Thursday, 21 February 2008

Ceres - around and about

Although Ceres is nothing to shout about the surrounding areas have a real WOW factor with regard to the scenery.
Here I am finding a geocache in an old Ransomes tractor at the entrance to Mont Rouge winery. Mont Rouge is at the end of the valley, surrounded by mountains, north of Tulbagh.



WOW - some of the mountains!



On our return we visited Drosdty Hof (DH). De Oude Drostdy was designed by the renowned Cape architect Louis Michel Thibault and built shortly after the establishment of the district and town of Tulbagh in 1804. When the seat of the landdrost moved to Worcester in 1822, De Oude Drostdy passed into private ownership. For the wine buffs reading this DH is well known for its wines. Here I am with a couple of bottles that I will be tasting later.



North of Ceres, over the Gybo Pass, there is the little known Witzenberg Valley. There is one road in and one road out. The valley itself is at about 3000 feet so the climate is very pleasant, but it can get snow in winter. We were doing a geocache here, unsuccessfully, but our presence had been reported to the Farm Manager who came out to see what what we were doing. By the time he arrived we had given up on the geocache and I was photographing the birds and dragonflies. We had a chat and he invited us to the farm for a cup of tea which we accepted. We met his wife and stayed for an hour, but didn't let on about the geocache (it's gone missing). The fruit grown on this farm is destined for Europe; so if you see Du Toit on your fruit it came from here.



One of the dragonflies.



Witzenberg Valley.




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