Just a small segment of the mountainous majesty visible from the dairy farm we visited at Storms River Mouth.This first appeared in the Weekend Post’s Leisure supplement on October 30, 1999, under the headline, “Storms’ natural beauty” – and there was barely a mention of birds!
IF I lived in a place like Storms River I’d battle to get anything done. When you’re surrounded by so much natural beauty you can’t stop admiring it.
Kind relatives put us up for a few days in a cottage on their dairy farm, just east of the river and not far from the mouth.
It was an idyllic time, particularly for our two boys, aged six and eight, who experienced a taste of the sort of world Dylan Thomas wrote about in his poem, Fern Hill.
They were more than a trifle envious of our hosts’ children, for whom barefoot walks along cow-dung covered roads and over lush green pastures are part of daily life.
A group of sacred ibises enjoy rich pickings on the farm.
Add to that the allure of fishing in scenic dams or rowing around in a boat to explore them and you get a picture of, well, bucolic bliss.
There was a delightful moment when the five children, all nine or younger, returned with a farm hand after a successful afternoon’s fishing. Klaas, it emerged, had caught not one but two carp, and had given one to the boys.
As we parents watched World Cup rugby on the telly, in walked Bruce, aged four, with this fairly sizeable fish, beaming.
“We caught a vis!” he exclaimed. “We caught a vis!”
In a rush of excitement he told us what had happened, before slapping the slippery silver fish onto the coffee table. As for myself, I couldn’t take my eyes off the surrounding Tsitsikamma mountains. Particularly impressive is Witels Peak, which stands proud and aloof, just demanding to be climbed.
Getting a taste of the local lifestyle, we drove off one evening into a light rain (most of the time the weather was perfect) to have supper at the annual Forest Festival held at a sawmill, ahead of a half-marathon being run the next day.
The rays of the setting sun, itself a glowing ember in the swirling mist, encrusted the row of receding mountains with gold. Awesome.
Earlier, a walk from the top of the eastern cliff down to the Storms River Mouth yielded more spectacular views. While we did not take the rather costly boat trip up the river, from the swaying suspension footbridge the vertical cliffs loomed impressively as they plunged down into a narrow, mirror-smooth body of water.
During our ensuing walk from the bridge to the tourist complex at the mouth, we climbed a steep flight of wooden steps at the top of which a group of English tourists were staring at something just above them.
A Knysna lourie was perched in a tree not three metres from us. We could see the delicate white lines around its eyes and, as it flew a short way onto a rocky outcrop, the brilliant scarlet of its wings.
What an exciting sighting!
We were pleased to find that, since our last visit about a decade previously, a boardwalk has been constructed along the entire length of the walk between the bridge and the tourist complex.
The same applies with the walk through the indigenous forest to the Big Tree, which is about a kilometre north of the N2.
About 800 years old, this towering – and leaning – yellowwood tree is some 36m high. It takes eight men standing hand in hand with arms outstretched to surround the base of its trunk.
One interesting observation we made at the mouth was that timber, no matter how well treated, doesn’t survive in very damp areas. It rots.
Which is why large sections of the boardwalk are being replaced – with replica plastic planks!
There was a delightful moment when the five children, all nine or younger, returned with a farm hand after a successful afternoon’s fishing. Klaas, it emerged, had caught not one but two carp, and had given one to the boys.
As we parents watched World Cup rugby on the telly, in walked Bruce, aged four, with this fairly sizeable fish, beaming.
“We caught a vis!” he exclaimed. “We caught a vis!”
In a rush of excitement he told us what had happened, before slapping the slippery silver fish onto the coffee table. As for myself, I couldn’t take my eyes off the surrounding Tsitsikamma mountains. Particularly impressive is Witels Peak, which stands proud and aloof, just demanding to be climbed.
Getting a taste of the local lifestyle, we drove off one evening into a light rain (most of the time the weather was perfect) to have supper at the annual Forest Festival held at a sawmill, ahead of a half-marathon being run the next day.
The rays of the setting sun, itself a glowing ember in the swirling mist, encrusted the row of receding mountains with gold. Awesome.
Earlier, a walk from the top of the eastern cliff down to the Storms River Mouth yielded more spectacular views. While we did not take the rather costly boat trip up the river, from the swaying suspension footbridge the vertical cliffs loomed impressively as they plunged down into a narrow, mirror-smooth body of water.
During our ensuing walk from the bridge to the tourist complex at the mouth, we climbed a steep flight of wooden steps at the top of which a group of English tourists were staring at something just above them.
A Knysna lourie was perched in a tree not three metres from us. We could see the delicate white lines around its eyes and, as it flew a short way onto a rocky outcrop, the brilliant scarlet of its wings.
What an exciting sighting!
We were pleased to find that, since our last visit about a decade previously, a boardwalk has been constructed along the entire length of the walk between the bridge and the tourist complex.
The same applies with the walk through the indigenous forest to the Big Tree, which is about a kilometre north of the N2.
About 800 years old, this towering – and leaning – yellowwood tree is some 36m high. It takes eight men standing hand in hand with arms outstretched to surround the base of its trunk.
One interesting observation we made at the mouth was that timber, no matter how well treated, doesn’t survive in very damp areas. It rots.
Which is why large sections of the boardwalk are being replaced – with replica plastic planks!
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