DJR

Oudekraal and the 12 Apostles also, within a 100 metres stretch

The thought DID cross my mind briefly, but I didn't think they would be THAT enterprizing

If you get a set, buy an extra pair and keep it with you especially if you are one of those guys who tend to break chains. It is just such an easy way to road-side-repair a broken chain. Also useful if you break a derailleur or need to MacGuyver a single speed for whatever reason. The pair of links take no space and weights nothing.

Now, just to put this into perspective, soon after that traffic circle was built right in front of the SAPS fortress, a whole forest of Dagga sprouted there. Yes, in the middle of the traffic island, and the cops never saw a thing until it was about head high and made it into the newspapers with a cool picture of the dagga and the SAPS in the background. They have not improved since then. Edit: I'm not crusading agains dagga, just mentioning it to demonstrate how blind the SAPS is. Edit again: Found it, ha ha, NOTHING ever disappears on the web https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/dagga-growing-under-noses-of-police-301492

I needed that this morning👍

This time of year I feel a bit like a Bran Rusk.

Very lekker local name and sponsor.

I think they should take all those down and put up signs that forbid MUGGINGS, ROBBERIES, RAPE, ASSAULT AND MURDER. Maybe the real criminals will read it like we read the no booze and the no fires signs and comply? 😜

You are just a realist in his December phase.🤪

Do I recall correctly that he raced for Honda before going to Santa Cruz? Nothing lasts forever.

Isak Denisen was the nom de plume of Karen Blixen who also wrote Out of Africa. She first published as Isak Denisen because she thought that nobody would take a woman writer seriously. She knew a thing or two about adversity and she was right about that Cure for Everything..

The idea certainly crossed my mind, so, as a sad 2nd best, this is one I posted a while back (in the gum forest above Llundudno).

I agree that we should not look to SANParks for a lasting solution. Neither should we look at the SAPS. We should look for people who have some of their own skin in this fight. That leaves the City of Cape Town and us, the mountain users. Here I include the user groups like Table Mountainbikers, Tokai MTB, Tourism Board, Hotels, Tour guides, Hangliders, Rock Climbers, Mountain Club of SA, hell even dogwalkers, Kirstenbosch, SANBI, Friends of Table Mountain, Ratepayers Associations..........if we can mobilise them, the politicians, and therefore the burocrats will get off their butts and do something effective and lasting. If you make me the King of The Mountain (hypothetically, with my tongue in my cheek), my first order of business (seriously) would be to take the whole of the Northern part of Table Mountain National Park back from the neglecting management of SANParks and give it to either the City of Cape Town (they used to run it) or Cape Nature (who are much more functional than SANParks). I'll leave Boulders and the Southern part including Cape Point to SANParks because they have not done badly looking after those. But they are totally inept running an open access park like Table Mountain. I should not blame them (but I do) because their true mandate, which is conservation, is not really compatible with an open access park in the middle of a world city. They should have realised long ago that they cannot do it and given it to someone who can! Ok, I know that's more than 2c

My place for hill-repeats that often turn out to be a hill-not-repeat.

You win the "Make DJR Jealous" trophy this week! Hands down. And against competition like Dale!

We only fires blanks.........whether invaded, by the British or Transvalers.........just blanks.........we haven't got the (cannon) balls to use the real thing.🤪

About Table Mountain safety: I do not think that hundreds of unarmed rangers are needed to solve this crime problem. Yes, I will be happy if they have more visible patrolling, but all it will do is to displace the criminals, not find, arrest, prosecute and lock them up. They will just move elsewhere and before you know it the beaches or the other parks will have the same problem. So, how to do it? I feel that a smaller well equipped team of dedicated "criminal hunters"with the skills to investigate, track, monitor, react quickly, do sting operations etc are needed. When a specific area is plagued by criminals, zoom in on them, catch them, remove them from the equasion. Then tackle the next problem etc. until it is well known that if you put a bad foot on the mountain, you will be hunted down and caught. Throw the skills AND the resources at it, but target the operation very specifically, as opposed to throwing a lot of poorly equipped and toothless rangers at it. Also, I think one should distinguish the difference between theCape Point reserve where SANParks have good access control from the land side and Table Mountain where it is impossible . My 2c

