I ♥ Tulbagh Because ...

I ♥ Tulbagh

Hi, I’m Irene Ashurst from Vindoux Guest Farm in Tulbagh in the Breede River Valley.

Tulbagh IS BEST KNOWN FOR its wine and fruit farm­ing as well as all of the great wed­ding venues.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT Montpellier little chapel which is set in the vine­yards on the Twee Jonge Gezellen Road.
THE BEST moun­tain PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN AT Vindoux on the bal­cony of the Tree Lodge.
OTHER HAPPY SNAPS AT can be taken so many places in this beau­ti­ful val­ley. Continued

I ♥ McGregor Because ...

I ♥ McGregor

Hi, I’m Anette from Tanagra Wine and Guest Farm in McGregor, Breede River Valley.

McGregor IS BEST KNOWN FOR its well pre­served his­toric cot­tages, its eccent­ric people and its tran­quil and relaxed lifestyle.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT Tanagra under the giant wild fig tree.
THE BEST land­scape PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN any­where in and around McGregor, as McGregor is sur­roun­ded by moun­tains, you will have a moun­tain view from any spot.

OTHER HAPPY SNAPS can be taken any­where in the streets of McGregor make sure you include the pic­tur­esque white­washed cot­tages. Continued

The Cobbit of McGregor

Cobbit of McGregor

We find the house via a com­bin­a­tion of dir­ec­tions from McGregor's loc­als and the abil­ity to fol­low our noses once we have the rather obvi­ous house in sight – there are not many homes in McGregor that look quite like it. Outside is a sign – cob­bits cot­tage. It's an apt descrip­tion of what stands before us, built com­pletely out of earth and serving as MAT's headquarters.

Jill is lar­ger than life. She would have to be. After build­ing her own house out of cob she is the walk­ing epi­tome of what it is to live sus­tain­ably, off grid — no link-up with Eskom at all — perched on the edge of McGregor where the town joins the Krans Nature Reserve. She is also, when we finally meet after hav­ing been vir­tual friends via email for a while, a won­der­fully warm indi­vidual who is only too keen to show us around her home, and drop pearls of wis­dom about how best to go about build­ing your own home out of earth into our ears ... Continued

McGregor weaves a spell over you, and all resistance crumbles

"I am Gorgeous"

McGregor is a wee vil­lage, tucked away in a val­ley at the foot of the Riviersonderend Mountains. It also hap­pens to rest on a series of ley lines (spir­itual earth energy con­nects here in a big way) that lend the vil­lage some­thing the folk who live here term 'magic' (they usu­ally shrug their shoulders and look all starry eyed as they say it, as if it's all a little bey­ond them). A stay here, it seems, is incom­plete without fall­ing in love with the place, or cer­tainly exper­i­en­cing some­thing other than the ordinary.

Spring in McGregor is some­thing akin to gor­geous... Continued

Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden — get there to see the flowers

Quiver Tree

Before any con­fu­sion sets in, there has been a name change. No, it's not new. It just obvi­ously takes me a while to cot­ton on to these things. The Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden was known as the same, but without the 'Desert'. The fact that this change came about in 2001 had totally slipped me by. The addi­tion of 'Desert' is to point out the obvi­ous – that plants grown in Worcester are of a par­tic­u­larly arid nature; they're really dry and hardy to sur­vive the heat and wind, in other words.

I love desert plants. Those thick, bulky leaves that hold water for months on end with no appar­ent limit to their abil­ity to with­stand the desire for more (that I had such will­power when it comes to food). They man­age not to wilt, scorch or com­plain in the heat of the sum­mer months, and then at the vaguest sug­ges­tion of rain, they explode into a caco­phony of col­our and pro­duce flowers that leave you spell­bound. It is hard not to be pas­sion­ate about suc­cu­lents there­fore. Even the bog stand­ard pelar­gonium pro­duces flowers that inspire ... Continued

Montagu's village market – fun filled Saturday mornings

Montagu Market

Heading off to explore the Montagu vil­lage mar­ket on a Saturday morn­ing to grab some break­fast is a stand­ard social affair for Montagu's res­id­ents, judging by the turn-out on a sunny morn­ing in winter. It's also a fun out­ing for vis­it­ors, and a great way to mingle with the townies, if that's your intention.

