Saturday Spot: Se7en visit Silvermine…

Welcome to Silvermine! We have blogged about this spot before and because it is such a good one we will most likely blog about it again! It is part of the Table Mountain Nature Park, a ten minute drive from home and in the middle of the city-scape of Cape Town you can be totally lost in the world of nature. No sight of civilization, no cell phone access just totally wild. I would definitely put this spot on my must visit list if I was visiting Cape Town.

We went their last week to get some countryside into our systems… It has lots of different and varied hikes, it has really easy twenty minute ones and harder hikes for the sturdier more athletic types. This is a fabulous spot for picnics, mountain biking and hikes of course!

First we plot our route:

We usually romp around the reservoir – it is the twenty minute option but actually it takes us hours – a lot of exploring and poking around can do this to a twenty minute walk.

Off we go stomping…

Scampering over the dam wall…

We paused to look at the beach that isn’t a beach at the moment…

But it can be mid-summer:

And just look a bit closer to see if we can spot any fish…

And on we went to our secret spot, which isn’t secret really and isn’t ours at all – but I wouldn’t want to squash any youthful illusions!!!

Where you step through the trees to the edge of the water:

Where we always set up camp for the first of many snacks…

And I mean always: in years gone by we looked pretty much the same too:

So there we were: we built a jetty…

And fished for pirana’s – not really!

Then on we went exploring as we went…

Round to the picnic spots… which are lovely little day campsites, for picnics with all sorts of friends. There are spaces to braai (barbecue), with stone tables and chairs alongside the water…

We set up camp again and snacked some more, and built a flimsy bridge!

I love that this place with all things natural: spider webs…

And proteas…

And all sorts of vynbos (pronounced fane-boss), which is our local indigenous plant variety.

In one of those pictures there is a guinea fowl hiding. Ten million wonderful eyesight awards to you if you can see it! Clearly I wasn’t meant to be a photographer of animal life.

So that’s Silvermine in a nutshell.. If you are looking for specifics then have a look at this link, where you can have a look at their brochure and map.

The entrance fees when we were there were: R15.00 for adults and R5.00 for kids under 12.

And we noticed a new fenced in area and were compelled to explore: A camp site that forms part of the The Hoerikwaggo Trail. Hoerikwaggo means Mountain in the Sea and is the original name for Table Mountain, given to it by the local San people. I just had to wonder if they ever need a family with se7en kids to try out their facilities for them… We would be so happy to review their camp site! I could lose the 21km hike on the first day of their route and the 15 km on the second day… We would be happy to just test the campsite without the bother of all that hiking on either side!!!

So that’s Silvermine – well worth a visit… whatever the weather beautiful still days or wild wintry days and this can happen all on the same day – so be prepared!