Did you know there is a nature reserve and hiking trail at NMMU? – Featured Blog

I went for an early morning walk along the Grysbok Trail in the NMMU Nature Reserve with Drama Princess last weekend and this was the view back towards the campus and university buildings from the reserve. 

 

The university campus was declared a private nature reserve in 1983.  The reserve covers 830 ha and is dominated by the St Francis Dune Thicket vegetation characterised by clumps of thicket occurring within a matrix of Dune Fynbos.  The Grysbok Trail itself was established in 1995 and is intended to be an environmental education and recreation resource for the University as well as the broader general community.  The trail offers various distance options ranging from a short 2,5 km loop to longer loops and covers a relatively flat terrain.  The public is welcome to walk the trail privately as long as they sign the Visitors’ Book. 

 

To get to the trail is very easy.  Drive into the main campus through the booms and keep straight past the main buildings.  The road curves to the right if you keep going will end in the parking area where the trail starts.  Best of all, if you are a Geocacher you will find nearly 30 caches on the trail.  Now that is a bit of a bonus and the reason I discovered the trail.

Every Sunday afternoon just after 12 I head over to the Luister FM studio in Newton Park for the weekly Padlangs insert on the Skop uit jou skoene program with Sarel Botha and Marius Erasmus.  Luister FM 90.5 is an Afrikaans community radio station that started a few months ago and has shown some serious growth in listenership among the Afrikaans community in and around Port Elizabeth.  Padlangs is a 15 minute travel slot where I cover everything from tourism info, travel destinations, things to do with the family and events with (just about) weekly competition give-aways.  I really enjoy radio and wish I had more time to get involved in a program on a more regular basis, but for the time being I love my weekly slot.