Some Picnic!

By Ian Robinson

“Big sky.” Athena, my wife, would say sometimes looking up at the vastness above.

“Wow, where did you get that from?” I’d asked the first time she said it.

“I felt it the first time I came to Africa. There’s just so much space and when you look out at the landscape it just seems to go on and on and on to the horizon and up into an endless sky.”

Big sky.

What a profound thing to say. This captures the feelings which we set out to achieve in Horizon's Gourmet Picnics.

It's a true story about Athena's (my ex-wife) and my business just outside Rosetta in the Midlands of KZN, South Africa.

Follows the finding of the property (it wasn't what we had in mind...), setting up the concept for the Gourmet Picnic business, naming the place 'Horizons' (which says 'as far as you can see' and sends a message 'to stretch our guests expectations'). We sold it as a going concern.

Every dish had a 'WOW' factor. Starting with glasses of free sherry on arrival. We walked them out to the expansive views, sat them on specially made bean bags or stylish chairs at a selection of tables. Next, we offered towellettes (heated in winter and chilled in summer) to rinse their hands with. After that, our waitrons offered guests some small snack eats. We would have kept their drinks flowing. Then, the sumptuous picnic will arrive packed in refined picnic basket containing half a dozen or so imaginative dishes.

After eating, the guests were welcome to sleep off their full bellies until they had a refreshed appetite for dessert. We found that Horizons was very attractive to couples that were getting engaged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Robinson
• Release date: Feb 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781514286814

Ian Robinson

WRITING TO RACE AT LE MANS 24hrs 2018 Motor Car Endurance RaceWhat makes me somewhat different to other writers, I had a massive stroke in 2011. It left me totally paralyzed on the entire right side of my body. But, that was then. I’m slowly, very slowly, recovering.I've started with the launch through an intensive campaign of my books, which are called Rough Diamonds and SOME PICNIC!. I’ve been writing Rough Diamonds off and on since 1994 and I wrote SOME PICNIC! starting in about 2007 and launched it in 2011.This is the evidence for Rough Diamonds:Family ripped apart! A killer read...In the sixties, this takes you to a mining village called Scallyclare in South Africa. There is deceit, evil, malice, negligence, blackmail, rape, murder. It starts when the three children's Grandfather gives them three uncut diamonds. Along with those, he gives them each a bracelet with their names engraved on. The diamonds and the bracelets become their blessings and their terrifying curses... This read is not for the gutless!My books are going to fund my dream to return to motor racing wIth the ultimate goal to take part eventually in Le Mans 24 hours in France in 2018. (I raced in South Africa in the seventies). This is the greatest sports car race in the world. I attended the race in 2016, and it was phenomenal, mind-blowing! I was joining over half a million people watching the race. The racing car is emblazoned with the bright, in-mistakeable colours of the cover of Rough Diamonds, and the car will recognize my backers. I feel my book Rough Diamonds will make a great film and have started the ball rolling.More about SOME PICNIC! further down.I was brought up on a coalmine in Durnacol, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa as a young boy. This is where Rough Diamonds takes place. My Grandfather secretly kept the three uncut diamonds in a tin at the back of his cupboard. He died and my mother discovered them. I imagined how I would see the rough nature of the diamonds, and did an abstract visual for the cover of my book on the way they would have glinted in the bright sunlight. (Uncut diamonds can glint).Life was filled with adventure and thrilling moments. I spent a life in advertising and motor racing. Filled with a sense of adventure, widely travelled, a capable chef, raced and rallied cars, competed in three day long, gruelling canoe marathons, ran an ultra marathon of 87 kilometres (I pathetically baled after 36km....), and an average snow skier. I used to be a part of an eight man wine tasting group, (called the Circle of Eight - there were eight of us), I've rejoined a wine-tasting scheme. In both groups, we don't take the wines too seriously.My first book was a non-fiction Some Picnic!, about our gourmet picnic business in South Africa. It talks about the activity which we ran from 2004 to 2007.“Big sky.” Athena, my wife, would say sometimes looking up at the vastness above.“Wow, where did you get that from?” I’d asked the first time she said it.“I felt it the first time I came to Africa. There’s just so much space and when you look out at the landscape it just seems to go on and on and on to the horizon and up into an endless sky.”Big sky.What a profound thing to say. This captures the feelings which we set out to achieve in Horizon's Gourmet Picnics.My wife suggested: "We need to get a quiet little place in the mountains, where we can chill out on weekends"; But the opposite happened - we ended up hectically working almost every day of the year on a picnic business with a difference. It's a true story about Athena's and my business just outside Rosetta in the Midlands of KZN, South Africa. Follows the finding of the property (it wasn't what we had in mind...), setting up the concept for the Gourmet Picnic business, naming the place;Horizons; (which says; as far as you can see; and sends a message "to stretch our guest's expectations). We sold the business as a going concern.We started with glasses of free sherry on arrival.We walked them out of opposite end of the home, and they were impressed by the expansive views. Next, we sat them on specially made bean bags or stylish chairs at a selection of tables. Then, we offered towellettes (heated in winter and chilled in summer) to rinse their hands. We would make sure that the bar would have kept their drinks flowing.Every dish had a WOW factor. Our waitrons offered guests some snacky eats. Then, the sumptuous picnic would arrive packed in refined picnic basket containing half a dozen or so imaginative dishes. The guests ate with proper cutlery, from proper plates, drank from stylish glasses and used proper serviettes. There was plenty of ice to keep the ice buckets topped up and keep the wine chilled. After eating, they were welcome to sleep off their full bellies until they had a refreshed appetite for dessert. We found that Horizons was popular for couples that were getting engaged.

