So Come Climb Me
“We’ve come to climb your mountain,” Bob Baigrie announces to the waitress as he points to Simonsberg, our mountain backdrop. “Coffee or tea?” she responds, smiling indulgently.
Towering over the Stellenbosch Winelands in the way Table Mountain does Cape Town, Simonsberg is an iconic mountain I’ve had my eye on for a while. Every time I go for a tasting at one of the many wine farms on its slopes, it beckons me. Named, like Stellenbosch, after Simon van der Stel, the first Dutch Governor of the Cape Colony, it is the local peak to climb.
After a drive to the top of Helshoogte Pass (the divide between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek), my husband Matthew and I have joined Bob and another keen mountaineer, Richmond MacIntyre, at the Tokara Delicatessen, for
