Robertson

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Robertson, approached either from the N1 or N2 from Cape Town, is the largest town in the attractive stretch of the Breede River Valley, known locally as the Robertson Valley.


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The acidity level of the soil is ideal for growing grapes - indeed, the Robertson Valley is responsible for some ten percent of South Africa's vineyards - but irrigation is necessary as the climate is hot and dry.


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The best wines here tend to be Chenin Blancs and Colombards, and some good Muscadels are conjured up too.


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Tulbagh

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You could easily drive into town, down Van der Stel Street and out the other end, and assume from this unexceptional main street that Tulbagh was just another humdrum dorp.

But one block west, on Church Street, is the most perfectly restored eighteenth and nineteenth- century streetscape.


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Only a fraction of what you see here is original (the town was flattened in 1969 by an earthquake), yet this is not Disneyland: the restoration of the buildings used salvaged materials from the ruins, following photographic and hand-drawn records.


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The best way to enjoy Tulbagh is to stroll up Church Street and take in the houses, gardens and gables, which are essential element of Cape Dutch architecture.
At least six different styles can be distinguished just along this short road.


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At no.23, Paddagang (frog passage) was originally a taphuis (wine house); today it's a restaurant with a wine house attached, recommended for its wonderful labels, all featuring comical frogs, rather than for the liquor itself.


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Worcester, Karoo Botanic Gardens & Worcester Museum

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The best part of the journey from Cape Town to Worcester, 110km east, is taking the Huguenot Toll Tunnel on the N1, burrowing through high mountains that give onto a magnificent valley.

Worcester, a relatively large town for this part of the world, is an agricultural centre with a number of factories and smelly chicken farms.
It's at the centre of a wine-making region, consisting mostly of cooperatives producing bulk plonk plonk that makes up about a fifth of national output.


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The Karoo Botanic Gardens, sister reserve to Kirstenbosch in Cape Town, is known for its show of indigenous spring flowers and succulents, and is a worthwhile place to stop, have a walk to admire the mountain backdrop, and recharge at the pleasant Kokerboom restaurant.


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The absorbing Worcester Museum depicts life on the Karoo frontier between 1690 and 1900, and is made up of about two dozen reconstructed buildings, with staff in old-style workshops engaged in crafts and home industries.
Keep a lookout in particular for the corbelled shepherd's hut, which represents a vernacular style unique to the Karoo, using domed stone roofs rather than beam and lintel construction - a response to the dearth of timber in the treeless expanse.


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Route 62 and The Little Karoo (2)

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Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves mark the convergence of the mountain and coastal roads; over the most dramatic of all passes in the Cape - the unpaved Swartberg Pass, 27 km of spectacular switchbacks and zigzags through the Swartberg Mountains - is Prince Albert, a Karoo village whose spare beauty and remarkable light make it popular with artists.


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From Prince Albert , the hinterland of the Great Karoo opens up, the semi-desert that covers one- third of South Africa's surface.
The fruit farms of the Little Karoo spread out into treeless plains, vegetated with low, wiry scrub and dotted with flat-topped hills.
The best of the Karoo can be found in the Karoo National Park, while, in Sutherland, the clear, clean air provides some of the best stargazing opportunities in the world.


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Route 62 and The Little Karoo (1)

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One of the most rewarding journeys in the Western Cape is an inland counterpart to the Garden Route - the mountain route from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, largely along the R62, and thus often referred to as Route 62.

Nowhere near as well known as the coastal journey, this trip takes you through some of the most dramatic mountain passes in the country and crosses a frontier of dorps and drylands.


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This "back garden" of the Little Karoo is in many respects more rewarding than the actual Garden Route, being far less developed , with spectacular landscapes, quieter roads and some great small towns to visit.
The most likeable of these towns are the historic spa town of Montagu, rural and arty Barrydale and the port capital Calitzdorp.


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Groot Drakenstein (Victor Verster) Prison

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The Victor Verster Prison, renamed Groot Drakenstein in 2000, was Nelson Mandela's last place of incarceration.

It was through the gates of at Victoria Verster that he walked to his freedom on February 11, 1990, and it was here that the first images of him in 27 years were broadcast - under the Prison Act, not even old pictures of him could be published during his incarceration.

The working jails looks rather like a boy's school fronted by rugby fields beneath hazy mountains.


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Franschhoek, Museum van de Caab

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The highly recommended Museum van de Caab gives a condensed and riveting slice through South African vernacular history as it happened on the farm and its surrounds.


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Housed alongside the atmospherically understated tasting room in the original 1740s gabled Cape Dutch cellar, the display begins with Stone Age artefacts found on the site and goes on to trace the arrival of the aboriginal Khoisan people, their colonization by Europeans, the introduction of slavery and how this eventually evolved into the apartheid system and its eventual demise.


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