Station to Station

I dropped the boy off early at school the nuclear power station this morning. The traffic back looked awful, so despite it being a rather grey, miserable day, I decided to delay my trip back home by having a wander along Melkbosstrand beach. Never having been to Melkbosstrand before, I decided to head for the Atlantic Ocean and then stop just before I got my tyres wet and walk from there. This approach worked well, and delivered me to the parking lot outside the local NSRI station. From there, I shot this:

…which shows just how close the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station was to my chosen start point.
Couple of kilometres, max, right?

Right.

Wrong.

I hopelessly misunderestimated the distance. As a wandered along the rather nondescript beach, the power station slowly moved away from me. Or did the beach between us elongate? I didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

Weird.

I don’t give up though, and even though last night’s energetic game of football had taken its toll on me, I kept going. It turned out to be about 5kms before I was met by this sign:

That’ll stop the terrorists.

You’ll note that the actual power station still doesn’t seem to have got any closer.

Anyway, I thought that I’d better not go any further. After all, the sign says you mustn’t, and who’s about to disobey the Sea-shore [sic] Act 21 of 1935. Not I. Even if it has apparently (and unsurprisingly) been repealed. After all, Section 10, subsection 2  warns us:

Any regulation may provide a penalty, not exceeding a
fine of twenty-five  pounds, for any contravention thereof or
failure to comply therewith.

25 quid is nearly R500 (per baboon). They’re not messing around here.

This sign seemed like a good place to turn around, given that much like the previous five kilometres, I wasn’t going to get any closer to the power station. It was then I found that I was going to have to face the rather stiff breeze for the duration of the journey back to the car.

I might have misunderestimated that as well. Blowy.

In fact, it turned out that it was so windy that my gait was shortened enough for my watch to think that I was climbing stairs. 5km of them, starting at sea level and finishing at… well… also sea level.

I made it back, feeling smooth, energised, and smelling like tiramisu, and headed back home. A morning well spent, and I get to do it all again this afternoon – well, the driving bit, anyway.

I didn’t take my camera onto the near deserted beach. This is South Africa and one doesn’t take that sort of risk when one doesn’t know the area and there’s no-one around. It would have been fine, but there was nothing much to ‘tog anyway, so I didn’t miss out. Melkbosstrand might be nice in the summer (although I have no evidence), but it wasn’t much to write home about on a chilly, windy October morning.