Hawksmoor House near Paarl: 30th January - 2nd February

The final leg of our drive to Hawksmoor House was our first, but certainly not our last experience of driving on dirt roads. But our trusty Garmin SATNav took us to the door!

The estate is made up of the original Manor House and a number of outbuildings which have been tastefully converted into luxury accommodation for guests. The setting is beautiful with well maintained gardens and grounds and there are views in almost all directions with a distant Table Mountain on the skyline. We are shown to our room "The Dispensary" and we arrange a wine tasting for early in the evening.

The atmosphere is one of relaxed elegence and the wines when we taste them all enjoyable, though we quickly determine a favourite and this becomes our wine of choice at every opportunity!

The evening proves a sociable one sharing cheese and meat platters and a couple of bottles with two other guests from Denmark. During our stay we find them excellent company.

I am awake far too early and my usual holiday excitement hits a new high when I peer through the curtains at a beautiful dawn view over the surrounding countryside.


We are scheduled to take a wine tour today with Paradise Touring, booked by Pam; and our driver Ian arrives shortly after we finish breakfast to whisk us off on a personal private tour! He has selected three wineries for us to visit and links these with a scenic tour of the area. Our first stop is not at a winery at all, instead we stop at the prison gates of the former Victor Verster Prison from which Nelson Mandela was released from his incarceration.

This event is marked by a stunning statue of this great man at the prison gates and a quote from his first speech following his release. Since our arrival in South Africa we have both been reading Mandela's autobiography "The Long Road to Freedom" and reading the inscription at the base of the statue is very moving.

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's own chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill one only finds that there are many more hills still to climb. I have taken a moment to res, to steal a view of that glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities and I dare not linger for my long walk is not yet ended." 

From here we visit our first winery, a very modern enterprise where we are able to see grapes being crushed and to taste the first pressing of grape juice, which is delicious. We then taste several wines and enjoy two of them so much we make some purchases.

The scenery in The Winelands is magnificent and the weather is on its best behaviour with mountain to mountain blue sky and warm sun. Our second winery is a real contrast, being established in 1699 and we are presented with a wide range of wines for us to taste though in our view none were as good as the new kid on the block we had already visited. From here to lunch at a further winery further up the valley and having had a long flight, two early mornings and rather a large amount of wine we suggest to Ian that we call it a day. Back to Hawksmoor for a siesta and a delightful dinner with Danes, Germans and another English couple at the long dining room table.

Our final day in the Winelands and we visit Boschendal, an estate established in 1685 by Huguenot refugees and now a rather upmarket venue for wine tasting, picnics and fine dining. We need to relax a little and so after a walk around the gardens we have a long lunch at the bistro; then finally drive across to the other side of the valley and take the track to a viewpoint providing a wide vista of vineyards, fruit farms and mountain scenery.