Promenade
They say outdoor exercise is better for you anyway. Not only do you get burn calories carrying around the weight of the money you would have wasted on a gym membership that you may (or may not) have used, but there are all sorts of other benefits: fresh air can rev you up as much as coffee, vitamin D from the sun, that fresh air feel good feeling, and the chance to show off to a wider ranging audience.
Now Cape Town has the mountain, the forests, the beaches and the hills, but the Promenade has always been one of my favourite places to stroll. I have a greater appreciation of human diversity that of botany, and I like its lack of gradient. And the sea, with its many moods, is soothing to the human soul.
I rode my bike down the promenade the other evening, it’s one of the best places in town to watch the colours change as the day dies. The after-work hour is one of the most popular for the social walking talking types, dog walkers and the joggers. Since October last year the promenade, which runs from 11km from Mouille Point to Bantry Bay, past the salty public swimming pools and man-made tidal pools, has been open to wheels as well as heels. Bikes, skateboards, roller blades once banned, are welcome to weave amongst the walkers.
It’s quite a task. A blonde with a small dog on a lead had one arm outstretched to restrain her pet and the other holding a phone to her ear. She wasn’t looking where she was going and the pooch was pulling her into my path, but I dodged the little bitch and slotted myself into the slipstream of a couple of runners.
Down the Mouille Point end of the promenade, but not as far as the candy stripped lighthouse, there is an outdoor gym; deemed necessary as the Western Cape is the most obese of all the provinces. The beach front equipment hasn’t quite brought out the Schwarzenegger’s of Venice beach. In fact, I’m not even sure that some people haven’t worked out that it isn’t a playground. Hands on two parallel poles a man just in shorts with a rippling muscular chest bounced up and down with his feet off the ground, whilst next to him an overweight lad had taken off his shoes and was pushing his denim knees up and down and unzipping his hoody. An old man with a can walked past and tapped another a step-up machine with the end of his stick.
The beaches are littered with broken shells that crunch under your feet and the smell of the kelp clings with mussel like tenacity to the coastline, briney and rotten. Out in the waves the weed bobs like playful seals, but on the shore it festers under a cloud of little flies.
Sometimes when the wind is high, the waves crash over the paved walkway, licking it with salt and littering it with bottle caps and sand and weed. On calmer days the seagulls paddle in the shallows, serenaded by the hadidas.
The air on the promenade is sticky, it makes your skin feel clammy even in the cool of winter and I breathe it deep and wait. And all because there ain’t nothing like a west coast sunset and I stopped my bike to watch. The sun looks biggest as it yawns and slips below the horizon, last flashes of red on the water and pink in the clouds. As the greyish light it leaves starts to dim to blue, the streetlights bring their soft orbs to stand watch over the evening. And I turn my wheels towards the firefly lights of town.