Brick Lane Music Hall

To Brick Lane Music Hall with Probus for adult pantomine Aladdin with afternoon tea. Coach was late because of the snow, but we got to Silvertown in time. The music hall is in an old church, riotously decorated inside with lights, signs and brick-a-brack.

It was a good afternoon.

Painted wall in the gents

Journey home

Joan waiting for her dinner

Late dinner on homebound plane,  service very slow.

Good wines, though, including Ch Lynch-Moussas 2009

and Ch Filhot 2011 Sauternes.

Then a good sleep until arrival to the freezing cold.

 

Woolworth's Water Rationing

Zero Day is pushed back to 9 July thanks to  residents reducing water consumption. 

This sign in Woolworth's today shows they have doubled customers allowance since we arrived.

We've seen people filling containers from a roadside stream in the mountains above Franschhoek and from an outlet pipe on Gordon's Bay beach.


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Breakfast on the Balcony

Breakfast sitting on the balcony overlooking False Bay is a mix of fresh fruits - today mango, papaya and banana - followed by toast or a roll and Houw Hook Seville orange marmalade.

View towards the Helderberg

Ocean Basket Again

Back to Ocean Basket. It's a lovely walk along Sunset Bay beach then round the bay by the sand dunes to the new harbour. And Joan loves the King Prawns.  

Waiter T K remembers us from last year and he and colleague Travis look after us right royally

This what I have, 200g Kingklip dusted with Cajun spices and chips. We also have a Village Salad (R50 £3) - cucumber, onions, tomatoes and olive and no Feta for me. Ocean Basket also bring bread rolls with butter, tartare sauce, and a  chopped green chilli sauce.

We ordered from the wine list Durbanville Hills 2017 savvie (R144 £8.33) which is their most expensive wine. We went one more time, the day we let and that time BYO with Springfield Estate 'Life from Stone' Sauvignon Blanc 2017 (R149 £9.03 from the wineshop opposite Spar)

This is Ocean Basket taken from the end of the harbour breakwater, with Gordon's Bay in the background across the bay

From the breakwater you can see the G B and anchor on the hills above Gordon's Bay. This was originally created by sailors at the General Botha Naval College on the harbour below.


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Lunch at Delheim with Eleanor and Mark Cosman

Mark & Eleanor Cosman and Peter & Joan May at Delheim

After a morning at Kanonkop Estate Eleanor and Mark Cosman and ourselves drove to neighbouring Delheim for lunch.

This time I had the Delheim salad that Jeanette ordered on our first visit this trip. It's a pile of roasted veg and leaves, yummy and filling, and matches well with a glass or two of their Pinotage.

We didn't see Victor Sperling this time as he was in the vineyards. They were harvesting Pinotage and a tray of sweet plump grapes were at the winery entrance to taste. 

The Cosman's will remain in the Cape for a few more weeks before going to Namibia.

Lunch at Houw Hoek Farm Stall

To Houw Hoek Farm Stall again for lunch and to see if we could get some marmalade that tasted of oranges. Woolworth's best is orange in colour but could be made of anything.

Houw Hoek is on the high pass of the N2 between Gordons Bay and about 10 km from Bot Rivier.

They have a wide range of intriguing own label jams, many made of fruits I have never tasted such as wild fig. 

I always try to buy my absolute favourite Hanepoot, made from whole Muscat of Alexandria grapes (aka Hanepoot) to take home, though they quickly sell out. 

There's a huge range of chutneys and sauces, freshly baked breads, cakes and pies, local olives and olive oils and fresh fruits and vegetables.

And there's a wine shop featuring local wines at good prices. This year is the first time I have not been tempted to buy a wine as they seem to have fewer choices than previous years.

In their restaurant we both chose the starter portion of 3 Bobotie Spring Rolls, which come on a bed of tasty mixed  salad with a portion of their own Banana and Date Chutney and a sweet chilli dipping sauce.

On the table comes their scrumptious house made salad dressing. In the past I've always bought a bottle of it to take away, but now they only sell it from the shop and since the normal sized bottle was sold out I took a large one I don't expect to be able to finish during this trip.

They've recently planted a small vineyard behind and are now selling their own Chenin and Shiraz. I had a glass of the Chenin with lunch, made by Kevin Grant at nearby Ataraxia winery.

It was dark yellow and oaked, rather austere and didn'd have the Chenin freshness I like. I did wonder how long the bottle had been open.

Sign at Houw Hoek

Harbour Lights: Good Food but BYO Wine

Entrance to Harbour Lights

To Harbour Lights restaurant for lunch. It's on the first floor, overlooking the boating activities of Gordon's Bay old harbour.

