Same town, different angle

How big is your world? I don’t mean, how widely have you travelled, or, do you have a wide range of interests. I mean, in any given day, how much territory do you cover? By that measure, my world is very small and is mostly limited to a relatively small triangle that extends between home, work and some other soccer mom destination. Since I started blogging, I realised that being a tourist in your own city is not a contradiction in terms. Most people just…don’t.

The same thing with Stellenbosch. I lived there for four years as a student, and since then my sister has consistently occupied a space in the center of the historic town. And so the space between Dorp and Church Streets was, for the last number of years, the images of this town in my head. This had its advantages, not least the fact that my eye-candy crush from varsity – now married! – also frequented these few blocks…

Imagine then my delight when, after getting married in September last year, my sister and her husband moved into a cottage on the Blaauwklippen Road outside of town, looking out over the Helderberg and in the shade of a gnarled two hundred year-old pine tree. 

Here, you can wake up and have a pre-breakfast (but post coffee!) walk in the vineyards that takes in views of Table Mountain and the other beautiful Stellenbosch mountains. Or, in the afternoon, you can go the other direction up the mountain and within minutes find yourself in the dappled shade of a pine forest. 

So: same town, but completely different. It’s as if I had a favourite book I’d read a hundred times and thought I knew every word, and one day I happened to pick it up again and discovered three new chapters at the back. It’s opened up new horizons, literally and figuratively, and it’s delightful. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Image credits: All photography by me