Staying ahead of the weather

Our second flat walk of the week (no uphill at all) saw us taking advantage of the last good weather before the cold front was due to hit Cape Town. It was difficult to envision the strong winds and heavy rain forecast from midday as we set out towards the Lower Tokai Plantation in warm sunshine and cloudless skies, with only a breeze at our backs. This strengthened slightly as we progressed and a band of high cloud passed rapidly overhead and disappeared inland.
The river that winds through the forest had water in it and looked clean, but was nowhere near what one would like to see on the winter solstice, when we should have already had a substantial amount of our winter rainfall. We can only hope that winter is late in coming.
It's always an enjoyable walk under the pine trees, with our footsteps softened by a decades-old layer of pine needles. The tree tops swayed to and fro in a slow dance of the trees, the wind soughing in the branches to remind us that outside the shelter of the forest it was waiting for us.
We crossed the road and continued in the open meadow where the plantation trees were removed some years back and the fynbos has re-established itself and found ourselves shedding a few layers as the sun was warm and there was still no sign of the cold front. The path soon petered out and the fynbos became too thick to push through, so there was no alternative but to climb through the barbed wire fence at the side of the road. One can only imagine that the sight of some pensioners on all fours with walking sticks in various stages of climbing through a fence caused a good laugh for those driving past. It certainly provided us with plenty!
We finished our walk well pleased that we had not been put off by a bad weather forecast, but an hour and a half later, a gale blew up in the blink of an eye, black clouds rolled over the mountains and the rain came down. Well timed.