Book preview

LEGAL STUFF

DEDICATIONS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CONNECT WITH IAN ROBINSON

ROUGH DIAMONDS A killer read… The first three chapters.

LEGAL STUFF

Author: Ian Robinson

Publisher: Ian Robinson

All rights reserved

Cover design by the author.

ISBN No: 1-514-28681-5

Published: February, 2017

Copyright 2017 I D Robinson

Smashwords Edition

DEDICATIONS

For my wife Athena.

Big sky. Athena would say sometimes looking up at the vastness above.

Wow, where did you get that from? I’d asked the first time.

I felt it the first time I came to Africa. There’s just so much space and when you look out at the landscape it just seems to go on and on and on to the horizon and up into an endless sky.

Big sky.

What a profound thing to say.

The glorious memories of what happened at Horizons and what I dreamed could have been. Aah, the wine farm…

To Courtney, Olivia, and my step-children Zoe and Jack…

Life was filled with the most exciting adventures there.

Here’s the true story:

CHAPTER 1

150 friends for lunch

CHAPTER 2

Just a quiet weekend getaway

CHAPTER 3

What’s that on the horizon?

CHAPTER 4

What a picnic

CHAPTER 5

An offer they can’t refuse

CHAPTER 6

Eureka

CHAPTER 7

Some work to do

CHAPTER 8

Restaurant economics 101 (with cucumber soup)

CHAPTER 9

Debits and credits

CHAPTER 10

DNA

CHAPTER 11

What’s in a name?

CHAPTER 12

Bed time

CHAPTER 13

Catching up – the calm before the storm

CHAPTER 14

Driving a hard deal

CHAPTER 15

The wow factor

CHAPTER 16

Road kill

CHAPTER 17

A good coffee

CHAPTER 18

Water everywhere, but can we drink it?

CHAPTER 19

Bagging the baguette

CHAPTER 20

More wow food - Tonnato

CHAPTER 21

Getting the numbers right

CHAPTER 22

Mediterranean in the Midlands?

CHAPTER 23

Making the Midlands Meander

CHAPTER 24

Surviving the Concrete Jungle

CHAPTER 25

Just another quiet weekend

CHAPTER 26

At your own risk

CHAPTER 27

A basket case?

CHAPTER 28

Bugs and Ginger Bread Men

CHAPTER 29

The big move

CHAPTER 30

The publicity machine

CHAPTER 31

Only a week until opening – let’s go on holiday

CHAPTER 32

Welcome all

CHAPTER 33

We’re open – I think?

CHAPTER 34

The waterworks – No, it doesn’t!

CHAPTER 35

The grapes of wrath

CHAPTER 36

Boletus Edulis and other mushroom magic

CHAPTER 37

Another big move, and another

CHAPTER 38

Mayonnaise

CHAPTER 39

Surprise storms

CHAPTER 40

Some rocky weddings

CHAPTER 41

A fancy school and the picnic lady

CHAPTER 42

Boys will be boys

CHAPTER 43

Let’s gather around a fire

CHAPTER 44

A different world – forty-three million light years away

CHAPTER 45

Follow the signs – really?

