I first laid eyes on Kleinmond two and a half years ago. It was an early morning in September when I drove in on the R44 from Hermanus. To my left, the Kleinmond Lagoon lay flat and still, in stark contrast to the restless waves that broke on the beach beyond. To my right was a large open area with a bowling green and tennis courts. Towering above were the Kogelberg mountains in shades of green.
The town itself is sandwiched between mountain and ocean. Like many Western Cape seaside settlements, it can’t get any wider, so it has developed lengthwise, skirting the coast and edging as far as it dares up the mountainside.
On my first visit, I remember thinking: I’ve never seen so many architectural styles on one street! A wooden A-frame cabin stood next to a sleek glass structure, which was next to a blockish, 70s-style condo…
That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed, as I turned onto a residential road, was the lack of fencing and burglar guards.
I made the move from Cape Town in 2020 and Kleinmond has been my home for just over a year now…
I’m not the only city dweller who moved to the countryside during lockdown. In fact, Kleinmond’s permanent population is increasing steadily. It’s no longer a small town of swallows, but that is how it began.
Kleinmond dates back to the 1800s, when a community of fishermen settled near the present-day Kleinmond Harbour. At the turn of that century, two outspans, one next to the Bot River Lagoon and one beside the Palmiet River, became popular holiday destinations for farmers of the greater Caledon area; some even travelled from as far as Swellendam to enjoy a summer by the sea.
In 1929, the town of Kleinmondstrand (simplified to “Kleinmond” in 1951) was laid out between these two outspans, but it remained remote until the 1940s, when Italian prisoners of war built the road – called Clarence
