You don’t really expect to find a wilderness guide in Cape Town.  After all, where’s the wilderness?  There’s plenty of city, a lot of beach and sea, many shops, clubs, hotels and restaurants, and lovely winding drives where one can ooh and aah over the scenery and stop for a sundowner.  But wilderness?  Pristine nature?  Where’s that?

Tim Attwell will be able to tell you.  There’s plenty, if you know where to look.  This retired Methodist minister has conducted a life-long love affair with the Great Outdoors, and now that he has the time to spare he wants to instil this love in everyone else.  And luckily for him, there is something about wandering in the mountains that appeals to most people.  
Tim founded a company called Cape Mountain and Field, which offers experiences of nature and outdoor adventure in and around Cape Town.  A fully qualified and registered field and mountain guide, Tim takes people into the less obvious and more beautiful (if that were possible) areas of the Cape metropole, and shows them, well, everything.

“I do a lot of school groups through Camp Africa, which takes school children off on a three-day camping trip,” says Tim.  “We camp at Scarborough.  What I like about these camps is that the groups aren’t just taken out and shown things. They get to experience a full range of outdoor activities.  The first day is spent rock climbing – being shown how to get into the ropes, how to go up and down cliffs, the different aspects of rock-climbing either as a sport of an educational activity.”  Tim loves geology, and rock climbing is a great way to introduce youngsters to the rocks that are, quite literally, right under their noses.

“In the evening we do some star-gazing, I tell them all about the constellations and the planets and the beginning of the universe.  Youngsters get really excited about this, when they start to realise that we are a part of space.”

The second day is taken up with a hike, looking at geology, doing some animal tracking, identifying vegetation.  The hike arrives at the beach halfway, and then some time is spent looking at the seashore.  “We talk about the inter-tidal zone, what makes a seashell a seashell, the different types of life in the sea, the littoral vegetation.  The idea is to make the sea and the shore come alive.  In the afternoon we spend some time doing orienteering, teaching the children to read maps and find their way around.  And then in the evening they are ready for a campfire, telling stories and singing songs and toasting marshmallows.”

The last day is the highlight as the children are allowed to do active conservation work:  clearing alien vegetation.  “They love this,” says Tim.  “We tell them this is a ‘Seek and Destroy’ mission, and they finish up grubby and happy.”

For more adult clients, Tim organises a day trip around the Peninsula, starting with an early-morning ride up Table Mountain in the cable car.  “We look at the geology of the Cape, we use the view to orientate ourselves, we talk about the mountains we can see.  We can cover 500 million years in a few minutes!” he says.

“Then we drive to Kirstenbosch via the Twelve Apostles, where the guests experience the floral kingdoms of the Cape.  After that, we drive over Chapman’s Peak (with a view on one side and a geology lesson on the other) to the Cape Point Nature Reserve.  There is lots of see here – the wreck of a ship driven ashore by a German U-boat, a whale skull that you can sit in, trails among the rocks, the most astonishing diversity of bird-life, archaeological remains, different plant communities.”

“At the end of the tour we go down to the Point, just to say ‘we wuz there’,” says Tim, “but we don’t spend that much time because there is little to see apart from the rock and the ocean.”   
“The point of my tours, I suppose, is to show what our planet is all about.  What makes it so easy in the Cape is that it is all so beautiful, so one can pick up this knowledge in the most rewarding setting.”  
Most visitors to Cape Town who want to walk around in the mountains in a limited time tend to take the trail up Plattekloof Gorge, which is so well used it is like the M2 at rush hour.  Tim recommends that walkers and hikers retain a guide who can take them up other, less populous routes, imparting local knowledge as they go.

In development are tours to the less obvious parts of the Cederberg, showing the history of the Khoi and the impact of slave emancipation. “It’s an otherworldly type of place,” says Tim.

“There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they're in the mountains, and all the rest,” goes the saying.  With Tim, singing hearts are definitely part of the programme. 
Visit the website at http://capemountainandfield.co.za