Good question. I'll tell you a fictional story based on true events (like they say in the movies).................. A cyclist, obviously shaken, dressed in cycling kit and bleeding from a good few cuts and bruises came into the police station. He reported getting pushed off his bike on Table Mountain, on the slopes of Devils Peak, assaulted and robbed of his phone and bike. He then ran down the mountain all the time trying to see where the criminals took his bike. At the Rhodes Memorial parking lot he encountered SANPARKS rangers. He told them his story and that they asked him where he last saw the thieves, which was as they exited the park above Groote Schuur Hospital. Oh, then you must report it to the SAPS ...........nothing they could do once the robbers have left Table Mountain National Park..........he managed to get someone pick him up and take him to the Woodstock Police Station........into whose area the robbers fled...........they asked him where the mugging happened.........just above Rhodes Memorial........then you must go the the Mowbray Police station because that is their area.........and that is where I met him! Sadly, they were not much more helpful..............didn't have a vehicle available.........the criminals were by that time many kilometres away anyway. He got his report taken, in an extremely laborious way by a cop who could hardly read or write, got his case cumber and was told to claim from his insurance. I am 100% sure that was the end of it from SAPS and SANParks side. His bleeding face, his bruised body and the psycholgical scars hopefully healed with the help of his private medical aid and support system of friends and family, no thanks to the non-existent help he got from the powers that be. OK, I know it won't make for a good enough movie script.........too much truth I suppose.........bit THAT is why thing are the way they are!

ENTRY fee for Cape Point is now THREE HUNDRED AND SOMETING RAND per day for an adult..........methinks I will demand my own personal ranger in future!

Anywhere between George and Mossel Bay you are never more than 20 minutes from the airport. 30 Minutes if you include parking and walking to the check in counter. Probably quicker than getting out of George in holiday season.

Also look at the little (not so little anymore) towns between George and Mossel Bay. Groot Brak, Klein Brak, Herolds Bay, Glentana. My elderly mom lives in Hartenbos and I must say that the Mossel Bay Municipality is one of the very well functioning ones. Whenever we have issues with municipal services they sort it out. Also, municipal infrastructure and staff works. The town is clean and well cared for. My father cycled alone (into very old age) on the roads between George and Hartenbos untill about 3 years ago and never had any security issues. He just always complained that "the Transvalers" clogged the roads too much over the December / January holiday season.

My youngest is doing a research project in the Kalahari (on Pangolin, so scaly, but mammal). One of his co-researchers is doing a PhD project on Pufadders. She catches them and when she has a few, she gets the vet in. They anaethetise them and implant a tracker that also records all kinds of biometrics. That way she can find the snake again at the end of her project to get her expensive trackers back. Badass woman! (Likes heavy metal too) The young D sometimes help her track her subjects. He says it is unnerving to have the tracker go bananas, bleeping like all hel is breaking loose because the snake is within a metre from you, and be totally unable to see it. Recently she had one Puffy that went quiet with his tracker not moving for over 5 months. So, it was decided to go dig it out of the burrow because it must be dead if it stayed there right through winter and into high summer. D was invited because anyone needs help digging in 40 degrees heat. So, after a good few hours of digging and by then in a belt-deep hole, he finally opened the cavity ...... just to find a very live and pissed off puffy that decided to go deeper into the tunnel system. So, yes, they do not sommer attack. He says he's going the think twice before volunteering to help her dig again.....

See, I told you to ask for a try-out yourself..........would have made for a MUCH more fun day out........for us all ! 😁

I have had working Labradors for many years and although most of their working season is in winter (when snakes ar much less active), they do also work in summer (on the Durbanville Hills, and if you ever cycled there in summer, you will KNOW how many snakes are around). The dogs often work in thick cover where they surely must come across snakes that we are never even aware of. I worry about it, a lot, but I still marvel at how few snake encounters we have had over the years. I can only attribute it to the fact that when the dogs are working, they are so focussed that they do not take much interest in ANYTHING else, including snakes. Also, I think snakes are not very likely to bite a dog unless they feel very threatened by a dog intentionally engaging with it. Only one of our Labs ever got bitten in the Western Cape by a snake. She was rushed to the vet and survived with no more than a swollen face and a few days of feeling sick. We assume it wasn't a very poisonous snake. We would not even have known that she was bitten if she did not yelp and came running back to us with two obviously bleeding holes on the nose. A frieds English Pointer got bitten by a Cape Cobra in the Eastern Cape and did not make it. It happened in a very remote place and there was no vet nearby, but that most likely would not have made any difference to the outcome. Currently there is still a severe shortage of antivenon in SA and the vets can for practical purposes not access it at all, meaning that if a dog gets bitten by a Cobra or a puffy, there is not a lot that the vet can do in any case. So, yes, doing anything possible to avaid a bite is the right thing to do.