New Year Reflections

The New Year is often a time for reflection. Rather than bore you with my inner navel gazing though, I’m instead going to share two photographic reflections with you.  Before heading back to the UK for Christmas, we spent a glorious week down South exploring Cape Town, Knysna and Franschhoek.  Both reflection photos come from that trip.

Knysna is a small touristy almost-beside-the-seaside town in the south of South Africa. If you look at a map and draw a line between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, Knysna is roughly two thirds of the way along it. It nestles by a tidal lagoon, protected from the worst of sea storms (hence the ALMOST-beside-the-seaside description). The lagoon ebbs and flows into the sea between the formidable rocky Knysna heads.

Pronounced nize-na, Knysna is a bit like an African version of England’s Cornwall. The coastline is dotted with beaches, there are plenty of seafood restaurants, lots of holidaymakers and  plenty of outdoors activities.   Although, be warned, if you are thinking about choosing canoeing in the lagoon as an outdoors activity you will get splattered with lagoon water and it STINKS.

….And should you furthermore decide to take both your children out on the lagoon, (“Pleeeeeeease Mummy, we’d love to go canoeing.  Please.”) it helps if they are proficient paddlers.  I took a tandem canoe with Pickle and Sweetpea struck out on her own.

Once we’d paddled quite a distance they both decided they were “soooooo tired” and which resulted in me trying to get back to base with the second canoe tied to the back of the tandem one and two dead weights flailing their oars about in my face, further dousing me in ghastly lagoon water, while I battled against the tide.  Meanwhile Mr Incredible was shore side busy reflecting (falling about with laughter at my predicament) over a cheeky espresso.

…I digress.  Moving swiftly onto my second reflection photograph.

We were on a boat and were meant to be out at sea appreciating the sunset, but one of the other passengers had terrible seasickness (or possibly pre-wedding jitters as she was apparently due to get married the following morning).  She had to be returned to shore and carried off the boat by a gallant, but very tiny sailor.

Taken from a moving boat, I’m pretty pleased with this photo.

Sunrise and sunset are genuine miracles that bookend each day.  Miracles that have been almost entirely lacking for weeks in places like rain sodden Britain, where Señor Sunshine seems to pottered off on an extended holiday.  Señor Sunshine has left his cousin, the Rain Fairy, in charge (and by the looks of things a very bitter and vindictive Rain Fairy she is).

We had a taste of her wrath when we spent Christmas in the waterlogged Lake District.   Water was just leaking out of the fells* from all directions, puddling and rushing downwards from every direction towards the fast rising river Kent. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Sunrise, sunset and even horrible floods, they are all food for thought, but I said I wasn’t going to start navel gazing.   So all that’s left to do is wish you Happy New Year and leave you to enjoy the pictures, while I dust the holiday cobwebs from my brain and get started on some brand new blog posts.

Learn more about Knysna at:  Visit Knysna

*fell is a term that comes from Old Norse, but is used in parts of the UK to describe hills, high moors and mountains