Blue Witch

Summer 2014

Could well have been Wednesday 5th to Sunday 9th March (highest temperature of the year recorded here: 25.4°C).

Back to normal - 11°C - temperatures for the time of year now.

*puts away crystal ball*

Thought for the day

This exact day last year it was zero degrees and snowing and there wasn't a daffodil in sight.

Each day since Wednesday (16.4°C) has been pregressively warmer. Yesterday it was 22.4°C. Some of the daffodils are already going over.

Day - nearly the end - lost count

The internet is working again...








Have already booked again for next year...

Day 10

Even dogs prefer rugby to football here.

Scarborough Beach. Wind and waves straight off the Atlantic. Nothing between here and Argentina. Our legs got sandblasted.

Day 8

In which we get to see places that most tourists wouldn't, or wouldn't wish to.

The local township. 50,000 people now live here.

School. Education is free, but children must wear uniform. Many NGO chairites provide uniforms for children who would otherwise be denied education.

Grade R (our Year 1, 6 year olds), these 60 children have been in school 6 weeks. There was one teacher and one lunchtime helper.

Already they can sit in silence to eat in a mannerly way. Many of these children had never sat to eat at a table before coming to school, and most had never used a pencil or had access to toys, let alone spoken English (the medium of teaching)..

Grade 1 (our Year 2 - 7 year olds). 51 children, one teacher (with the loudest voice I have ever heard), no help. Many children come into Grade 1 (often from other, poorer, areas) with no pre-school or Grade R experience.

This township is situated 2 miles from the centre of the richest suburb of Cape Town. It relies on international aid and volunteers (mainly gap year students and retired teachers from Europe and the US).

More later.

Day 7

We started the day with a walk on the amazingly long local beach. 5 miles of pure white fine sand and water cold enough to freze your toes off in a matter of minutes (it being on the Atlantic side of the Cape):

Panorama:

A few vineyard visits and tastings of plenty of these:

And the end of the day at the local vineyard's once-weekly evening food market, watching the sun set overlooking the same beach:

Can't write more as the netbook is almost out of power and it isn't its turn for use of the one UK:SA adaptor that we have with us.

Day 6

1 year, 2 months and 2 days since we were last here:

I was only allowed to stay for not quite 3 hours today. But we are going again. Quite different flora in bloom this visit. And I took a lot fewer pictures.

It's been raining since 3.15pm.

Well, OK, drizzling, and it is still 24°C.

The BBC weather service have been predicting today as the only rainy day during our trip for the last 10 days.

The locals laughed at me when I told them this morning, when it was clear blue skies and totally still. And then the wind got up, the cloud came down and it drizzled.

Gotta love the BBC.

Day 4

After an early morning swim...

...and breakfast...

...we left the place we were staying...

...in the mountains yesterday through the Hole in the Wall: literally a hole blasted through the rock.

In our brown car. Don't mention the brown. I thought it was dark grey metallic when we picked it up at the airport, but it is actually brown. If there is one colour I dislike, it's brown. It's an Opel Corsa. Nowhere near as plasticky inside as those at home, and the aircon is fantastic, and doesn't need to be turned off every time you go up a hill, if you wish to reach the top.

Montagu is famed for its fruit and nuts. The mountainous area was settled by farmers in the mid 1800s, and, being unable to get their fresh fruit produce to market in Cape Town before it perished (the Hole in the Wall being still some decades in the future), some enterprising soul had the idea of drying it instead. These days, fruit from all over the Western Cape is taken in and dried here.

We bought a tray of yellow-green figs from a farm stall (as they are known) on a real farm (most of them are about as farm-y as most of our farmers' markets) on our way up to Montagu on the first day.

Yellow-green figs are only in season for a couple of weeks, and we've fallen lucky in Turkey at the end of August, and managed it again here this year. R25 a tray (less than £1.50 for all that lot).

We finished them, stuffed with blue cheese and baked, for dinner last night.

Having driven the 150 miles down to SW of Cape Town where we are now staying, we couldn't summon the energy to go out to dinner. Which was OK because I'm still dreaming of the most divine risotto starter I had at dinner the night before. Cheesy creamy rice with mushrooms, pistachios, a griddled cheese wafer, surrounded by a slightly creamy pesto-y sauce. I sent a message to the chef, hoping he might appear so that I could grill him on the dish's construction, but sadly he just sent a message back thanking me for the compliment. I'm pretty good at working out dishes served to me, but this one perplexed me. I may yet have to email the chef.

