A Clovelly Childhood #7

When we were children, the small mountain behind our house, known as Trappies Kop, was our playground. Huge boulders that had tumbled down the mountainside aeons ago when the Cape fold mountains were first formed were the pirate ships, cars, playhouses and caves of fertile young imaginations, and the paths and alleyways and archways were an endless source of adventure. Sometimes there would be more adventure than we had hoped for, and we would often run pell-mell down the steep mountainside back home, shouting "Snake! Snake!" But we never stayed away long. The lure of freedom was strong up there on the Flat Piece, a natural platform bigger than a ledge and about as wide as a roadway that formed a cliff face about 50 metres from home and from where we could survey our world - to the left, the sea stretching from Fish Hoek Bay to Miller's Point beyond Simon's Town, with the southern Peninsula mountain chain split by the Fish Hoek Valley, the white sands of the dunes running from east to west with the rocky outcrop where early inhabitants dwelt in a cave, and a glimmer of the Atlantic Ocean in the west. The distinctive outline of Chapman's Peak joined the valley to the northern Peninsula mountain chain, with the impressive cliffs and world-famous Kalk Bay caves of Clovelly mountain keeping an eye on those lucky children who played in its shadow.

We never went higher than the Flat Piece on Trappies Kop because it was covered in impenetrable bush - the invasive alien known as Rooikrans, which was so dense that no person could pass through. Except for one amazing place, which we called the Tunnel of Trees. There was an opening rather like a cave mouth and you could walk into an area of dappled shade where, for some reason, the trees had not seeded themselves closely and a tunnel led a short way up a slope, ending in a sheer rock face beyond which there was no access. I like to think that this magical place was deliberately contrived by nature to provide us with that particular experience, knowing that it would be a defining part of our childhood memories. I always felt a different atmosphere in that tunnel of trees, one of secrecy or mystery, and I would never have gone in there by myself although I couldn't say why.

Years later, all the bush was destroyed in a fire, which exposed the rocky face of Trappies Kop, so much more interesting to look at, and the Tunnel of Trees has gone forever. But I'm sure everyone who ever went in there remembers it still.