Sunday 25th/Monday 26th
A very pleasant drive kindly ‘chauffered’ by Will and Di to Heathrow. After a smooth flight with British Airways on a 747–400 – 6005 miles, 11 hours 40 minutes and 4 hours’ sleep away – we’re here and it’s hot.
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We sat next to Barbara and David Gay who live in Gloucester and have 3 daughters one of whom is married to a S. African – so B & D have visited 4 times, but daughter and son-in-law now live in London so the visit is purely to chill out for a week away from their busy jobs in banking and IT. Now here’s the coincidence….
Another daughter Laura, is married to Tim Palperry and lives in West Bridgford. Tim’s father is a friend of Tim and Hilary Pearson who used to live two doors away from us on Cottams Close. They say you’re only a few steps away from being related – well nearly.
Expected our rental car to be a VW Polo but somehow ended up with a huge Toyota Corolla. Plenty of space for luggage then… having packed so economically carefully!!
Now here’s a riddle – how come we have a picture of Avis breakdown truck with a replacement car, but we still end up using the Corolla!?
The road was jam packed all the way from the airport to Cape Town, so a lot of ‘riding the clutch’ as we crawled along. Then suddenly the car stopped and wouldn’t restart. Panic. A bunch of workers jammed into the back of an open van leapt out and with huge smiles and cheering, pushed us to the hard shoulder where we scratched our heads, read the manual and tried repeatedly to start the car.
No joy – so phoned Avis who came out within 20 minutes with a replacement car. In the meantime a couple of Traffic Services (sort of minor cops I guess, but they still had guns) had stopped and checked us out – all very friendly and sympathetic.
Cheery Avis guy arrived and checked the driver was pushing the clutch down to start the car – it was necessary to disable some security device. Then the guy twigged that the driver was sitting quite a long way back in his seat (whoops, gave the identity of the driver away!) and queried if he was able to push the clutch fully to the floor. Bit banter about short legs and the mystery of the unstartable car was solved. Boy we were embarrassed.
Arrived in Constantia at lovely B & B owned by Gerry and Denise. Houseboy said the room wasn’t quite ready for us, so Gerry welcomed us and we went for a snack at Melissa’s in the village.
A very welcome shower refreshed us and then we were off to Hout Bay and Campbell Peak Drive. The latter was still closed (a friend of John’s army friend Ian, Tim (none of the above Tims!) had told us it was closed in Nov and apparently the work permit to do the work to retaining the falling rocks has still not been issued – the wheels of gov’t run slowly here) so then to Mariner’s Wharf for a seafood snack overlooking the beach.
Roger the waitron ( such a sensible unisex word!) was interesting on language – something like 11 official ones in S.Africa.
Back to B & B for aperitifs on our private patio before Peddlars on the bend for 3 course wine/gourmet meal– prawns/calamari, venison, crepes suzette.…