Please join us (all welcome – members as well as non-members) for our AGM, after which cheese and wine will be served:
We, the committee of the Florida Hiking and Adventure Club, hereby give notice to all paid up members of the
14th Annual General Meeting
to be held on
Tuesday 23 February 2009
at the Golden Reef Road Runners Club, Andrew Street, Horison.
7:00 pm for 7:30 pm
Tuesday 26 January
Golden Reef Road Runners Club, Andrew Street, Horizon
7 for 7.30 pm
Bring & Braai
For our first meeting, we will have a social evening to catch up with what we have all been doing during the holidays and to let you know what we have planned for 2010. Do hope to see you all there. The bar will be open, as usual, for drinks so just bring along your meat and salads
HIKE: WOODCLIFFE CAVE TRAIL
DATE: 28 DEC 2009 – 1 JAN 2010
TYPE: 5 DAY BACK PACKING
AREA: MACLEAR – EASTERN CAPE
This is going to be quite an effort to write this report, as we were so looking forward to this hike, especially after our wonderful experience the year before – the row up the Kowie and then the Alexandria hike.
Starting at Nick and Pauline’s place the night before we set off we were “entertained” with a delicious meal (thanks Pauline – much appreciated!!) as well as numerous bottles of wine, at least we all slept well!! Decided not to hit the road too early, discovered we didn’t have that far to travel to reach our overnight stop at Rouxville – ok so maybe we should have chosen some place slightly more civilised – none the less we still had lots of fun. Next stop – Woodcliffe farm house in time for us to reach the overnight cave. What an absolutely beautiful farm house with the most exquisite views, Phyll is an extremely gracious host and is very meticulous concerning the finer details pertaining to the forthcoming hike.
The area we were in was so beautiful that the adverse report we had received from Albert just didn’t seem as if it could apply. But unfortunately a lot of the problems, I must stress here though – not all, that Albert had brought up, still applied.
The description of the trail just doesn’t correlate with what you encounter. We didn’t battle at all in finding our way around, but one does not want to spend 4 days out of the 5 walking most of the time on a jeep track, and when one does finally get into the bush there is no defined path to follow, you scramble over rocks, bushes etc, the markings are plentiful but in places have been painted on flat rocks and as the grass is long all of these cannot be seen. Even when doing a wilderness trail like the Cederberg, you have a path to follow – there may well be no markers but you can at least work out where to go with your GPS or otherwise a compass and a map.
The water situation at Tok’s cave needs to be addressed, getting water from the waterfall in the warm weather was bad enough but I would have hated to have been there in the winter, and got totally wet in the freezing weather.
The huts are just that huts – there is nothing else, and nowhere does it say that you need to bring mattresses for these nights. At Reed Park hut there were 4 chairs and a table, some mattresses that were in a shocking state. At Wide Valley Cottage there was nothing. No chairs or even logs or rocks to sit on, no mattresses, with a loose piece of corrugated iron on one section of the roof that banged all night long as the wind had come up.
Day 2 or 3, depending whether you do the circular yellow route or not, the ascent up to the top of the high berg is awful, once again no path to follow, lots of erosion, it would have been so much better if the path had zig zagged its way to the top.
I do not want this all to sound like doom and gloom as this is an exceptionally lovely area, but I do believe there is so much more that could be done. Paths made instead of all the walking on the jeep track, more walking along the rivers, markers on poles etc where the grass is long, more zig zagging up and down the mountain sides, to avoid all the erosion, some form of water containers at Tok’s cave, upgrading and maintenance of the interior of the huts.
If I had been a first time hiker and had attempted this hike, I think I would have been put off of hiking in a big way….. So it is lucky that we know that there are well marked, well maintained beautiful hikes around.
Woodcliffe – please listen and heed what we hope will be taken as constructive criticism. We would love to recommend your hike to others – but not as it is at present.
And then the best was yet to come – we found the most awesome B&B in Zastron on our return trip – called Die ou Stal, even if you are not that close – make the detour and spend a night or two there – Zanobia and Piet are host of note, the B&B is spotless and beautifully furnished – truly well worth a stay.