CHAPTER 46

The chicken and the egg – any Cock’ll do

CHAPTER 47

Four seasons, five senses

CHAPTER 48

The fish farm and the fish pond and other wildlife

CHAPTER 49

A little nibble of Prosciutto

CHAPTER 50

Tadpoles

CHAPTER 51

Let’s reward ourselves

CHAPTER 52

Buried secret

CHAPTER 53

Ant city

CHAPTER 54

Toil and trouble, bubble, bubble – kitchen calamaties

FIFTY 55

Bank squeeze

CHAPTER 56

Looking forward to a rest with a Ferrari

CHAPTER 57

Subdivision – becoming a road builder

CHAPTER 58

Moving four cats, no three...?

CHAPTER 59

Losing some good people to HIV Aids

CHAPTER 60

Horizons Gourmet foods

CHAPTER 61

Beetroot soup

CHAPTER 62

Thai oysters

CHAPTER 63

Notes from Athena's diary

CHAPTER 64

The best wedding – ever

CHAPTER 65

Less ice cream, please

CHAPTER 66

Trip of a lifetime - and the money’s in the bank

CHAPTER 67

Vroom, Vroom

CHAPTER 68

Simply stunning

CHAPTER 69

Star-struck

CHAPTER 70

An absolute treat

CHAPTER 71

The luxury continues

CHAPTER 72

Monaco

CHAPTER 73

Back to routine – all in a week’s work

Experiences and what I've learnt from Horizons

The challenge

CHAPTER 1

150 friends for lunch

I fled from the chaos inside the house.

Outside, an entirely different and tranquil scenario awaited me, where a gloriously, peaceful morning had dawned two hours before.

It's 8 am Sunday, early in winter, where I stand on the front verhanda looking out across the valleys of the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal. A mountain chill lingers in the air and the shadows under the giant conifer trees are still brightened by frost. That will disappear soon - it looks like a fine day ahead reaching low 20C's - usual for this time of the year. In the distance magnificent Giant's Castle rises languidly out of the early chill air, catching the early rays of the rising sun.

When I return inside the house it's bedlam. There are picnic baskets everywhere. Fifty large ones for adults and thirty kid size ones make an obstacle course - across the  lounge floor, the sofas, the spare room bed, the temporary table, on top of the TV - anywhere there's a flat surface.

It’s going to be a big day – the trial run-through of the brand new Horizons Gourmet Picnics business. My bride to be, Athena and I, have bravely (or stupidly?) invited many of our friends and their children to test the systems before we officially open to the public in a week’s time. As today got closer the numbers grew from sixty to seventy and now we were expecting ninety adults and who knew how many kids.

Years in the advertising industry have hardened me to deadlines and a stint as catering manager for the Royal Cape Yacht Club have given me all the basics of the restaurant industry. Nonetheless my excitement for today is tinged with not a little anxiety. Fear of the unknown.

I navigate the baskets to the kitchen. How anyone can work in there is a wonder. More baskets cover the floor, the table has hundreds of little plastic containers sliding off the edges and there are giant pots and trays of food balancing on the stove and fridges. The industrial size oven is on Gas mark ten as it battles to keep up with rows of ramekins waiting their turn. Yet labouring in there are five Zulu ladies and my gorgeous wife Athena who could be a reincarnation out of Greek mythology.

Taste this please, Ian, I think it needs something, asks my goddess as she hands me a sample spoonful of her legendary insalate di mare (yet to be bettered anywhere).

As good as ever, I mumble as I savour the vinegary, lemony, garlicky, olive oily, parsley, black peppery chunks of seafood. 

It’s the eleventh dish I’ve tested since getting up so my taste buds are already well tuned in. There was the chilled cucumber soup, the tonnato, the lamb casserole, the mielie bread, the...

My mobile rings and it’s one of my golf friends we invited. I fear it’s bad news – a last minute cancellation. Hi Ian, he says, looking forward to seeing you midday. I relax a bit. By the way, we had a few friends stay over last night and I thought it would be good for them to find out about your picnics – may they come – they’ll pay?

Of course, and we don’t expect anyone to pay. Today’s on us to get people to know about it. The more the merrier. Athena gave me a strange look.

The food – unbelievably – was coming together, although we knew our challenges were far from over. 

