Apricot jam adventures: A sweet discovery on the potholed roads of the Karoo

In early January we set off to visit family in the southern Cape and decided to take the back road.

We started with a slow meander through to Clarens and the Golden Gate national park before moving into the little, dusty, almost forgotten town of Wepener tucked in the mountains behind Lesotho.

On the way we travelled the most potholed road imaginable, between Ficksburg and Ladybrand (thank you Ace Magashule).

Three guidebooks said we should visit the doll museum in Hobhouse. Over 600 dolls, they said. Well, down a potholed road we went, arriving at a broken village. Abandoned houses left and right, broken roofs, broken windows. A fast asleep municipal official who said, “Nee Oom, daar is nie ‘n poppie museum hier nie!”

Guidebooks were way out of date! Such a sad sight, that village, and no legacy to brave Emily Hobhouse, who exposed the shameful concentration camps and scorched earth tactics of the British in the second Anglo-Boer War.

Exclusive Books has a terrific biography of Hobhouse, recently published, where I read that she was the only foreigner ever to have been given a full state funeral in South Africa.

Moving on, we entered Wepener (another sad, broken little town), looking for the B&B I’d booked online.

From the street, it looked pretty rough. Found our way through a courtyard into a gloomy bar, where we were greeted cheerfully by the barman. Oh yes, we’d come to the right place, he said.

Rose mutters out the side of her mouth: “I am not staying here!”

So, I said, go and look at the room before you decide, please, coz it’s a hundred kays to any other accommodation!

Thankfully, she comes back smiling. “It’s wonderful,” she gushes, and so it was.

This is Lord Fraser’s Guest House, the summer house of a titled English nob who owned a chain of supermarkets and trading stores in Lesotho.

The 100-year-old house has something like 16 en-suite rooms, Oregon pine floors and panelling, period furnishings and wholesome food.

We cracked the honeymoon suite, as you can see in the picture. The delightful owner, Oom Willie Swanepoel, took a shine to Rose and gave her a big jar of Tannie Wilna’s apricot jam on departure.

That’s something you see a lot of in every padstal in the Karoo, apricot jam, along with roosterbrood (toast), vetkoek, pineapple juice, bottled peaches and figs, biltong and so much more.

A new one for me was Agave, being the pickled flowers of the sisal plant. Very nice on roosterbrood with fig jam.

Onward to Nieu Bethesda, just outside Graaff Reinet, a delightful little village of sand streets and towering trees where the teenagers don’t race on motorbikes, they gallop along on horses – followed by the scampering foals!

Another comfortable B&B, two little museums for fossils and Bushmen and the wonderfully eccentric Owl House, where the loopy owner had made concrete castings of owls, camels, owls, horses, owls, three wise men on camels, owls and a whole lot more. Did I mention the owls?

The next lazy stop was at Prince Albert, another gem of a town, there behind Oudtshoorn and through the impressive Meiringspoort. More juicy Karoo lamb chops for supper and then through the awesome Swartberg Pass to our destination at Witsand at the mouth of the Breede River for a few days fishing.

The thing about this trip was realising that there are all these little towns and villages scattered about our country, lovely little places, clean and homely looking, busy getting on with life far from the screeching of politicians, riots, hijackings and traffic that fills our days on the east coast.

Burgersdorp, Aberdeen, Cradock – they all roll by. You can’t stop in every wholesome-looking town and village or you’d never get there, but I’d like to try it sometime. Just for the hell of it!

Follow The North Coast Courier on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube for breaking news

WhatsApp Broadcast Service: https://chat.whatsapp.com/BdGZsGJEAf04AXZ2yLWi8T