We went to Memel. Memel was founded in 1252 by Poppo von Osterna, grand master of the Teutonic order. It is situated on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Hang on, I am getting confused here, our Memel is in the Freestate not far from Newcastle and that is Newcastle in South Africa not the Newcastle on T in England. The world is a confusing place.
Our Memel was first established in 1911 and proclaimed a municipality in 1917. The population in 1970 consisted of 286 Whites, 1 Coloured and 845 Bantu (Reference: Standard Encyclopedia of Southern Africa, 1972). I wonder whether the one coloured is still there? Its present claim to fame is that it has proclaimed itself to be the 'ultimate tourist destination'. This what was written on the information center. Not sure how they got to that. Apart from a few hills around it has nothing, at least nothing that I am aware of.
Sediba is only1.3km from town as the crow flies. The main camp is on a river with a water fall, that is when the water is running. At this time there was just a trickle going down. The camp is well laid out and very comfortable. We all collected there on Friday, for us it was a short drive of only 2 hours and a bit.
Saturday's hike was only about 10 km. Not much up and down and mainly along the kranz of the mountain. The trial designer had tried to make the hike interesting by taking us along the cliffs and sometimes through the cliffs and sometimes up and down the cliffs.
Our timing was good as far as the Red Paintbrush flowers (Scadoxus puniceus) were concerned, we had lots of them. With Roger even attempting to eat one.
Because the walk was so short we had lunch only about one kilometer from the hut and were back in at about 14h00. We whiled the time away by reading, talking, sleeping and local exploration of the river bed.
Most of us tackled the short Sunday hike of only 7 km. Some took a bit longer because they wanted to have a look at the river further down the valley, The rest of us just marched on. Some excitement was had when we came to this cave. It was a crack with we imagined a leopard or porcupine sitting in the far reaches out of sight. So I had to be sent in to flash with my camera, I didn't capture anything on the film, just more darkness further in where I couldn't fit.
That was the end of it, on the way back we drove through Memel, Vrede and Villiers just to see what these dorpies are like.