How would our little-trained, local Zulu farm workers cope with presenting our high end, al fresco, gourmet picnics? Would our oven cope with crisping up the baguettes and heating lamb casseroles for ninety adults? Had we mastered making espressos and Capuccinos to pump out sixty in half an hour?

Would Athena and my relationship stand up to this weekend in and weekend out?

The next dish I had to do was one of the most important, and alongside Athena’s insalate di mare our other signature dish – my carpaccio made with my specially cured bresaola. I had been building up expectations all week and now was my time to deliver. Most of the work was done and it was simply a matter of slicing it and plating it up.

Bresaola – a cured topside of beef - was one of many dishes inspired by our travels, in this case to the north of Italy. I sourced the basic recipe off the internet and had given it a South African twist. Sliced less than a millimetre thin, this is the main ingredient of my carpaccio. Because of the curing, it makes for a serious version, unlike the insipid affairs served in most restaurants made with tasteless fillet.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Flo, who we had brought to Horizons to help with the load of the extra work. She is a little woman (compared to the huge size of the maids that one can see around), and as an outsider (she was from a different African tribe in the Umhlanga Rocks area on the coast) and she was standing up to her proper right in amongst the half a dozen ladies that we had working today. These were locals from the farms in the area and the nearby village, Bruntville,

Back to the bresaola. For this I trim a full topside (about seven kilos –readers, don’t try this at home!) of the flap and all fat. Then I cure it whole in a few cups mix of sea salt and sugar and about a cup mixed of ground black pepper and coriander seeds. After four or five days I rinse it in vinegar and rest it in the fridge for another few days for the flavours to penetrate through before it’s ready.

The ingredients are inspired by those used for biltong. This is the dried, cured meat developed by the voortrekker pioneers to preserve their slaughtered beef as they trekked on their conquest of savage southern Africa. I only use the meat from a Midlands butcher – reared solely on its lush pastures. It’s some of the finest – a deep, rich burgundy colour.

The rest of the dish is simple but requires equally good ingredients. 

We served it by plating a portion for two on a sideplate, covering it with about four delicate slices of the bresaola. A handful of shaved Grana Padano (similar to Parmigiano Reggiano but less expensive) is scattered over the top (can’t be too frugal with this as it adds to the rich umami flavour of the dish). Then follows a dressing of olive oil and finely chopped sweet basil. Lastly a couple of lemon slices to be squeezed over just before eating with a grating of black pepper.

This would be one of our signature dishes upon which we build our reputation.

However I digress (food does that to me).

Bring me the mkulu nyama - the big meat, I shout above the voices of the six Zulu ladies all going in different directions across the kitchen, doing their best to avoid tripping on the looped picnic basket handles sticking up in the air.

This is one of the big moments I’ve been waiting for – to christen our brand new meat slicer. My mind flashes back to the many delicatessens in Europe where I’ve watched Prosciutto, coppa, parma and salami deftly sliced to order, and I keenly anticipate using our new Rheninghaus Stellina – all shiny, stainless steel and brand new out the box.

Every self respecting restaurant should have a good quality meat slicer. It’s an essential piece of equipment – along with a good espresso coffee machine. So we’d had no hesitation in investing in a top of range German make that was the price of an overseas airline ticket.

I fetch the box from the store room where it’s lain unopened since the catering equipment company delivered it at the last minute on the Friday. It weighs a ton and has no pictures but lots of German on it – a good sign of a quality slicer.

Around me the buzz continues with Athena efficiently commandeering the plating up of the insalate di mare, folding the cutlery in the napkins, and making sure there are butter dishes, salt dishes and pepper mills in every basket. Meanwhile I’m picturing myself in a Milanese deli savouring a slice of cured ham – either the dark, slightly sweet San Danielle or the truffly Pata Negra made from pigs that forage the forests for their favourite food - acorns.

Get on with it, Athena yells, you still have to fetch the twenty bags of ice from the trading store and our guests are on their way!

I open the box and glimpse the shiny machinery through the layers of plastic packaging. Impressive. Carefully I lift the couple of pieces out and unwrap the biggest piece first. It’s the length of my forearm and as thick as my leg and looks like a cannon. I’m a bit puzzled.

What’s this? I say, but no-one takes any notice.

My bresaola waits to be sliced. The ice waits. Lunchtime and our guests approach.

