Walking

 

30 January 2013 – Wednesday

Lounging  about in huge pools of warm water, soaked up to the neck is a totally new experience for me - very comfortable but  rather like having giant baths with strangers.  Though, Tony, of course, talks to and befriends everyone he meets, so there really aren’t a load of strangers around.  He knows all about the Scottish vets, the sweet South African woman that sometimes camps in the wilds with her husband (and uses a stone to cover each of her newly dug poos),  the couple whose son honeymooned here recently, the Barrydale nutritional expert, the Knysa psycholanalyst and countless more.  Het likes talking to people and they like him back .  He particularly knows about men with Land Rovers.   

I decided I needed some exercise so today I asked about local walks.  Once I had been told about the 6.5 km walk in the mountains I was determined to do it and was delighted that Tony came with me.  Jenny and Angela were very busy at the Scrabble table at the time.  But to give Jenny her due, she has provided all of our catering whilst we have been here.

The walk started from a high point, at the top of the spa and, for the first 2 kilometres, at least, led us uphill.  I’m not desperately good at uphill.  I’m willing – but get out of breath very quickly. (The Bishop probably said that to the actress),  But we kept going and climbed the very stony uphills and were glad of the stony downhills and were also glad that it was cloudy today; not cold, but not boiling hot.    The whole walk was wonderful.  I think the paths we covered must have been created as tracks in the years before car access and modern roads.  These were not highly irrigated pathways but,  with little rainfall, sides of the track were crammed with bushes and intricate plants. 

I also got Tony to take a photo of me on the track.  My friends, Mike and Kerstin Wood, good people,  were photographed recently on their trip to Asia and ended up looking so miserable that I was determined to avoid this for my own blog.  So in a previous photo Tony took, I grinned with such eagerness, I looked like a predatory female paedophile with an enticing line in kittens or baby gerbils.  I’m not posting that one. 

 

The walk was good exercise and took us a bit over 2 hours and we were grateful and thankful to drink large quantities of very cold water when we returned.

Later this afternoon I managed to photograph  one of the peahens resting with her brood.  I have been trying to photograph them since I have been here  and was even responsible for a peacock bunfight.  I changed my mind about feeding them as I was hoping they might hang around long enough to be photographed. What actually happened was that, as soon as I started to distribute bread, male peacocks arrived from every direction and booted the babies out of the way.  So this afternoon offered a very rare quiet moment.