Continuing Professional Development?
No: Chapman’s Peak Drive.
We had a bit of a walk on the beach on one side of the peninsula today, before scooting through Sun Valley (which was both sunny and a valley) to the other side for a spot of lunch. We could have come back over the mountain, but because Ke Dezemba (I know, but the spirit remains for the moment), we went around it instead.
Chapman’s Peak Drive has won all sorts of awards for being a beautiful, scenic road, and while I 100% understand where these awards committees are coming from, it really needs to be noted that the beauty of Chapman’s Peak Drive is from Chapman’s Peak Drive, and actually not Chapman’s Peak Drive.
Now just over 100 years old, Chapman’s Peak Drive remains an incredible bit of engineering. Stuck into the granite cliff of… well… Chapman’s Peak, there are 114 bends in 9.6km of road, which begins at 38m AMSL and peaks (lol) at 161m.
It’s an incredible bit of road to drive on, and the views are equally amazing:

This one is a 24MP pano that I knocked up earlier today with almost 2 minutes of effort. Almost.
But that’s the view from the road. If you look at the actual road, it’s a real scar across the Cape landscape. You can see it – or rather not miss it – it on the right hand side of my image above, or if you prefer a borrowed aerial shot from a bit further south:

It has wrecked the mountain a bit. Chapman is presumably turning in his grave.
Of course, none of this was a problem back in the 1910s and 20s, but I’d wager that you’d never get away with building this sort of thing today.
And equally of course, you can’t say that it’s ugly to look at.
That would be against The Rules.
Chapman’s Peak Drive is sacrosanct, flawless and infallible. Just like Stephen Fry. (Although.)
But “Stunning to look from, unpleasant to look at” isn’t a category in any tourism awards, so we have to keep saying that it’s beautiful.
Which the view from it, is.