I unpack more and suddenly the horrible realization hits me. Slicing the massive bresaola into paper thin slices for nearly 100 guests has just become another, unexpected challenge to serving our test picnics. 

Why? Because what has been delivered is not a slicer. Instead, before me is an industrial strength, very large and impressive - but quite useless to me with 100 guests on their way - meat mincer!

What a thing of beauty, I momentarily think before realizing this unexpected predicament.

I look at the six kilograms lump of bresaola sitting on the table that should be in 300 slices. I look at the machine that could pass as a World War I cannon. 

With an hour to go before our guests were due to arrive, the plan was unravelling fast!

I made that Bresaola in 2017 (I’ve just realized that was the anniversary ten years ago we transferred Horizons to the Grealy’s/Robinsons). It’s not the way we presented it - there’s enough for four to six people - we did portions for a couple. I got a bit carried away (again…)

CHAPTER 2

Just a quiet weekend getaway

Our craziness had all started about six months before. We were relaxing over the Sunday crossword with the last of our lunchtime chardonnay.

I’d like a little place in the mountains, said Athena, somewhere to escape to for weekends, with views, where we can go for walks and really chill out. You know, absolutely relax and do very little.

With four teenage (or soon to be) children between us, and both running our own businesses we needed somewhere to get away to. Not that where we lived - Durban and Umhlanga Rocks - really needs to be got away from. With miles of beaches, a subtropical climate to enjoy them year-round, and the best rugby team in the world (The Sharks), it’s no wonder it’s South Africans’ favorite holiday destination. (Athena: enough of the travel commercial, Ian).

Right. So, it was we had started our search for a little place – a cottage by a mountain stream or lake with views of the magnificent Drakensberg. Or a little smallholding where we could grow our own organic vegetables and a few chickens.

A little geography may be useful here. Durban is one of the few places where in the morning you can enjoy surfing and at lunchtime be sitting at a log fire in your snow kit at the Highest Pub in Africa. This little gem at 3,000 meters on top of the Drakensberg sits just inside the little mountain kingdom of Lesotho (which if you didn’t know was there you could quite easily overlook). It’s only about three hours’ drive from the coast.

In between is what’s marketed as the Midlands Meander – a quaint tourism route of a couple of hundred artists, artisans and piss artists – where you can spend a day or more meandering around eating, drinking and resisting tea cozies embroidered with ducks.

Fortunately, there’s also a brewery at Rawdon’s Hotel, which has a fine pub with a roaring fire in winter where you can have a good pub lunch. A bunch of people have also been trying to grow grapes to produce wine in the area so it does have some respectability.

You’re right, I succumbed, not bothering to think of a reason not to.

So, we spent a few weekends driving to places like Underberg and Himeville and Drakensberg Gardens looking at possibilities. And mostly we spent the time driving.

To get there we would head inland from Durban along the motorway. After about an hour we’d turn left at Midmar dam or Nottingham Road and drive for another hour or more to the foothills of the mountains. The route through Nottingham Road (there’s another good pub at Notties Hotel) takes you through Rosetta – a tiny little village that everyone seems to have forgotten – where you turn left again.

This route heads to the Kamberg where an interaction center (fancy name for a hall with a video) has been set up by Ezemvelo Wildlife. They are the provincial nature conservation people (or Parks Board, the un-politically correct name many still call it) who are entrusted with nature conservation in KwaZulu-Natal. This center is perched on top of a hill, and here you can find out how the early settlers, with missionary zeal bent on bringing civilization to the area, wiped out the San – one of mankind’s earliest civilizations. Get the irony?

This area is now also a World Heritage Site – with the slip off the tongue name of Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Mountain Park.

The Kamberg has one of the best hotels in the country with the odd name of Cleopatra. Proprietors Richard and Mouse Poynton create and produce a unique menu from local produce 365 days of the year to a 95% capacity of mostly foreign guests.

It’s also known that it tops the list of favorite places of ex-president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. So, you might bump into him in the pub and share his favorite tipple Chivas over an enlightening fireside chat about how the arms deal went down. Or he went down. Or a few of the other public figures that went down in South Africa’s post ‘94 scramble for top paying government jobs and contracts.

So, our quest was having another benefit. We were discovering places and facts and meeting lots of interesting people.

A few times en route we drove through Rosetta (which also has one of the best wine shops in the country – the Wine Cellar, and one of the worst named restaurants – The Piggly Wiggly).

