Camel Rock from Constantia Corner. This route is misleading. It looks easy because you never see the whole route ahead of you, but my calves are still hurting a day later. Karen’s pack of dogs, from small to large, were scrambling up the mountain with various degrees of help from human hands.
At the top we found shelter for morning tea under those beautiful weathered rocks, chiselled away by the exact same wind and mist that was swirling around us.
Walking in the mist makes the mountain soft, mysterious; things look different. It’s like a woman wearing a veil.
But we didn’t linger. By noon we were sitting in Barristers, sharing a bottle of red wine and a few beers. Now it didn’t matter what the weather forecast was, we had a birthday to celebrate.

Ultimate art

We call it Mango Cave because of the unforgettably sweet and juicy mango Jannie and I shared there one afternoon long ago. So, in the mood for a short and sweet walk, I went up to Mango Cave in the middle of the afternoon.
Just before our cave, I noticed the rock wall next to the path. This is the mystery and wonder of Table Mountain. I have walked past there dozens of times, but on this particular afternoon the slant of the sun and the wet glistening on the rock face stopped me in my tracks.
This is not a rock wall, it’s a wall of poems! I sat on a stone next to the path and looked at this wall. As I looked, poems emerged. As I looked closer, even more poems emerged. The beauty developed like a photograph on wet paper in a dark room.
A dry bunch of tiny twigs sat rooted in a damp cushion of moss. A bonsai Erica had all the potential of being a big tree in a park if you forgot about scale. A thin grey branch twisted into a sculpture. Lichen clung to moss and looked silvery in the afternoon light. Dry strands of grass curled into a mass of delicate twists and curved lines. The brightest pink oxalis bloom stuck its cheerful head out above a clump of dry sticks in a song that said the sun is pink and it has risen. Two thin streams of water poured through a patch of green moss, like two small taps at a bathroom basin.
The mountain in its smallest beauty, its most intimate moments. A mountain that holds you close and then shows you her total, open heart.
Last night we went to an art exhibition. Kendell Geers had thrown some bricks through a glass window of a gallery in Roeland Street. Broken glass lay inside on the floor and the bricks were scattered; artfully, I think. There was nothing else in the shop.
I knew it was an art exhibition because there was free wine and snacks at the Kimberley Hotel across the road. On the mountain I didn't need free wine and snacks to point the way.

Here is a rock wall of poems. That's all.