It used to be the premier restaurant in Gordon's Bay offering old fashioned elegance and service with a wide ranging, eclectic, interesting and tempting wine list.

When we arrived at 13:10 there was not a soul in the place and we had to shout into the kitchen to eventually rouse a waitron.

The menu hadn't seemed to have changed, but the winelist looked sponsored by one of the big distributors. There are only four Sauvignon Blancs - reliable but boring brands Beach House & Tall Horse, plus Franschhoek Cellars and Niel Joubert.

But only Beach House was available by the bottle. The other three had already been opened for previous diners (when?) who'd bought by the glass. Non delivery by their supplier was blamed. Hummpph. We're in the Cape and there are hundreds of great wineries within a short distance with wines for sale.

So while waiting for the food to be prepared I went back to the apartment to collect Spier Sauvignon Blanc Signature Collection 2017 we'd bought at Spier the previous day.

Which was an ideal match for the food which was up to its excellent standard of the past.

Joan had a platter of King Prawns, calimari, two fillets of line-fish of the day (yellow tail) with steamed vegetables and crunchy fried potato wedges.

I had Kingklip in lemon butter with a salad and delicious crispy potato wedges.

With a bottle of fizzy water the food bill came to R430  (£26)

I don't know what has happened to this once great restaurant: the food is good, it has a great location, tables are covered in cloth, but it's showing signs of wear and neglect.

For good wine, BYO.

Spier Eight Restaurant

To Spier and their Farm-toTable Eight Restaurant for lunch. I had made a booking and had received email confirmation but that hadn't reached the restaurant. 

The welcome was muted at best, but we were given a table.

We ordered Farmer Angus pasture-reared beef burger with double smoked bacon, coleslaw, hand cut chips. No cheese, thank goodness.

Offered a choice of still or sparkling water and requested second. Still water was brought and poured. The bottle for this interestingly said it was captured from the air and sterilised by ultra-violet. Seems to be water from a de-humidifer unit in the restaurant.

Wine was offered chilled or room-temperature. We chose chilled (the room temperature was in the high 20s) and the superb 21 Gables Pinotage 2016 was served cool.

The burger meat was excellent, with a good bun covered in a thick mix of seeds.

Coleslaw was mostly mayonnaise and plastered thickly on the lower bun-half making it soggy. The bacon was 99% fat, white, not crisp. Quite horribly uneatable.

Chips were excellent, crispy and fresh potato.

I have never had such execrable black coffee. It was a pale brown as if it had been mixed with milk. They apologised and brought me another which was just the same. They said it was the beans. I said it was undrinkable, and they took it off the bill. 

After we called in at the large tasting room and tasted and bought three interesting Savvies: 

2017 Spier Signature Collection Sauvignon Blanc 
2016 Spier Creative Block 2 (85% Savvie and 15% Semillon)
2017 Spier 21 Gables Sauvignon Blanc

When it's Yellow, Let it Mellow

Sign seen in toilets of Dock of the Bay restaurant, Gordons Bay

Fizz 'n' Burger at The House of J C Le Roux

Finding Spier restaurant closed we drove up to Devon Valley and sparkling wine specialist The House of J C Le Roux.

It was a hot day and so we sat in the air-conditioned inside, rather than the deck we've sat in the past. There was a good view over the car park and valley to the distant mountains

The place was very quiet, with just one car in the car park and one other table occupied at 13:30 but more people came later.

Champagne flutes were on each table and asking for a sparkling wine was insufficient since the wine list had 16 with just two token still wines as guests.

Joan selected the J C le Roux MCC Brut, a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay made by the Method Cap Classique, i.e. traditional method of secondary fermentation on the final bottle.

It was delicious Champagne quality wine. To eat we chose the hamburgers without the bacon, cheese and avocado (?) toppings, but with a green salad.

Sweet bread and individually wrapped in waxed paper sticks of butter came first.

The burger was excellent, thick and meaty with a crumbly home made texture and the chips were the tops, made from fresh potato, hand cut and fried just right and drained free of fat. That tasted wonderful. 

Service was attentive and just right. It was an experience to repeat.

Afterwards we wandered down a glass walled corridor they grandly call their auditorium. It looks into the cellar where a riddling rack sits in front of a line of gyro pallets, then there is the glycol bath for freezing the bottle necks when removing the lees and the bottling line. Nothing was happening in the cellar at the time. 

Two large flat screen TVs were telling the story of making sparkling wine but the soundtracks cancelled each other out and what we heard was at a very superficial level.

