Ruda Landman has it her way

When you’re a TV veteran, one thing is for sure: you’re almost guaranteed to be citybound. But Ruda Landman likes to have her bread buttered on both sides…

Hermanus

We learnt the expression “You can have the penny and the bun” from a friend of my husband’s. I’m an urban person who enjoys the variety of friends, hangouts, book shops and possibilities in general that city life affords me. But I hate noise. I want to return to peace and quiet, preferably without (strange) people. That’s a tall order! Hermanus, where we’ve been spending Decembers for nearly 20 years, offers me my city penny and my silence bun. It has the nicest book shops I’ve ever come across, and dozens of lovely spots for socialising within walking and driving distance.

So many of our friends have retired there that our social calendar could be a lot busier than at home in Johannesburg (but we manage it strictly – it’s the holidays after all).

Yet it’s also about the soul food in the silence and the beauty that you can find there. Yes, the town has burst its seams in the past few years and over Christmas it’s packed, but you can decamp to your stoep, between the mountains and the ocean, or go for a walk in Fernkloof and be astounded by a single vygie, or find a bench high above the waves and watch day turn into night.

The penny and the bun.

Ruda Landman is a journalist renowned for her award-winning work on the investigative TV programme Carte Blanche.