Sandy Bay, near Cape Town

I adore beaches.  One of the most astonishingly-beautiful beaches in the world is a 30-minute drive from Cape Town.  It is called Sandy Bay, a rather plain name in my mind.  You drive down through Llandudno and park where the road ends (it's signposted from the main road).

A track, partly laid with boardwalk that eventually peters out, leads away from civilisation to a superb coastal wilderness that is Cape Town's most Elysian place of beauty:  a small, stark place - a plage sauvage - drenced in eternal sunlight, the clefts in its hills choked with milkwood trees, and going up to the thicker, virgin forests of the Table Mountain Nature Reserve.  The reddish earth gives way to Tippex-white dunes; these dunes are littered with pink-tinged boulders that act as natural wind-buffers.   Beneath all this, a yawn of breadcrumb-textured sand that is as white as snow. 

Ahead, the mountain comes down to the sea, framing the panorama.  In between it, the pinkish rock conceals, then reveals first small coves of white sand, then a large tongue of the whitest sand I've ever seen.  It is quite possible to claim a cove as your own for the day.

The ocean is bottle-green, especially in the coves and at the water's edge, changing to dark blue further out; the Agulhas current forces cool water from Antarctica up this coast, so it is an unexpected, but pleasant surprise, to find the sea so delightfully refreshing on such a hot day.  But the ocean is by no means cold by Northern European standards.

I glimpse sea anenomes - coloured purple, red, yellow, green and blue - in the rockpools.  There's not a single building in sight.  A visit here gives one the feeling of ultimate escapism and wild abandon, like being marooned on a desert island, yet one richly endowed with pleasures for the senses. The scene is framed by a harsh blue sky.  It is 30c, there is not a breath of wind.

The place is a haven for nature lovers, romantics and naturists.  

I know I am in Africa when I find a place of such rare beauty as this.

Arrival in Cape Town

I own a wine estate just outside Cape Town, South Africa, and given the never-ending Satanic English winter, I decided to take myself off for a 10-day visit; well, what harm could it do to get some well-needed Vitamin D to lift the winter blues, as well as check out a city that always seems to be full of hunky Cape Tonians who know how to party.

The above shot was taken from a helicopter ride I took.  I hope it shows you how beautiful I find Cape Town.

I wanted some independence during my stay, so rather than stay at the accommodation on the wine estate, which is 1 hour outside Cape Town, I opted to stay at what for me is not only the most luxury hotel in Cape Town, it is also one of the best hotels in the world: Ellerman House.

Once the summer residence of shipping magnate Sir John Ellerman and his wife, Lady Esther, this cliff-hugging Cape Edwardian mansion has nine rooms, two suites, a 180 degree spa with infinity pool, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired villa, and one of South Africa’s finest collections of contemporary local art inside a 30-ft gallery carved into the rock beneath the large, manicured garden.  The views from the garden are the best in Cape Town, stretching over the glittering Atlantic, to Robben Island and inland to the Lion’s Head; the staff tell me Lady Esther used a telescope to check the punctuality of ships on their course through the boulder-strewn waters below. 

Every guest-room is different, but themed around the ocean, such as the aquamarine, beige and oyster pastels of my bedroom, No 2.  I also adore the Cape Dutch furniture chosen for its collectibility and beauty, the duck-egg blue of the breakfast room ("you should feel like you are inside a Tiffany box") and the HIER Sculpture, a 20-ton man’s head made from stacked slate, beside a statue of a man pointing, entitled Order and Chaos, both created by Angus Taylor. 

I took an interesting cultural tour around the rainbow-coloured streets of Bo-Kaap, the old Malay quarter of Cape Town, in which one can sample some great curries. 

I will post more on my stay in Cape Town under a new entry.