Picnic site offers queenly treat inside Aberdares park

Queen's Cave

A waterfall near the Queen’s Picnic Site, inside the Aberdares National Park. 

Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Queen’s Picnic Site just one among many attractions.
  • Queen Elizabeth and her prince once had lunch here, so can you and yours.

Everybody loves a good place to rest, probably after working for months without a break.

And the place is the Queen’s Picnic Site, located inside the Aberdares National Park, a habitat that is also a mine of historical information.

A picnic table is set at the entrance to a waterfall and a cave that was once used by Dedan Kimathi, the Mau Mau freedom fighter.

The cave, which lies at the base of the 10,000ft Magura waterfall, was christened the Queen’s Cave after Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, were served lunch here by Major Eric George Sherbrooke Walker in 1952.

The site offers an ideal place for picnics, for a staircase has since been constructed leading into the cave.

TROUT

Down the fall is Magura River, a major tributary of River Tana that is famously known as Gura River downstream. It is the fastest in Africa and is best for sports fishing.

According to Simon Wachira, the chief executive officer of the Mt Kenya Tourism Circuit, only trout fish survive in this river due to its high altitude and cool temperatures.

The Queen’s Picnic Site is surrounded by moorland, a vegetation of giant heather and tussock grass. Dozens of buffaloes, baboons, waterbuck and eland gulp the cool waters side by side.

“We have quite a good number of wildlife in this area, among them waterbucks, hyenas, eagles, kingfishers, wild ducks and other species of birds,” says Mr Wachira. “Also common are lions and the black leopard.”

He says since the area has plenty of wildlife and beautiful vegetation, members of the British monarchy chose it and had their lunch here.

Before that, however, the cave was used by Kimathi as a hideout from the colonial army that pursued him and his fighters during the State of Emergency in the 1950s. The cave offered a perfect hideout because it was invisible from aerial patrols.

The Queen’s Picnic Site is just one of the many attraction sites that draw visitors to the Aberdares. “The site offers a perfect photography scene while the pool beneath the fall is best for nude dipping,” says Mr Wachira.

It can be reached by air, since it is near an airstrip, and by road through Nyeri, past the Kiandogoro gate, and via Naivasha through the Mutubio gate.

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