This post is for the #wednesdaywalk challenge and the #makemesmile challenge collaboration. This collaboration initially took place once a month, but due to its popularity, @tattoodjay (of the #wednesdaywalk) and @elizacheng (of #makemesmile) decided to make it a weekly thing.
If you want to know more about the rules, visit this week's post by @tattoodjay where you will find all the rules at the bottom of his post after you've enjoyed his beautiful photos from his walk.
Last weekend we've had some light rain again and I was hoping to get enough time to get out and take some decent photos.
I decided to go up to the Springside Nature Reserve in Hillcrest. It is only about a 10-minute drive from where we live. You'll see on the image below, that it is indicated as a 6-minute drive for us.
The uniqueness of this reserve is that you can go on a nice hike, and forget that you are in the city. It is situated right in the middle of a built-up area, yet, when you are inside the reserve, you would never say that. It can be seen in the image below, which is a screenshot from Google maps.
Source: Google Maps
In the image above you can see the hiking trails marked out within the reserve, marked with the thin gray lines.
On arrival, as we got out of the car, we immediately noticed that even this reserve is showing clear signs of the incredible floods we've had a couple of weeks ago.
The picnic area was marked off and is a "no-go" zone at the moment.
In my first two photos, you can get an idea of the damage to this area.
We decided to take the River Trail.
We had our 3-year-old grandson with us and we were hoping to see some wildlife too. There are several forms of wildlife...amongst others are some small antelope species.
In the first part of the trail, you are walking next to the forest. Looking in, this is a typical view at this point.
Yet, while still being relatively high, you can look over the forest and see some of the houses bordering the reserve, like this one.
For me...I just wanted to get inside the forest as soon as possible and forget that I am anywhere close to the city...
Another peek in from the outside...!
After a few minutes, we found a little footpath, leading down to the stream running just below us, to get a taste of what is waiting.
On the opposite side of the stream was a nice little bench if you were to need some time to just sit down and enjoy the silence. We would be passing it soon after we crossed the little bridge a little further upstream.
Here you can also see some debris still hanging from the floods.
Shortly after that, we reached the little bridge and decided to cross the stream. To take a longer route, you can continue straight, but with our little grandson with us, we didn't want to go too far.
So, we took the turn, and there was the little bridge. It's like an invitation to come into the forest and leave everything else behind you.
Some more evidence of the recent floods.
But even after the chaos, there is still beauty...
I just had to take this photo with this amazing tree in the foreground.
That is where I stood, on the opposite side of the stream when I took the photo of the bench a little earlier.
The road ahead. Wet and slippery...lol.
Going in deeper...
Eventually, looking back at where we came from...
And where we were heading to...
The deeper we went, the denser it became...
When we got to the highest point on the other side of the reserve, I decided to turn around and follow the same route back out.
If you complete the route, you eventually get back to the car park area again. But I saw as we entered the reserve, that the bridge at the end of that trail was completely washed away and we wouldn't be able to cross back to the car park area from there.
So we went back and eventually got back to the little bridge from this side.
In the next photo, I stood on the bridge and zoomed in on the rocks upstream which can also be seen through the railings of the bridge in the photo above.
We started heading back to the car. Although we weren't lucky enough to see any wildlife on our walk, we did see some monkeys on our way back, just as they were about to enter the bushes.
I was lucky to get close enough to this one (the last one) before they disappeared into the bushes.
From there it was just a few minutes back to the car.
After that, we took our grandson to a farm market (I'll share some photos of that on Friday).
Tomorrow I'll share some more photos of the stream here in the nature reserve.
But for now, that's all folks!
Thank you for reading my post! I do appreciate it!