Bertie's Balcony

A fresh southeaster met us head-on as we set off from the Silvermine south carpark early this morning. Our destination was Bertie's Balcony, a site unknown to me as I am still a beginner hiker, but I knew it was a long way away, and a long way up! The walk along the familiar jeep track to the dry waterfall brought back memories of slogging along many years ago, not enjoying the trek at all.  With my new-found fitness and generally vastly improved health due to selective nutrition, I barely noticed the journey, but once we turned off to the left and began the climb, it was a real test of my progress. The wind kept us cool and it might have been a lot less pleasant to be in hot sun with no shade along the way.
I tend to trail in the rear as I stop often to enjoy the view and take photos of flowers, but this is no longer the case and I can keep up with the best of them (if I want to). Plentiful flowers, still closed at this early hour, promised a lovely showing on the way back, and the views became more and more spectacular as we climbed  - onward and upward, Pamela! was the exhortation. It's nice to know, though, that I have reached a stage where I can be solicitous towards others who might not be managing the rock climbing so easily.
The trail took us up ridges and down valleys and after a little judicious map-studying, we arrived at the overhang known as Bertie's Balcony, with the name painted faintly on the rock face. Amazingly, it was the only graffiti to be found, but on reflection it is quite obvious that nobody with a spray paint can in their hand bent on defacing nature's beauty would ever be that keen to climb that far. Long may it last!
The hike down was quite fast due to the steepness of the incline, and with the wind at our backs, we made it to the cars in just under 4 hours. About 8 kilometres. Another fine outing under the boots.

Noordhoek beach and Chapman's Peak in middle distance

The cars are at the end of the little stripe in middle of left-hand side