The nearest town to the hike is Amersfoort, and the nearest biggish town to that is Standerton. It was a long drive, but only 250 km. The longness was mainly caused by the numerous road works and their numerous stop and go's. That was also one of the reasons why I wanted to use a long weekend for the trip, so that we could use a full day to get down there and not have to find the place in the dark.
Participants were: Frans, Judith, Jenny, me, Christopher, Hester-Louise, Tania, Allen, Kelly, Ian, Michael and Lindsey.
Our little group had a stop in Amersfoort for lunch at the Pearlstream Guesthouse, a place that I had stayed at before. It is just outside town on the other side of the stream. We enjoyed our tasty and uncomplicated lunch in pleasant surrounding.
It was now 39 km of dirt road. And this last bit of the journey was interrupted when I saw an old (well, not so old) farmhouse near the road. I love these sort of places and there was no opposition when I suggested that we should have a look at it. I think it was abandoned when the government bought out some of the farms in the area so that they could than hand the land over to some blacks. I heart these stories the previous time I was in Amersfoort. The hand over in general has not been very successful. But anyway, we enjoyed our visit to the house and finally returned back to the cars covered in Blackjacks .
We made it to the camp with not much time to spare before the sun disappeared.
There was a split in the party, the young and fit did the longer hike of 11 km and the old the shorter hike of 8 km. Needless to say the 11k hikers were back in camp long before the 8k hikers. But, I think, us 8k hikers had more fun, lots of talking and admiring nature. Of interest on our hike was the discovery of a coal seam, I hope they will never dig up this place, but they could search for shale gas, that would be okay.
Much marvelled at was a patch of Euphorbia clavaroides (in some of the literature spelled clavarioides, I am not sure which is the correct spelling, applying Occam's razor I selected the simplest form), these are growing as round balls and we only found them at one specific spot of about 25m by 25m. We were wondering what actually sets the boundaries? Why are there no plants of this kind outside the circle? The world is full of mysteries.
This Monday walk was rather tiresome since large rocks had to be climbed over when following the stream bed to the foot of the fall. The picture on the vright gives an impression of what it looked like.
Overall a nice weekend in an interesting and pleasant countryside. And thank you to Jennet and Sam for looking after us and making us feel welcome. And also thank you to my lift partners for the patience when I needed to take some more pictures of Amersfoort, enabling me to update the website bit more.