To the fort

The monthly meeting was on yesterday and a walk to the fort in Longmore Forest was the objective. The weather was quite unpredictable, it turned out quite fresh with a light breeze, ideal for walking. Unfortunately some people didn’t pitch so the cost of the permit that Ellie went to a lot of trouble for to organize wasn’t completely covered.

Nine of us set off from Van Stadens, met Rasheed on the way and a friendly attendant opened the gate just past Culturama for us and we proceeded to just beyond the Van Stadens River crossing and parked there.

The tracks in the forest look all alike and sometimes it can be quite a challenge not to get lost. Fortunately the forest around there is quite young so we spotted the old Boer War fort quite easily on top of the hill even though it did not quite match up to my map. Only later did it become clear that in fact there are two forts and we went to the ‘wrong’ one which turned out to be the right one.

We looked around, took photos, did some botanizing and retraced our steps to make it back to the Reserve in good time to enjoy our coffee and cake and a good old chinwag.

Everyone helped afterwards offloading the trailer with more repotted plants, admired the misting house, checked the nursery and such things. We also collected the bag with Bryophyllum delagoense that had been pulled out in the Arboretum the day before, thanks to the Woodridge students there are now a few less to worry about. The porcupines are still at it, bulbs we planted on Wednesday under the impression they don’t like those had all been munched and their diggings are evident all over the Arboretum. A bit discouraging actually.