Tag: snow

Back home, but what a day!

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Hey – I called it!

Awoken at 5:30 by excited voices outside, I chose to turn over and hide under the duvet a bit more. But then once we did get up, we were in a full-on winter wonderland.

And we were like kids again. Snowmen, snow angels, snowball fights: snow end to the fun you can have with some white stuff (careful now). I’m thinking we got about 10-12cm, which is far more than I’ve ever seen here in SA before. And to (literally) wake up to it (literally) on our doorstep instead of having to get up at 4am to make a Groot Trek out from Cape Town was such a bonus.

So much so, that after some more fun, some breakfast, and copious cups of hot things, we took the long road back, as the grey skies gave way to blue:

And what a drive it was:

Back through Montagu with the essential stop at the Spar there for coffee and sandwiches…

…back through du Toits Kloof and the Holiday Portal and home.

I’ve got (ahem) “several” more images to go through and remove snowflake lens spots and the like, so maybe there will be more to come, but after a couple of amazing days away, today was such a bonus as we headed back home.

Chilly, but chilled

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Hello from somewhere near Touwsrivier.

Gone is yesterday’s sunshine, which we made good use of with an 11½km hike through the local nature reserve, looking for fossils and enjoying the views of the snow-capped peaks of the Matroosberg.

It’s Sunday lunchtime, and ostensibly, it’s 3 degrees outside. But with a biting northwester and horizontal rain/sleet, I’m fairly sure it will feel a lot colder out there. Even the baboons have sought shelter on the leeward side of the camp infrastructure, and they’re seriously tough guys.
It’s definitely warmer inside the tent, but not by too much. Everyone else is in their beds, sensibly enjoying the luxury strength duvets. Probably Hungarian goose.
I can see my breath in front of my face in here, and I’m sitting only a couple of metres from a wood-burning stove.

Which is burning wood, by the way.

I chose to lob on a beanie, a rainproof jacket and some shorts and go for a 6km run this morning, past the incredulous, sheltering farmworkers and out along the tracks into the Karoo. And while it was very hard work in the wind and the cold, it was also really exhilarating. I’m never going to put myself into an ice bath or even a tidal pool, but a half hour this morning with just myself and the elements was superb.

I’ve never seen my legs go that colour before, though.
I’m not even sure that there’s a name for it.

The temperature is dropping now. Not just because the sun (ha!) has past its highest point for the day, but because the post-cold front weather is moving in. We’re mentally preparing ourselves for tomorrow morning, which is now forecast to have an actual high of -1 and a “feels like” of -8.

I’m hopeful that it won’t be long before this rain turns to something fluffier and whiter, which would be a perfect end to a lovely – if bitterly, bitterly cold – family weekend away.

Disruption

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I’m back in my car park, but surely only briefly. There are, I would estimate, around 400 people at this particular sports complex this evening. Dodgeball, squash, rugby – at least two different team groups, baseball and dog agility training. (There are several dogs, as well.)

And we’re all going to have to go home when the power goes off at 8 o’clock. Training truncated. Sports shortened. Activities abbreviated. That’s a lot of people who are having their evening ruined.

It’s also going to make the traffic out of here quite horrible.

Back home 6000 miles… away, things are looking equally disrupted. But this time, it’s the weather.

The local road through to Manchester – always an early casualty in the snow – has been closed, but you’ve got to be a bit of a mindreader to know. (Or, you know, just notice that there’s white stuff on the floor and put two and two together.)

Derbyshire County Council has announced the A57 Snake Pass, a link between Sheffield and Manchester, is closed. They said in a statement the road was closed because of snow, adding: “Unfortunately the electronic signs we have on the pass are not working today.”

“Please do not attempt this road or any of the others we have closed.“

Ooh. Very cryptic. I got my crystal ball out and tried to work out which other roads those were, but all I came up with was the Three of Clubs. So, I’ll dutifully be avoiding that this evening.

Day 509 – Recent photos

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OK. The first half of the photos from our recent (ok, not so recent now, but I have a decent excuse) trip away are now edited and up on Flickr. Truth be told, I’m a little disappointed with the overall quality. That said, it was a really hard job packing all the sheer scale of the landscape into a camera, and we were there for family time rather than photography time.

And there are one or two of them that I still quite like:

Moody stuff. Go full screen for more effect.

The second part of our trip was less landscape and more animal. But it also makes up about 80% of the photos I took. I’m on it, but with energy and concentration at a premium right now, it is going to take some time.

Please bear with me.

Day 157 – Distant vistas

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I filled the car with diesel for the second time since March, chucked in the family and a camera and headed North East. I wanted to see snow on mountains. Not snow on the ground: I’m happy to leave that for the locals – who didn’t have the privilege of having it on their doorstep every winter – to queue for.

A quick trip over the Du Toitskloof Pass gave us some ok spots, but I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed. I wanted a bit more snow, a bit more drama. And that seems a little greedy given some of the views:

We could have gone much further inland towards Ceres, but that wasn’t really the plan, so we headed back through the tunnel, towards Franschhoek and then over Helshoogte to Stellenbosch.

Yeah. OK. Not bad.

From there, down to Somerset West via the (absolutely terrible) Mooiberg Farm Stall and a hope of some easy pickings on the Helderberg. But no. Horrible grey clouds hanging just around the snow line. Very disappointing. Coffee and home then.

It was a nice trip around our little corner of the Western Cape. But – photographically, at least – the whole thing could have been a bit more lucrative.

Some pics here.