Everyone is bundled up in coats, scarves and gloves, but it looks as though the day will be fine as the first rays of sun hit the market's venue, Euvrard Park in Bath Street just across the way from the Tourism Information Bureau. There is a real sense of camaraderie as vis­it­ors and loc­als mingle around the foun­tain that forms the centre piece of the glade, filled with gor­geous old trees that in sum­mer serve as shade and in winter add oodles of char­ac­ter to the mar­ket. Continued

Worcester Wine Route

Slanghoek Wines

Being a bit of a self-proclaimed wine con­nois­seur, I jumped at the chance to drive along the Worcester Wine Route with a friend. Situated in the beau­ti­ful Breede River Valley, the Worcester Wine Route pro­duces close to 25% of South Africa’s total volume of wine and spir­its, mak­ing it one of the most invalu­able wine mak­ing areas in the country.

The Worcester Wine Route stretches from the Worcester District, going as far as Wolseley, Slanghoek, Hex River Valley along to Villiersdorp in the south. Taking the scenic route, we savoured the spec­tac­u­lar val­leys and majestic mountains.

Be sure to visit the fol­low­ing wine estates on your travels Continued

Aasvoëlkrans — more than a touch of whimsy in Montagu

Aasvoëlkrans B&B

Let me let you into a secret. Pretty Aasvoëlkrans is really worth your rand. To say that you are  spoilt for choice when it comes to accom­mod­a­tion in Montagu is an under­state­ment. There is so much to choose from that it can get a little con­fus­ing. But if you're after a little bit of lux­ury, with a huge dol­lop of con­trar­i­ness, indi­vidu­al­ity and per­son­al­ity, then this coun­try set­ting B&B is for you.

I have not been exposed to some­thing quite as ori­ginal as Aasvoëlkrans before. Set on an Arabian stud farm just out­side town — Church Street is a mere 10 minutes walk from here — the accom­mod­a­tion is a series of com­pletely indi­vidual and private garden rooms. Each has its own bed­room, en suite bath­room, bal­cony, and a couple their own kit­chenette ... Continued

Passionate about the bean — Strictly Coffee in Robertson

Strictly Coffee

Passionate about the bean — Branded freshly roas­ted cof­fee: The really sad thing about cof­fee is the amount of stale, bit­ter cof­fee being served to guest's daily. Most people just don’t real­ize the dif­fer­ence in the taste of fresh roas­ted cof­fee. It is import­ant to note that the fresh­ness of cof­fee has to do with when it was roas­ted not when it was har­ves­ted. After roas­ted cof­fee has been exposed to air, the fla­vor will begin to deteri­or­ate extremely fast. Instant cof­fee. Coffee made from freshly roas­ted beans is rich in aroma and fla­vor, with a taste far super­ior to instant cof­fee. Whilst instant cof­fee might curb caf­feine crav­ings, fresh cof­fee is a treat to be savored ... Continued

Get to the Wacky Wine Weekend on 3 to 6 June

Wacky Wine Weekend

Named after the Scottish min­is­ter Dr William Robertson who arrived on our shores in 1822, Robertson is today a pros­per­ous town and is home to the well known Robertson Winery (estab­lished in 1941).  The winery has a long his­tory of grape-growing fam­il­ies, some of them 7^th gen­er­a­tion grow­ers.  Thirty five fam­il­ies today cul­tiv­ate 2400 hec­tares of vine and all con­trib­ute to the suc­cess of Robertson Winery.

