Jacobsbaai Junkers!

Do you ever have one of those days where you begin one task and then get side tracked to do four or five different things that you hadn't bargained on doing but were glad you did in the end? And never completed what you were doing in the first place? And if you are still with me after that ramble, well done!

We had one of those days on Friday.

Backtracking a tad, my sense of direction has never been a strong point. In fact, when I drove to Knysna, Rob fixed little strips of paper to the Garmin with 'left          straight      right' and arrows to show me what was where! So, when the lady said 'In. Five. Hundred. Metres. Turn. Left.' in that stilting way she has, I knew exactly which way to go. This stems from my years of teaching Grade 1 and Grade 2 children and standing in front of them saying 'Start at the left side of the page' and holding out my right arm!

So, back to Friday. I decided to clear a piece of garden that has been bugging me for a while. The moles have had a party there and half the plants were dying through lack of soil round the roots. I got stuck in. Let the side tracking begin!

Rob does a Marine Weather Broadcast every lunchtime on the radio, giving the temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, cloud cover, sea state, rain, and wind strength and direction. Now, when he goes away, it is my job to take down the information and relay it to the man in Napier, so I have to know what is what. Rob has a fancy instrument for the temperature, pressure and humidity and for the rest it's stare out and have a look!!

Rob's fancy weather station!

Caravan Chaos!

Last week was a very interesting one! We decided to put our beloved Gemsquash on Gumtree, the site where you can literally buy and sell anything that is buyable or sellable! There was nothing wrong with her at all, but we decided to upgrade to a slightly roomier one, and as she was thirty two years old, we thought that we could find a more modern one. We also decided that we were in no hurry and if she didn't sell, well, we would simply keep her. Well, we could have sold her fifteen times! We had several calls from Cape Town and one chap from MagGregor sounded so desperate to buy her that he was ready to do an EFT and literally walk here to collect her! The first person who came to view her handed over the money, hooked her up and drove off! We stood in the drive and waved goodbye to our old friend and we both had tears in our eyes!

So, that meant we had to find another caravan! Rob found a beauty on Gumtree (where else?) and phoned the owner. I was at the Hospice shop by then, so was on tenterhooks to find out whether it had been sold or not! And as it turned out, it was waiting for us to go and see it!

Friday morning we bundled Alfie into the car and snuck out so that Basil didn't see us go and set off to Worcester in cloudy, cold, very windy and occasionally wet conditions! The shorter route was closed due to flooding on the road, so we had to go the long way round via the tunnel in Paarl! The mountains had lots of waterfalls cascading down them and every farm dam and small stream was full to overflowing.

Snow and clouds!

Wind, and then some!

We have been having some very hot days lately. Far too hot for me.

It happened very quickly though as a few weeks ago we had several days of the most unbelievable wind, gusting up to 65kph at times, causing tremendous damage both on land and sea. Ships were stranded in Cape Town harbour, unable to leave. One of them was the cruise ship 'MSC Sinfonia' and the passengers spent two days of their cruise, tied up! (Not the passengers, the ship!) Roofs were blown off, trees blown down and at one stage we heard on the radio that the SPCA had warned owners of small dogs not to let them out in case they blew away! Seriously! One lady phoned in to the radio station to say that her large Labrador had been blown sideways into a tree!
Fortunately we were fine here, we walked a little bent into the wind, but Alfie remained firmly on the ground, although his ears flapped a lot! Our roof did a fair amount of creaking and we did wonder if we would wake up to see the stars where the roof once was, but fortunately it held.

The Dry Dock at Saldanha harbour.

We went for a drive to Saldanha harbour, another favourite place of ours, to see what was happening in the dry dock. We were glad to see that two fishing boats were being repaired and painted, they look so different out of the water. Then we had a wander along the wall.

Poor boat.

Sadly we saw that one of the boats had sunk at her moorings, we don't know the story, but it's such a sad ending for a boat somehow. Like a fire engine burning, or a tractor being buried!

Wild, Wet and Windy!

I know that it's a bit soon for yet another blog, but I just had to share the weather with you! We have literally had all four seasons in the last thirty-six hours, with a cyclone thrown in for good measure! (Well, it felt like one.) I decided to show you the Weskus version of snow in a field, so we went for a little drive on Thursday and saw just what I wanted. Look, white with snow hey?

Snow Weskus style.

I cannot tell a lie, so I have to admit that you are looking at a field of flowers! These are Rain Daisies, or Dimorphotheca pluvialis, to give them their correct name! We have had lots and lots of rain, so the flowers are expected to be good this year, and this is a start.