This had got me thinking. No, not the wine or the Piggly Wiggly, but this idyllic little populated village in its pretty setting. It had got me thinking.

You know something, I said as we were crawling out of the Umkomaas Valley stuck behind a taxi crammed with more people than the designer intended, we’re missing the point here. If we’re going to get good use out of this place, we can’t spend half a day driving there and another half back home.

Look what happens, I added, when we go somewhere a bit far for the weekend – by 10 o’clock Sunday morning everyone’s getting fidgety because lunch won’t be relaxed because we have to set off home at the time we should be having our second bottle of wine followed by a Sunday afternoon nap. Doesn’t make sense.

You’re right, concurred Athena, as the taxi nearly hit a goat.

In fact, much as we love the actual mountains, I built my case, what we really want is a place that is very quick and easy to get to. We must be able to leave Durban at four on a Friday afternoon and an hour later onto our second glasses of Sauvignon Blanc admiring the sunset.

Makes sense, otherwise we’ll end up not using the place. And then we can enjoy the whole of Sunday, have a full-on Sunday roast and leave early Monday morning. You can tell why she’s my goddess.

I need to explain here, for the benefit of those people unlucky enough to travel long distances to work. Here we are, discussing an hour’s journey like it is the trans-Antarctic survival mission. Well, for good reason. We’re spoilt in Durban. Three cars make a rush hour (well they used to). People would lose touch with friends if they lived more than twenty minutes away and a dinner invitation almost meant taking an overnight bag. So, for us an hour-long drive is not what we do to and from work every day.

The family owned Wine Cellar. http://www.thewinecellar.co.za/

___________________________

After a few weeks exploring, Rosetta and its surrounds was a growing blip on our radar. Having driven through it a few times we started falling in love with it.

Unlike so many other small towns, it had been forgotten about, ignored and not stuffed up. No franchises except for the Piggly Wiggly, and I swear I’ve never seen another Piggly Wiggly anywhere on earth but they do tell me it’s a franchise, and besides a trading store or two, not much else. It has a small dam and on the village outskirts the gentle hills give 180 to 360 views of the midlands and the distant Drakensberg. There used to be a station there because people would train up from the seaside (that’s how pretty Rosetta must have been, and could be again) for the weekend or day and stay at the Rosetta Hotel – which is now the Piggly Wiggly. (I can see a time-warp, back-to-the future type movie somewhere there...

The area around Rosetta is the answer, I said, as we tucked into chargrilled calamari for lunch after a summer morning on the beach at Umhlanga. It was early January; the year had started and our minds were back into Goals for the Year.

It’s off the beaten track, the gateway to a World Heritage site, peacefully quiet and is just over an hour’s drive from Durban. Let’s look there.

Whether it was my sound logic or the African sun and the Chardonnay, either way I had Athena nodding.

Nothing fancy at all. In fact, a single room cottage with a fireplace in one corner and a bed in the other would do.

We agreed.

At that time, we were dealing with an excellent estate agent Shelley Nortier (who is sadly no more), and so I asked her to see if her contacts in the Midlands could find us anything. Our brief was simple: a modest cottage, small piece of land for a bit of weekend agriculture, mountain views, stream or dam (with trout), north facing to enjoy the winter sun, verandah for summer al fresco lunches.

Would something turn up?

CHAPTER 3

What’s that on the horizon?

Durban’s colonial forefathers saw fit to preserve the city’s botanic legacy. So, close to the city’s center nestles the Botanical Gardens – about three hectares of lawns, gardens, trees and a dam - which is grandiosely referred to as a lake.

It’s the perfect place for a picnic – especially when the province’s philharmonic orchestra is in concert amongst the palm trees and the ducks are splashing around. (They had tried spectacular and noisy firework displays with some of the concerts, but that had the birdlife running for cover and the greenies up in arms as quick as you could say global warming!)

We were now just into the second week of February and still no cottage. There’s good music at Botanic Gardens this Sunday for Valentine’s Day, let’s go, said Athena.

My mind immediately recalled our past successful picnics there - Athena’s Insalate di Mare of course, platters of my home-made Prosciutto, and some of the best, rich, sticky Gorgonzola we know of. All washed down by a couple of bottles of good stuff.

Great – we’ll do one of our fine picnics. I’m easily convinced by good food.