Now a firm favour­ite on the cal­en­dar, this year the 7^th Wacky Wine Weekend takes place from June 3^rd to 6^th.  The week­end offers vari­ous events in vari­ous loc­a­tions e.g. a tour of the wine­mak­ing pro­cess as well as bar­rel tast­ing and samples of the finest single vine­yard wines with Continued

Robertson Winery Miles of Smiles on 5^th June

Miles of Smiles

The run­ning world will come to a halt this week­end as 20,500 odd run­ners take to the road between Pietermaritzburg and Durban for the 2010 Comrades Marathon.  However, on June 5^th things will be back to nor­mal and the first post Comrades run­ning event on the Western Cape run­ning cal­en­dar is the Miles of Smiles Road Race.

The venue of this event which com­prises a half mara­thon, a 10 kilo­metre race and a 5 kilo­metre fun run is the Robertson Winery in the stun­ningly beau­ti­ful Breede River Valley.  The Roberston Winery Miles of Smiles attracts thou­sands of run­ners every year whether they are com­pet­it­ive ath­letes going for the prize money or a fam­ily run­ning the fun run together!  Taking part is what it’s all about ... Continued

Bonnievale — hidden treasure along the Breede River

To Bonnivale

On a Friday after­noon we take the N1 towards Bonnievale for a week­end of camp­ing. Because it’s still early we decide to make the 160 km, a road trip of note. With great music and lots of traffic head­ing out for the week­end, we start bob­bing our heads to the free­dom of nature.

The high­way takes us through Worcester where we take the R60 towards Robertson, the town that hosts the annual Wacky Wine Festival in June. The road is abso­lutely beau­ti­ful with moun­tains, wine farms and the river lurk­ing in the back­ground. The sun­set catches up with us and for a moment there is no hes­it­a­tion to stop the car and wait out the strik­ing orange even­ing that is chased by dark­ness. We become a part of twilight’s ima­gin­a­tion and noth­ing can hurry us. Weekends should always start like this ... Continued

Worcester – the town that fell off the map

Worcester

I can under­stand why the recent edi­tion of Time Out Cape Town Weekend Breaks chose to shun Worcester. The town, which is eas­ily three to five times the size of other little towns in the val­ley, like Robertson and McGregor, fails hor­ribly to excite the vis­itor — whether this is the town's prac­tic­ally non-existent tour­ism, or a dis­tinct iner­tia that has settled like a palour over the town, isn't imme­di­ately obvious.

As one approaches the major inter­sec­tion on the N1 just past the huge Shell City that indic­ates that one has reached the town of Worcester, there are no sign boards indic­at­ing the beau­ti­ful 'old town' that is the centre of Worcester, no sign that there is a Worcester Wine Route just wait­ing to be dis­covered, that the town is part of Route 62, or that the Karoo National Botanical Gardens is a slight detour off the N1 well worth tak­ing, although in this case there is at least the oblig­at­ory brown board sig­nalling the way ... Continued

Muscadel and potjiekos in Montagu

Montagu

The small town of Montagu is loc­ated on the fam­ous Route 62 within the Klein Karoo region of the Cape. With less than 10 000 per­man­ent inhab­it­ants it non­ethe­less has much to offer the vis­itor. Famed for its hot springs, the town in fact offers an abund­ance of other activ­it­ies and exper­i­ences from adren­aline filled sports such as rock climb­ing to more cul­tured activ­it­ies such as wine tast­ing, and just about everything in between.

The Montagu Market held every Saturday morn­ing in the park oppos­ite the tour­ism bur­eau offers a sampling of local arts, crafts and cuisine, and an oppor­tun­ity to meet and mingle with the friendly locals.

Another local legend in the mak­ing is the tractor trip and potjiekos lunch, in oper­a­tion since 1985, where vis­it­ors are taken by tractor and trailer to the sum­mit of a local moun­tain, and, after admir­ing the view of the town and sur­round­ing farm­lands, are able to sample two local spe­cial­ties: Muscadel and potjiekos ... Continued