Cape to Cape Day 06 – Deepdene to Cape Leeuwin
Ominous Weather
I broke camp at 08:10 that morning and made my way from
Deepdene Campsite down the 390 metre trail to the dune blowout. I was greeted by dark, ominous clouds, a sure sign of impending drama. I had had enough of the blistering sun by then and welcomed the brisk sea breeze as I pushed my way onwards with my sights transfixed on the tiny lighthouse in the distance.
I found that stepping in the footsteps of those that had gone before me somehow made the going much easier. Perhaps it was due to the compacted sand or perhaps because less energy was being used to maintain my balance as the soft sand crumbled
under my feet. I also stayed away from the slopes of the dunes and tried to keep on the firm, wet sand that the waves had just washed over.
For some reason, a part of me was starting to anthropomorphise the weather. The clouds looked moody to me that day and had struck me as capricious from the start. Strangely enough, the more I looked at them the more vindictive and malevolent they seemed, their incipient wrath having sapped all the colours out of everything, leaving the terrain looking barren and desolate.
My pace dropped considerably after about five kilometres as sharp limestone formations had sprouted out from the ground and had turned the easy beach walk into rock clambering. I welcomed the change finding hopping from rock to rock far more entertaining than the endless treading on the dull sand. There were sections that were a little precarious though, even forcing me to use my hands on one occasion. The rocks ended at the 6.8 km mark and the sand began once again with a 200 metres dash to a sand dune and a 300 metres walk between the dunes before reaching shrubbery.
I was left a little perplexed at one point having thought that I had seen another hiker in the distance struggling up a sand dune. By the time I got up the dune, atop a relatively flat sand plateau, absolutely no one was in sight. I hadn't seen any other hiker in front of me the entire time, even with my eyes fixed on the distant horizon, so quickly dismissed it as having being another mysterious case of pareidolia, something that I recalled had happened to me
before when hiking alone.
I walked a bit further before my
Suunto Ambit beeped to announce that I had already covered 10 kilometres. After rounding the next crest and seeing the views open up infront of me, I decided that this was as good a place as any to stop for my first rest of the day.
