No Fixed Abode: Surf and Turf

Thursday 26 May 2016 - J Bay to Natures Valley

With a small window of opportunity and a glimmer of internet service, Glenn was up early and to contact our Airbnb host today to receive directions of how to get there as our next home, Four Fields Farm is a small holding farm in the Western Cape, slightly outside of Nature’s Valley.

We left Gary and his surfing family to head for the beach at Jeffreys Bay (or Jbay) where all the surf action takes place. This area is known for its supertubes and world class events take place here, in fact we are missing one taking place here in the next four days. Arriving at the beach there were several surfers already out and the others were on the beach looking like they were carrying out maintenance on their boards. We strolled across a spent mussel covered beach, the most either of us had ever since on a beach and we were careful where we stepped to avoid their sharp edges on our bare feet. We sat awhile watching the surfers and noticed several of them were indeed, silver surfers. We discussed how much time was spent just floating watching the waves rather than the 10 seconds of riding them. Our NZ friends, Lloyd and Linda, with two surfing sons, had explained to us this was part of the surfing experience and these times were spent, well, reflecting.

We left them, reflecting, and headed off to Spar supermarket for a quick shop for dinners to tide us over for the next couple of nights whilst we are in the remote and rural smallholding farm. Laden with goodies, we stopped at the town beach for a quick lunch in the car, just like old people do, and then drove off to the, clearly, wrong part of town whilst trying to find our way to the motorway. Again, out of town and very noticeable how different the housing and infrastructure was around here, we navigated our way to the N2 to follow the Garden Route for the next few kms.

The scenery became lush with green rolling hills and blue sea on either side of the motorway and with the highway in good order we quickly came to stop at Storms River bridge, which expands across a spectacularly wide and deep gorge of limestone with the river running below. We hadn’t anticipated this being such a great attraction but quickly decided to walk across the bridge and spent a long time viewing the gorge in sheer amazement.

Continuing on the famous garden route we pulled over to the Tsitsikamma NP site of a ‘big tree’ which required a short boardwalk path through the dappled light of the lush, cool forest and shaded us well from the strong afternoon sun. This yellow wood Podocarpus tree is estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old, stands over 36m tall and has a trunk circumference of 9m. Just as impressive as the NZ big tree in North Island.

Still on the garden route we crossed over the famous Bloukrans Bridge which is the highest commercial bridge bungee jumping off point in the world at 216m (or 709 ft), above Bloukrans river. Not a remote desire for either one of us.

Turning off the garden route N2, we followed our given directions to Nature’s Valley and turned down a dirt road track to find lovely gardens and our delightful cottage at the farm. Felicity, the owner, was out but Orson, her capable odd job man, welcomed us and showed us inside - spacious and with great views all around. A few minutes later Felicity arrived to welcome us, telling us the story of the small farm, how she and Graham, her chef husband, had turned this into a totally organic farm, rescued logging ponies, built herb gardens and now had numerous wildlife on the land including a leopard, to which she quickly added “they are nocturnal so you won’t see it”.

Seeking the wifi code Glenn went to Felicity's cottage leaving Yvonne stroking a pony and reliving her childhood. During a lengthy conversation about our travels Glenn mentioned our onward travel to Namibia, at which Felicity beamed with delight and invited us into the main farmhouse, to grab armfuls of books on Namibia whilst she enthused about the country and recommended plenty of must sees to us. As they collected Yvonne en-route she was now giving the pony a full on head massage while it stood motionless in apparent ecstasy.

Felicity and Graham have been here for over 35 years and health reasons mean they are now selling up as running the business is tying them down to travelling and visiting their family who live in Australia. The small holding is in an idyllic spot in Nature’s Valley, the three cottages and the 4 bed main house are stunning and their own cottage is offset in a delightful corner with land which has been well looked after. It’s all very tempting but Yvonne’s heart is in NZ.

As evening fell we made the most of a reliable internet connection to catch up on the past days worth of blog.