B&B roadtrip the Eastern Cape: Day 1

Roadtrippers: Me and my brother, Bjorn

Kms driven: 900
Start point: Johannesburg
End point: Rhodes (the town, not the university)
Animals spotted: Slender Mongoose, Albino Blesbok, Llama, Eland, Springbok, Ostrich, Spring Hare, Red Duiker

We knew in advance that this was going to be the kind of roadtrip where one needed to relax, not have an agenda and not worry about where one was going to sleep that night. As we left Johannesburg on the morning of Thursday 15th September, we had only one place we had to be and that was Grahamstown on the Friday night. Half way to Bloemfontein, it occurred to Bjorn that he always wanted to go to Rhodes and stay in the Rhodes hotel. So we did. They accepted the booking and 9pm arrival time with reluctance. We only realised when we got there that we were the only guests in the hotel that night.

Highlights of the day:
The August winds were late this year and the windmills in the Freestate were going crazy and glistening in the sunshine.
Smithfield is a tiny town worth going back to. A quick drive through really doesn’t do it justice.
The sunset in Rouxville.
Letitia was the lady that stayed up to let us in at the hotel. Turns out she was grumpy on the phone because she was sick but was accommodating and friendly when we arrived and opened the bar for us so we could at least have a drink.

The photo above is the till on the bar counter at the Rhodes Hotel. Most of these were destroyed when South Africa changed from Pounds to Rands. Some crafty guy hid this one in the basement for safe keeping.

Some bits from Ireland

Kinda, not really, enjoying my first Irish Guinness Some locals in Clogheen tried to teach me some Gaelic. These were the phrases they thought would be important for me to know.

Castle Grace ruins. A scene from Barry Lyndon was flimed on this lawn.

Duck heart on gluten free bread.

View of county Tipperary (Clonmel area) looking towards Castle Grace from the Vee.

Being a tourist and kissing the most kissed and yukky bit of castle rampart in the world, the Blarney Stone.

Irish Mastication

I struggled to keep this post short and interesting because I could go on about food in Ireland for ages. Here are two highlights:

Ireland, not surprisingly, has an outlandish variety of fresh seafood. We visited a restaurant called Aherne’s in Youghal (pronounced “you’ll”), a village in the south of Ireland. Between three of us we ate various crab, cod, salmon, mussel, oyster and scallop dishes. It was a seafood banquet like I have never experienced before.

At Ballymaloe Cookery School, we watched a traditional Irish cooking demonstration by the one and only Darina Allen (famous in Ireland for traditional Irish cooking, her Irish cooking school, numerous Irish cook books and for saying, “Well, that was a gas,” after completing an Irish dish). One could say the Irish are quite patriotic. She also subtly hinted that she wouldn’t be around the next day so if anyone wanted cook books signed; it’d better be that day. Half the stock of her books in the shop was promptly sold during the tea break (the Irish are be very sneaky money makers). I succumbed to the sneakiness.

Caoimhe? What?

While staying in county Tipperary in Ireland, I met a 9 year old girl with a gorgeous round face and brown curly hair. She wore a little purple striped t-shirt and skinny jeans, innocently dressing herself older to a fashion lost in countryside. When she told me her name, she proudly said, “Queeva.” That’s what I heard her say, phonetically, at least. When I asked her to spell it, having never heard the name before, I expected her to start with Q or C or K. But she carefully and thoughtfully started C…A…O…I…. hold on. What? Start again? Her name was not Queeva at all, or Kweever, or anything similar. She was proudly Caoimhe. What a beautiful name and what confusion and to her, what normality.