WESTERN CAPE PART 1

November 2021

Having had holiday hopes dashed in July when our ski trip to Lesotho fell prey to border closures courtesy of Covid’s Winter Wave, we were savvy to plan our year-end holiday early to be in advance of any summer shutdowns. Having enjoyed roadtrips in the Eastern Cape the previous November and then the Northern Cape in August, we figured we’d hattrick with a roadtrip in the Western Cape. Having done the Garden Route several times, we settled on an inland tour of Route 62 through the winelands.

With several of our friends moving to the Cape in recent years, we paired our holiday with a couple of  reunions en route.

CAPE TOWN

Landing in Cape Town on Saturday afternoon, first stop was an overnight with the Hunts in Croydon, a suburb on the outskirts of Somerset West – and a very fitting start to the theme of the holiday since their estate doubled as a working wine farm, with homes set between the vineyards.

It was wonderful to reunite and catch-up on what we’d been up to in the last few years and who we’d seen recently, cross-pollinating our stories with what we knew about mutual friends’ status and getting the brief on the new friends we were due to be making that evening, with dinner plans already in place.

We spent the evening at a lively new Portuguese restaurant called Dias Tavern; it was the first time that anyone in our group of 11 had been there, so it was a trial run for all concerned. The food was great and the company better, and we were still there when the call of curfew came round and sent us home.

We awoke to a murky Sunday morning, which was great weather to work off Saturday night with a run through the vineyards in our weekend home, Croydon Vineyard Estate. It started to drizzle while we were out, but it wasn’t cold and the setting was lovely so it didn’t matter much.

Having worked up an appetite, we were ready to set off on our adventure.

PAARL

First stop was 50km away in Paarl, lunching at Cucina Giovanni’s on Laborie Wine Estate (based on the Hunts’ experienced recommendation). We were fortunate to get the last available table for the lunch sitting – and would surely have been completely out of luck had we not been so early!

The setting was gorgeous, even on a grey day. We were tucked into a table for 2 in the cosy restaurant and could view the vineyards through the window, with the mountains in the background looking like a painted backdrop. The pasta was incredible and the panzerotti and seafood linguini paired perfectly with the Laborie Pinotage.

Full to bursting we welcomed the sun breaking through the clouds for our afternoon excursion, a wander around Babylonstoren. Besides being one of the oldest Cape Dutch wine farms, the estate boasts beautiful fruit and veg gardens, set at the foot of the sublime Simonsberg mountains near Franschhoek. We ambled around the garden’s 15 clusters, comprising nuts, citrus, berries, bees, herbs, ducks, chickens, a prickly pair maze and a pofadder-shaped covered feature tunnel at the far end. 

The gardens are laid out such that gravity feeds water throughout, from a stream flowing through ponds and the 300 or more species in the garden are either edible or have medicinal value. There are harvests all year round that determine what is served in the 2 farm-to-fork restaurants.

Entertained and exercised, we were ready to get back on the road for the 25km hop to our home for the night, Wellington.

WELLINGTON

At the foot of one of the oldest mountain passes, the Bainskloof Pass, Wellington and its 62,000 inhabitants form the centre of the Cape Winelands, producing grapes, fruit, wine and brandy. A charming small town, with a main road that still boasts the facades of buildings centuries-old, we drove from the Moeder Church at one end of the high street to the ‘Welcome to Wellington’ sign at the other end, admiring how clean and well-maintained it was.

It was also relatively bustling for a Sunday afternoon so, after checking into Cummings Guesthouse in one of the side-roads off the main drag, we sampled a couple of the pubs for a sundowner to round off our first day.

MONDAY

We started the day with a wholesome 5km run around the town, appreciating the view and the crisp morning country air. Our host at the B&B, seeing us return all rosy, was very impressed with our efforts and insisted I have an extra egg – on top of the 3 course breakfast she’d already laid out for us – “for energy”. 

We checked out and drove down to the main street to visit the Wellington Museum, which Google had recommended as “well worth the visit at the price”. For R10 we enjoyed a good half-hour of edutainment, learning all about the region, how it came to be and all the ups and downs that came with life over the last few hundred years.

In 1652, Jan Van Riebeeck and co. landed in South Africa, first of many. Surviving on stale and mouldy foods on the ships, by 1658 hundreds of vines and apricot trees were planted to service passing ships with fresh fruit, to which nutritious dried mebos and raisins were soon added. When the French Hugenots arrived n 1688, they were allocated farms in Wagenmakers Valley, particularly suited to the production of fruit, and this is where Wellington, the dried fruit capital of South Africa, was established in 1840 and named after the Duke of Wellington in honour of the Battle of Waterloo. 

The next win for the region was the completion of the Bainskloof Pass (29km with 11 bridges) in 1853, built by 300-400 prisoners between the ages of 18 and 40, mostly first offenders serving anywhere from 3 months to life. This allowed connection to the north and is a heritage site today.

Mentally nourished, we jumped into the car, headed 33km down the road to Riebeeck-Kasteel, one of the oldest towns in South Africa.

RIEBEECK-KASTEEL

Settlers in 1661 happened upon a lonely mountain and fertile vista, so named it Riebeeck Valley and established the sister towns of Riebeeck-Kasteel and Riebeeck West, which has birthed 2 Prime Ministers, Jan Smuts (1870) and Daniel Malan (1874). Farmers established themselves in the valley and in the 1900s the town was laid out around the existing church and what is now the oldest hotel in South Africa, The Royal Hotel.

With some 2700 residents, including some of South Africa’s most famous painters (drawn to the town by its picturesque valley), Riebeeck-Kasteel is often referred to as “Franschhoek 15 years ago”. It also has a great butchery and deli, where we picked up some dry wors and koeksisters for padkos.

Another 40km down the road was our final destination for the day, Tulbagh.

TULBAGH

We were quite underwhelmed by the town as we drove through; a line of the usual retailers overshadowing the smattering of historical buildings in between. The backdrop was breath-taking though and we were pleased that we’d opted to stay on a wine farm on the outskirts of town, closer to the pretty mountain range.

We had never heard of their wines, and had chosen Rijk’s Wine Estate & Hotel by the pictures on the booking site. They did us well and we were greeted with magnificent lushness of the green vineyards with a block of fresh white cottages, from where we could peacefully survey our surroundings. Sadly, Rijk’s didn’t offer winetasting on a Monday so we were forced to go out to sample the region’s fares.

We started with Twee Jonge Zellen, a very impressive wine estate offering tastings of their sparkling wine collection. Chris was in his element from the tasters while I gulped the view which was exquisite!

With an hour to go, we figured we could squeeze in 2 more quick tastings since everything was so close together. We chose Theuniskraal first, spurred by my connection having lived in a road of that name during high school. It was an unmemorable experience though, with no atmosphere in the tasting room, little pomp to the tasting itself and no stand-out wines from what we sampled. Flippenice was a bit better, with a larger range of testers and some (flippen)nice surprises of wines we’d seen but never thought to buy before.

We rounded off the tour with a beer-tasting (for a change of palette) at Obiqua Cafe, before returning to Rijk’s to enjoy the sunset from our patio before indulging in a wonderful local specialty, Bobotie, for dinner paired with our host’s homemade Pinotage.