On our recent visit to Cradock we walked up Oukop, the hill outside the town. From the top there is a lovely view over the town. There is a wide variety of succulents and cactuses that grow in the area and this one I found very interesting.
If you get bored with the miniture trains, you can always go game viewing. These guinea fowl have taken "ownership" of the local neighbourhood and are a delight to watch.
In my series on the British Settlers I have posted about the village of Bathurst. In the village is the Bathurst Protea Hotel, a real country hotel. In front of the hotel in the long grass I found this old vintage tractor just as the sun was starting to set. It felt appropriate to photograph him in the sunset.
At Londt Park in Sunridge Park is a delightful miniature railway, complete with station, overhead pedestrian bridge and tunnel.It is a great place for children's birthday parties (and the accompanying adults seem to enjoy it too!)
A little while ago the Damselfly and me got to go away for a weekend without the Rugrats. Last year I won a weekend trip up to the Gauteng province, all expenses paid, and this was the first opportunity we had to use the prize. One of the activities we got to do was hot air ballooning at Magaliesberg with Bill Harrop's Original Hot Air Ballooning safaris. This man is a legend and we were lucky enough to actually be…
......excuse the pun. We already did a post today on the new wordpress blog, but ironically were unable to upload the bitmap kindly sent sent to us by our friend Louise Eksteen (a noted photographic artist who has offered to supply us with pics.) However, as I am in Capetown and uploading from my cellphone, blogger is behaving delightfully! So here is an image of the fire in Port Elizabeth yesterday, in which the old Greatermans building was burned. In…
This tatty looking building (admittedly made worse by the fact that it was photographed through the windscreen on a wet and miserable day recently) is where a huge number of Port Elizabethans (including our son) were born... it is the old maternity wing of the Provincial Hospital. Definitely in need of some tlc, but given the abysmal state of the Health Department in this province, I imagine it is low on the list of priorities.
Coral Aloe is one of the many aloe species found in South Africa. Unlike most other aloe species, the coral aloe does not have thorny or spiky leaves. These aloes are in full bloom at the moment and in some areas in the Karoo the fields of aloe looks awesome at the moment. This coral aloe is growing on Oukop in Cradock.
Until recently these were very run down houses in Richmond Hill. I love the new colour scheme on the dark one! And as you can see, these properties enjoy superb views across the bay.
After my first British Settlers post Ann had a couple of questions which I will hopefully answer today. The British public was invited to apply to come down to the Cape Colony. Because of the hard times back in England, nearly 100 000 people showed interest out of which 4 500 were selected. The Settlers came in parties and each party was allocated a farm. For this and the seed and implements they had to pay a deposit.Most of the…