Magnificent halls of
UR national highways are in great condition, which they should be considering how boobytrapped with tolls they are, but you need a Victoria Cross to venture off the beaten track on any back roads in KwaZulu-Natal.
Had Avis not provided me with a Nissan XTrail, the ideal vehicle for navigating the outer spurs of the Drakensberg, my partner and I would have been camping in a ditch instead of wallowing like happy hippos in luxury on the way.
The Wild Horses Lodge near Harrismith
A stone mansion, perched high on a koppie above the rocky shores of the vast Sterkfontein Dam and which could have been featured in a San painting, was our first stopover.
Being taken out for a water safari at sunset in a streamlined boat, one of a fleet of four, by former Springbok yachtsman and master stone mason Jon Hawkins – who has designed and overseen the laying of every stone of this unusual mansion – and his wife, Trish, is more fun than meeting the Flintstones! You will be drinking fine wine from cut crystal rather than moonshine out of horns and sleeping under goose down in front of a gas fire instead of rolling up in zebra skins next to open flames.
OThese owners are passionate about their stamping ground. They know where to find nesting fish eagles and lone rhino roaming the Sterkfontein shores better than Fred and Wilma know “Rock Vegas”.
When you have faced cliff hangers at sea, it’s not surprising you name your waterside manor “Wild Horses”. Spionkop Lodge I missed out on an education, but it’s never too late to get a history lesson – and if there is anyone who can bring to life the Anglo-Boer War and the impact of the Battle at Spioenkop on our future, it is Ray Heron.
Ray owns a sprawling 700ha aloe and beef farm above the Tugela River near Ladysmith, on turf that was trodden by Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Louis Botha – and most of all by the entire Liverpool football squad, who backed the wrong team, under General Buller, at Spioenkop.
We drove into the rustic gate with the sun setting on orange aloes like wildfire spreading through indigenous bush and the highpitched sound of flocks of birds disturbed by our late arrival.
Ray’s son is in charge of the aloe business and introduced us to a cocktail concoction on the deck, with the occasional black mamba story thrown in for good measure. To sit around the fire of the original Victorian farmhouse and listen to the world’s foremost expert on the subject of this strategic battle is better than watching a reality show or the history channel, even for a television addict like me.
Who knows what would have