A weekend in the Country. We made an escape down to the Cape
Agulhas area for a wine festival and to enjoy the weekend away from home. We took our visiting friends
from Holland, who have not been able to come here for four years because of
Covid. We booked accommodation near Pearly Beach and wanted to show them this
lovely area, which is about 2½ hours' drive out of Cape Town. Well, not if you
leave the city on Friday afternoon, when everyone else is also leaving, but we
were not in any rush and stopped along the way to get pies for lunch at
Houw Hoek, which seems now to have the best in the Elgin valley, and to pick up provisions
at Gansbaai Spar. Our friends had never been to the very southernmost tip of
Africa, so that was on the agenda. The weather was perfect all weekend, even though
these clouds did seem a little unsettling
Our small but perfectly formed cottage at Klein Paradijs
Country Retreat
They are on Booking.com and have several different standards
of accommodation
We chose the budget variety and were very impressed with the
humble cottage
which proved to be much comfier than the pictures had implied
Two
bedrooms, a bathroom, a lounge, kitchen, binne and buite braais and, most
important in summer,
a stoep where we could enjoy the evening and morning meals
The lounge area at one end
Kitchen and binnebraai at the other
A comfortable bed
A glass of Silverthorn River Dragon to get the weekend
started
and, at 7, we drove off over the hills to Baardskeerdersbos
for a fish and chip supper at Marietjie’s Pub
where we have eaten before and
wanted to come back for the good food
You can drive the 31.5 Km conventional,
long, route, but there is a much quicker way from Klein Paradijs, over a low hill,
down a dirt
road and only about 8 minutes away
You can eat on the terrace
but it books up quickly
so we chose inside
Indoor gardening?
Oh, so fresh, hake in batter, with good chips, a small salad, lemon and a tartare sauce, all for R80
and, as we finished dinner, a little after 8, another power cut,
and so a romantic candlelit end to the day
They stop serving food at 8, so there were not many people left
in the pub
Our bill. We drank a bottle of Kranskop Chenin blanc with
the meal and were not charged corkage
A nightcap by torchlight
We took our friends to see Pearly Beach the next morning, a very pretty small seaside village with a lovely sandy beach
Lynne loves to beachcomb
Yvonne enjoying the sea air
Come and join us lads? But they don't enjoy walking on beach
sand. Firm friends for 70 years
Gulls catching the updraughts
Everything was a beautiful blue
A tiny daisy surviving on the boardwalk
A European
barn swallow (Hirundo rustica)
Thanks for correction by reader Peter who says it is a Greater Striped swallow (Cecropis cucullata)
We went to the Agulhas Triangle wine festival that afternoon (see separate story)
and then went back to the cottage to relax and enjoy a braai supper
John photographed this Jackal Buzzard (Buteo rufofuscus) in flight 
We had
brought a rather special bottle of wine to enjoy with dinner, 2009 Ad Honorem
Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz blend,
made by Erika Obermeyer with
Pieter Ferreira, cellarmaster at Graham Beck wines,
to honour the legacy of the
late Graham Beck (1929-2010) and chosen after his death from a special
barrel selection
It really is a very special wine, a classic red blend,
with all
the fruit, gravitas, weight, minerality and layered flavours you would expect
and we so enjoyed drinking it
If you have some, it could go another 10 years
and still be superb
Graham Beck is now a specialist Cap Classique producer, so
they will not produce more still wines
The back label
The meat on the buite (outside) braai
We enjoyed some good well-aged steaks, Boerewors and lamb
chops...
... with a French salad, coleslaw and baked potatoes. A
lovely summer's evening in the country
Sunset turning the clouds pink
It did rain heavily in the
night, but all the clouds had disappeared by the morning
"Time for bed", said Zebedee...
and a clear sky, pink dawn with a new moon the next morning
We set off to see Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa
Passing large farms with sheep, cattle, wheat and grapes
A pair of blue cranes (Anthropoides paradiseus) by a
waterhole. The blue crane is South Africa's national bird
A useful Information board at the Cape
A Bloukop Koggelmander/Southern rock agama/Blue-headed Agama
Lizard (Agama atra)
So tame, he posed for John
The Cape of Gulls, the most southerly point on the African
continent,
the place where the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans meet. Next stop
Antarctica
Yvonne and Peter had to have the obligatory photograph taken
to prove they had been there
We had taken a picnic for lunch and had it near this wreck
on the coast just a couple of kilometres after the point
The wreck of Meisho
Maru No.38, a Japanese fishing vessel
which ran aground in a storm off Cape
Agulhas on 16th November 1982
The crew of 17 all managed to swim to safety
and what else would we enjoy with lunch, but one of our
favourite wines, SeaSalter Sauvignon blanc from Groote Post
A toast to travel and widening horizons
The impressive Cape Agulhas Lighthouse
It was the third lighthouse to be built in South Africa, in
1849, and is the second-oldest still operating, after Green Point
Lynne thinks
it looks slightly Egyptian
and wondered whether the architect was echoing the
ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria at the other end of Africa?
Then we drove to Struisbaai to watch the fishing boats
coming in and sit a while on the docks. It was a dazzling blue day
Kids having fun jumping off the end of the dock
Lynne and Yvonne were lucky enough to see the local treasures,
the large black stingrays that live around the dock
Then, as the afternoon progressed, the fishing boats started
coming in
A man in a special fishing canoe, well-protected from the sun
Some people SUPping and another canoe fisherman
The scientific name of the silver fish is Argyrozona
argyrozona, known locally as Silvers, they are Carpenter Sea bream
They must
get very bashed and bruised by this treatment
A very pretty fish, which comes from this area. Lynne has
eaten them and they can be quite bony
This boat had caught a huge catch of Yellowtail. Again,
subjected to lots of rough treatment, throwing them into the boxes
There were
commercial and private customers all around
We enjoyed an ice cream and then headed off on the long 4½
hour drive back to Sea Point, feeling very rested and revived
These summer
weekends away are a joy
All our stories can be seen in the Blog Archive near the top of the column on the right
If you do not wish to receive e-mails from us, please email menucape@gmail.com with the word 'UNSUBSCRIBE' in your email
