Rasondale Farm Stall

Rasondale Farm Stall

We drove back from Knysna on Monday and en route heard from our mort­gage broker that our mort­gage had been approved.  My hus­band already owns two prop­er­ties but it’s a first time house pur­chase for me so under­stand­ably I was pretty excited!  Being sans a bottle of decent bub­bly on our road trip we hooked a right at a road side cafe and treated ourselves to a pot of tea and a scone — we shared the scone; after all we have a mort­gage to pay off!

What a find Rasondale is; situ­ated on the N2 some­where between the Breede River and Riviersonderend (actu­ally fol­low­ing fur­ther Google research Rasondale is loc­ated in Swellendam) it’s a wel­come oasis on the 500km trip between Knysna and Cape Town ... Continued

Traversing the Tradouw

Tradouw Pass

If you are after a simply beau­ti­ful drive through rugged ter­rain then make sure you take the 14 kilo­metre long Tradouw Pass between Barrydale and Swellendam. It is so craggy and ardu­ous that the mind boggles as to just how the pass ori­gin­ated.  To say that it is breath­tak­ing is doing it a dis­ser­vice, and we trav­elled it in the pour­ing rain!

All I can say is that the man who designed it is a genius. Known amongst his con­tem­por­ar­ies as 'the man with the theodol­ite eye' (for those who don't know, a theodol­ite is an instru­ment to meas­ure hori­zontal and ver­tical angles) Thomas Bain, not to be con­fused with his father Andrew Geddes Bain who con­struc­ted eight passes includ­ing Bainskloof Pass, pulled off thir­teen such passes in the south­ern Cape dur­ing the 1800s and each of them is a mas­ter­piece. But this one in par­tic­u­lar deserves a travel for its beauty. Continued

Snow in Worcester (photographs)

Wondering where to go to see the snow? There's plenty of snow on the moun­tains in Worcester — Surrounded by majestic moun­tain and verd­ant val­leys, Worcester is seated in the biggest wine-producing dis­trict in South Africa. There is a lot to see and do in Worcester and it is ideally situ­ated to explore the sur­round­ing towns, vines and val­leys — a real eco-destination nestled between majestic moun­tain ranges and mag­ni­fi­cent scenery ... Continued

Magical McGregor

Magical McGregor

The small town of McGregor is what most would call “off the beaten track”; aside from a small sign­post on the N2 high­way, there is almost no indic­a­tion of its exist­ence.  Perhaps because of its isol­a­tion and the inspir­ing nat­ural sur­rounds, it has become some­what of a haven for artists.

The vil­lage lies at the foot of the Riviersonderend Mountains, and its cli­mate is sim­ilar to the rest of the Cape Peninsula and -  get­ting scorch­ingly hot in sum­mer, with rain and snow on the sur­round­ing peaks in winter. Continued