Climb the Cape Kili

We’ve only covered 5km and already we’ve gone up and down three, four, maybe five big hills. I’ve stopped counting. There are more up ahead. Robertson is behind us, forgotten, and Arangieskop towers ahead, quiet and majestic.

“I’m sure this trail has made many a hiker give up his hobby,” says Wadda Louw, echoing my sentiments.

Arangieskop, in the Dassieshoek Nature Reserve, is part of the Langeberg range, and its slopes offer an abundance of natural scenery: fields of sugarbush, forests, ferns, murmuring streams, dizzying heights, and a howling wind at the top.

I’m hiking with Wadda, Charl de Wit, Roland Truter, Gerrit van Deventer and Francois Albertyn. We’re nowhere near as brave as the travellers in the , who journeyed to Mordor to throw a ring into the fires of Mount Doom, yet it feels like our group of old school friends is also on an epic journey –