We ate a nice breakfast in the garden and then visited the owners' large garden across the road.
The inmates of part of the plot were a pig and a bullock. The pig, refused to come out of his sty but the bullock came bounding from over the hill to say hello.
This the the church which looks so perfect, it could be a Lego model
We then set off towards Franshhoek. We passed the local winemaker, Barrydale Cellar and began to feel at home as we passed vineyards. For a short time, we thought that mountains and vines would be all that we would see all the way to our destination .....
Our first stop was Montagu where we stopped for a cup of tea and then wandered around the town which was quite pretty.
And up to the old saw mill which was the gateway to some long walks up into the mountains, passing over a river
And capturing the local wild life
As we returned to our car, we were stopped by a friendly passerby collecting sand and searching for someone to OK his removal of sand. According to his van, he was a thatcher and from his dress, a soldier. Without prompting by us, he told us that he was in the army and how much better his life is now compared to the apartheid years. It sounded as though he was a builder when on leave.
It wasn't long that we were back with magnificent mountain views and arid countryside.
There were a lot of bikers about enjoying the roads (this is for you James!), we heard that there was a rally at Mossel Bay and, of course, the bikers would be looking for winding mountain roads en route.
Some of the views were quite stunning
We came to a bridge through the rock
And stopped of the other side
(I should explain that there were times on this journey that we were stopping at every opportunity and sometimes doubling back, as the scenery improved all the time).
We passed Ashton and its New Look, neighbourhood
and at Robertson we stopped for a lunch at the cafe of a small garden centre and then looked around at the plants in case there were any names to plants we had seen, but most were plants that we have in Europe and many were unlabeled.
We realised that we had not been concentrating and had gone
past our turning onto the R43 as we came into Worcester. This was not a total disaster, however, and TomTom instantly took so through some magnificent scenery on the way to Franshhoek via the N1 and R45.
We were back in arid country again. The valleys were mainly green but when you went over a pass into the next valley that was very dry. We lost count of the numbers of times that we went thought passes into new valleys with new mountains surrounding us. Some of the valleys reminded us of the Adige valley in Italy near to Bolzano on the way to the Brenner pass.
The N1 route provided some of the most spectacular scenery of the journey. These were taken from out of the car window as we travelled as there were no places to stop.
Eventually we found a place to stop just before the long Huguenot Tunnel and just before Paarl but the panorama loses the impact.
The light was fading when we reached La Petit Ferme in Franshhoek. This is the view from our window over the terrace.
We wandered around Franshhoek for an hour with the setting sun on the mountains
before eating outside in a local restaurant.
Franshhoek is renowned for its food which seemed to be supported by TripAdvisor as there was little difference in people's scores for the first dozen of 40 restaurants.
Pat and John on tour