#Wednesday Walk - Going on a Walk on the "Spook Pad" and Making a new Discovery!

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.

I'll tell you now what "Spook Pad" means...read on...LOL!

Last weekend, we went for a drive. And while on the drive, we got out for a short walk too.

But let me share a humorous story about the area where we went for a drive. In Afrikaans, we call it ... "Die Spook Pad". That means... "The Spooky Road".

We love going for drives on this road. It is beautiful and takes you through a nature reserve. Inside the reserve, there are also hiking trails which we love walking on. I shared the Molweni Trail sometime ago when we walked to the Gillits Waterfall.

Anyhow, you drive through an upmarket residential area, and then, suddenly, you find yourself in the nature reserve.

The story has it that some time ago, the residents of this neighborhood were plagued with a high crime rate, with the houses being broken into regularly. The criminals had an escape route into the nature reserve, and once inside the reserve they were gone as it is a dense forest area.

Then, one of the residents came up with an idea...

He was a biology teacher at one of the local schools and he had access to one of those skeletons they use in biology classes...a life-size thing.

He got together with some of his friends and they decided to stage a scene on this road by using this skeleton. They hanged the skeleton by its neck from a tree, hanging over the road (just as you enter the reserve), just high enough to enable cars to pass through underneath it.

Mysteriously, the burglaries suddenly just came to an end. After two weeks, the City Council requested the people to please remove the skeleton. They did so, but to my knowledge, to this day they do not have a problem with crime in that area...haha.

We approached this area this time from the Waterfall side, driving past some huge estates and complexes.

Just before we entered the nature reserve area, I pulled over to take my first shot.

This is looking back in the direction of where we came from.

Just around the corner were the first signs of approaching the nature reserve.

From here on, you have to go slow and be very careful, as the road gets very narrow at some places and there are quite a few very sharp, blind corners.

My wife took the next three photos for me while we were driving down to the bottom. There is no space here to pull over. So, if you want to stop to look at something (or take a photo), you have to stop in the middle of the road. At this point, I noticed another car following behind us at a distance, so I didn't want to stop.

At some places, the road widens a bit, which is very welcome when you have oncoming traffic from the front. But still, no space to maneuver if you decide that you do not want to continue down. With only rocks on one side, and on the other side...straight down, you have to continue to the bottom at the Molweni Hiking Trail where you find enough space to turn around.

At one point, I had to stop and back up a bit to a space where the road was a bit wider. There was a car approaching us from the front, and there just wasn't enough space for both of us to pass each other...lol!

The next photo my wife took just as I was approaching the last bend before the place where I wanted to get out.

We reached the Molweni Hiking Trail (the one I mentioned before). There is enough space here for quite a few cars to pull over. This is normally where we would leave the car while walking the trail.

I parked the car and took the next shot while standing in the middle of the road. Here we are at the bottom of the gorge. Carrying on with the road (as we would be doing soon), you gradually start climbing the hill, until you find quite a steep hill getting out on the other side of the gorge.

But driving from here, this would be your view of the road.

The Everton Gorge Molweni River Trail will take you to the Gillits Waterfall.

This is the trail we took to the waterfall that I covered in some of my posts before.

Standing on the bridge, with the Molweni River passing below me.

The river coming out on the other side. I stepped off the road here to get a bit closer for a better shot.

We got back into the car and started the rest of our journey, but only a few meters further, my wife and I called out simultaneously... "Another waterfall!"

We haven't seen this one before, but with the amount of rain we had lately, it was quite spectacular. Although it is not very big, it still has a beauty of its own.

I found a tiny space where I was able to fit our car in and we walked back to our new discovery.

Here you can see it through the greenery.

I walked down a little further to where I could get a slightly better view of it.

We then continued our journey, leaving the nature reserve and returning home!

Thank you for reading my post! I do appreciate it!