About Wednesday that week a call came in from Shelley. I’ve been asking around and there isn’t much in your price range. However, our agent in Notties has something you may be interested in – it’s next to Rosetta on about twelve hectares and is on the market for R1 million (roughly US$14,000).

Shelley, are you crazy – we don’t want to buy a farm! Surely there must be a little cottage somewhere?

There’s very little around there unless you want to go into Nottingham Road, Fort Nottingham or the town of Rosetta itself. The next smallest size is something like what I’ve found.

But there is something about this worth looking into, she added. The sellers have been subdividing so you may be able to buy part of it or sell part of it. Shall I get the agent Anthony to call you?

So, it was that Saturday morning saw me heading up to Rosetta to view our possible weekend getaway. Athena was working at her linen store so I went on my own.

Meet me just before Rosetta where you see a little dirt road the D146 on your left, was the arrangement with Anthony.

I arrived a little before the arranged time of 8am. The air was thick with the scents of summer and the distant sounds of farm animals going about their Saturday morning business. I hesitantly looked up the steep Road D146, which barely qualified as a road. Summer rain torrents had rushed down, gouging deep ruts and turning the clay surface into a slippery mess. The low-level bridge barely cleared the stream and logs, grass and litter clung to its upstream edge.

A mud splattered 4x4 pulled up and someone who looked like Magnum PI’s brother shouted out the window: Good morning, welcome to Rosetta, Ian. I’m Anthony Baker, he drawled at about half the speed of someone from the city. Follow me.

We slithered up the hill with my sporty Alfa doing its best to think 4x4. I tried to ignore the occasional grind as it scraped over a rock or I navigated a man size wash away in the road.

After about 300 metres we crested a hill. I slowed down to take in the landscape but Anthony sped on. His vehicle disappeared up the road through an avenue of towering blue gums so I used my rally driving skills and caught him up, just as he stopped at a pumpkin coloured entrance.

As we entered all I could see were buildings. Our modest little weekend cottage had the makings of Rosetta Club Med!

A gravel driveway was flanked on one side by stables converted into cottages (plural) and garages (plural), and on the other by leafy poplar trees and parking for about twelve cars. The pale pumpkin colour theme followed through to a thatched home beyond, partly obscured by three-meter-high hedges.

A man came out one of the garages wiping his hands and a woman emerged from behind the hedge to meet us – Avril and Trevor Spiers, the owners. Half a dozen dogs of wide ranging size and provenance sniffed us new visitors.

Come in, welcome, Avril greeted us warmly.

We entered a side door into first a hallway with a cosy lounge and earthy fireplace and then a very large area the size of a restaurant that Avril had also furnished as a lounge. The walls were the colour of pinot noir - a light coloured, but very noble red wine -punctuated with large windows.

Let’s go outside, Avril invited.

I stepped out onto the veranda and gasped.

Birdsong and a rich amalgam of natural scents filled the air: freshly mown grass, conifer trees and floral fragrances.

Just in front of the house to the right a large pond half filled with lilies shimmered and reflected the bullrushes and fountain at its centre. Sprawling emerald lawns flowed into a gently curved double row of conifer trees that was obviously once a grand driveway entrance.

Beyond, valleys spread out swallowing the last of the morning mist and pastures defined by rows of trees started to form. Through the blue gum trees, I could see in the distance the imposing Drakensberg.

If you look through there you can see Giant’s Castle, said Trevor.

There’s also the dam that’s being built – Spring Grove Dam, said Anthony. It’s going to be 1km down the road and will add enormous value to the property as it will be recreational as well. They’ve been planning it for the last fifty years and it’s due to be built now.

You’ve also seen what’s happening at Nottingham Road with Gowrie Village and there’s a big new shopping centre that’s about to be built.

A flood of emotions engulfed me – I was smitten, excited, inspired. My marketing background and trendspotting nature of my work was picking up all the right signals: key tourist region; attracts the well heeled; close to a World Heritage Site; a big trend towards living in the countryside and commuting; working from home with digital connections; an unspoiled, undeveloped and potential Franschhoek. I could see fabulous investment potential.

I was also very aware that this was rather a lot more than we had in mind.

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Let’s see the rest of the house, said Anthony.

In South Africa, we have a dwelling known as a rondavel (see pic above). It’s a very rudimentary structure – simply a circular abode with a pointy thatched roof. Usually only