It's much cooler down here - high 20s when we arrived yesterday mid-afternoon, mid 20s with a cooling breeze today, but after the 39.5°C on the drive down here yesterday, during which even the satnav got heat stroke and ceased to function until we'd cooled it down, we are quite relieved.

Yes, this is turning into a bit of a hot gastro-tour isn't it?

Day 3

We have objets at home. Lots of objets. But what we don't have is objets with ostriches. Must work on that.

Mind you, we'd need this sign too:

Because, yes, they do walk in the road:

Having had the door open all last night due to the heat, I could have done without finding this on the balcony this morning. OK, so it's out of focus; the camera must have been scared.

Anyone know what type that is, and how fatal its bite?

During today's epic 5 hour drive north up the R318, then back west along the N1 and then down through Robertson wine valley we saw many different types of scenery. I like mountains best, but mountains and proteas bestest:


The grapes are all hanging over-droopingly from the vines, almost ready to be picked. In fact, we saw a tractor and trailer load of white being tipped out sideways into a processing plant on our way down here on Friday. All juice with a few bits of skin. Sadly couldn't get the camera out fast enough. Reminded me a lot of France in September.

We sampled some of last years' vintage at Graham Beck wines (one of the few vineyards open on a Sunday: they take their god-stuff seriously round here):

And of course we bought some. it would have been rude not to. A very nice Moscadel dessert wine and some superbly dry white chenin and sauvignon blanc (why can't one buy it that dry in the UK any more?) but the shiraz was disappointingly far too acidic for my palate (and we drink a lot of shiraz). Never mind, thousands of other vineyards to try, and at three or four quid a bottle for what you'd pay fifteen or twenty for in the UK...

The satnav was recording body temperature as we drove back down our track soon after 3pm.

In that heat the straw roof of our cottage smells glorious.

The pool was glorious too. Now time for a few zzzs before dinner methinks.

And now there is thunder and dark skies in the mountains all around, but no rain here, yet...

Day 2

It was 37.5°C yesterday afternoon, and still 24°C at 9pm.

I was surprised that Orion was upside down. I always forget about the Southern Hemisphere's effects on the night sky.

A superb 3 course dinner at the best restaurant in town with a very nice bottle of rose and water, and a good tip, cost £32. Round our way at home you can't get two mediocre main courses and two beers in a pub for that.

Mr BW had eisbein. It was a whole huge ham hock with crackling. He ate the lot and then had the trio of chocolate puddings (and that was after the prawn and chorizo salad starter with garlic foam). Two Harley men at the next table looked on in wonder (there is a Harley convention in town - Montagu, about 200km north-east-ish of Cape Town - for the weekend).

It's like living in a time warp here. I've been eyeing up the estate agent's window - a 240ha working smallholding in the middle of nowhere with breathtaking views over the mountains, including 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom house, pool, private water source, and 3 workers' cottages for under £200,000 (you can't buy a garage round our way for that).

View from our terrace (and there's 180° of that):

Erm, sorry.

Cold Hearths and Flooded Plains

That's me on the left. Mr BW is still just flowering on the right.
That amaryllis was meant to be red... it looks as washed out as the rest of the south.

With apologies to Nanci Griffith

*sings*

Our bags are waiting in a cab outside
I've got two tickets in my pocket says we'll make it out of here
And I came by here just to tell you good-bye
I can see it in your face, you don't want to know why

We made up our minds late last summer
That we would leave our country behind
Oh, and love is not in question
When you're holding the answer
In your cold month and your sunless days
You've got a wet spell and a flooded plain

Out in wet streets the people are angry
Well, they push and shove the politicians aside
Well, I worked from the heart and they worked for the money
But I paid the price for their Houses to survive

We made up our minds late last summer
That we would leave our country behind
Oh, and love is not in question
When you're holding the answer
In your cold month and your sunless days
You've got a wet spell and a flooded plain

Cape Town shines in the midsummer sun
I see the storms that are in the news
One of these mornings when you're making your way
Just gonna wash you out with the tide

We made up our minds late last summer
That we would leave our country behind
Oh, and love is not in question
When you're holding the answer
In your cold month and your sunless days
You've got a wet spell and a flooded plain
We've got a hot spell when we've been on the plane


Blue Witch has left the country.