Joan in the frame

Desalination Pipes Installed

On Sunday this inlet pipe was in the harbour car park. Monday it had gone.

Midweek the harbour was clear of pipes, ships and inflatables. 

One of the workman told me they had been using Gordons Bay old harbour to assemble the pipeline. 

At the weekend the water inlet pipe had been delivered, and that had gone on Monday, taken out to sea by one of the ships moored in the harbour. I'd seen two of the pipes  being attached to each other on Monday and  being pulled out by an inflatable. They were working into the dark and we could see the lights of the two rig ships all night in the bay.

So, the water inlet is around 800 metres off the coast, the sea water pumped through 800m of pipe to Monwabisi Beach, by the township of Khaeyitsha where it will be processed to create 7 million litres of drinking water every day which will be pumped using underground pipes via a reservoir for Cape Town.

This is the first of 7 such projects and is a month ahead of schedule. They now just need to test the pipe and sea water extraction is working OK and if so the drinking water should come 'on stream' (as it were) in March.

But locals say, compared to the daily water demand in greater Cape Town, what the desalination plants will deliver will be a 'drop in the ocean'. Others forecast the rains will come and make the whole exercise redundant. 

We'll see.

Back to Ocean Basket

Second time to Ocean Basket this trip, which is a pleasant walk on the sand around the curve of Gordon's Bay to the new harbour.

We sat outside this time and Joan had her favourite ofsix King Prawns with chips (R179 same as last year but favourable exchange rate equates it to a pound less at £10.85) with a Village Salad.

I had cajun (i.e. blackened) kingklip and chips and Village Salad and we shared a bottle of delicious Durbanville Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2017 (R144).

View from our table over new harbour

View from our table over harbour breakwater and False Bay to Hottentot Hollands mountains.
Ship in bay is laying desalination pipes

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Gordons Bay Desalination Pipeline

Taken today. 

They're constructing a 80 metre pipe at Gordons Bay old harbour to bring in sea water to a desalination plant. It's supposed to be live in March producing drinking quality water...... 

 There are about half a dozen workers there, a couple of divers, forklift truck driver, supervisor and a couple on the pipe in the background. Not a lot of urgency and I would lay money its not going to be live by March this year. 

 It's not clear to me where the desalination plant will be located, newspaper reports suggest it will be at Harmony Park resort which is 4 km along the coast from Gordons Bay harbour (?)

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50 Litres of Water from Today

From today,1 February, our limit from the public water supply falls to 50 litres per person per day.

Sign in our bathroom

There's the expectation that water will completely run out on 12 April -- Day Zero -- leaving people to collect a 25L ration from tankers or standpipes.


I find it hard to visualise 50 litres, but that equates to flushing the toilet just five times. The 50 litres is not just for that, but also bathing, washing clothes, drinking, cooking and everything.

We only flush the loo when necessary. We don't let any water go down sink plugholes and scoop water we use to wash, dishwash and teeth clean from sink into a bucket which we pour down loo after No. 1s. 

Instead of boiling veg we're buying ready prepared veg that is microwaved in its bag. We're buying ready meals that can be microwaved and are eating them out of their containers to save washing plates. 

In the big Pick'n'Pay supermarket several people were buying huge plastic drums to store water. 

So far restaurant washrooms bathrooms are as normal; I don't know if they've their own water supply. I understand hotels are not washing towels and linen with the usual frequency and have removed plugs from baths.  

On arrival we tried buying bottled water at the supermarket but people are stockpiling and shelves were emptied of larger containers, however we managed to get enough drinking water for a few days.

Then yesterday Woolworths had a pallet of boxes containing 4 five-litre containers. There were 5 or 6 remaining and we grabbed one. Very heavy and difficult to get into shopping trolley.


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Marine Hotel, Hermanus

Another tradition is to drive from Gordons Bay on the dramatic coastal road to lunch at The Marine Hotel perched on Hermanus's cliffs overlooking Walker Bay. The restaurant has a new name - Origins - but some of the old dishes remain.

Richmans (always one word) Fish and Chips, taken from hotel owner Liz McGrath's  cookbook  has lost its title and the chips no longer come in a Hermanus Times paper cone, but the chips are mega crispy and so is the hake's craft beer batter.

Joan had Grilled LM prawns on fragrant rice with chilli jam, and a bottle of Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc 2017 from the vineyard just a few miles down the road is a perfect match.

It's overcast in Hermanus with a brisk breeze, but these trees on the pavement cheer us with their colourful plate-sized flowers.


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