Anyone with even vaguely active offspring will know the weekend round of driving to a far-flung playing field, lost and late. Standing on the touchline chatting with parents you only see at matches. Cheering a famous victory or, more often, commiserating with your own sporting hero or heroine as they fall victim to a bullying foul or yet another inexplicable refereeing decision.
For us, that’s a normal Saturday on a damp
and chilly sports ground somewhere in the London suburbs. But not today. Today
the team in question is playing not-bad cricket on an immaculate pitch under a
limpid, limitless blue sky. It’s 34 degrees and the batsmen’s faces are shining
with determination under their helmets. Behind the scoreboard (showing a
knife-edge match in its closing stages, our last man facing their fearsome
opening bowler and chasing twenty runs), exotic trees give way to the soaring sandstone
cliffs of Table Mountain.
When 12 year old Luke made it onto the South
Africa cricket tour I was delighted for him; and even more delighted to have an
excuse for a few days in what must be, if you can face the long flight, the ideal
place to see off the winter blues. His first match was on the morning we landed,
after an 11-hour flight. Restored by a perfect breakfast on the verandah at the
sweet Garden Café in Rondebosch we found the cricket pitch and, just like any
other Saturday, greeted the other parents on the touchline. The usual gossip (bizarre
marking in the recent exams, guess who’s moving to Kent) took on a surreal air
in the sunshine – and fell away as the match developed into a thrilling last-ditch
win for the tourists.
Like his teammates Luke was billeted at one
of the local boys’ parents’ houses. He had made it very clear that we were to
keep a good distance during our stay to avoid embarrassment, so after seeing
him away with one of the Rondebosch boys we obliged by driving about forty
minutes up the N1 towards Franschoek. From
the outside, Babylonstoren doesn’t look much different to the other wineries in
the region - vines, fruit trees, white-painted farm buildings and a rather
lovely Cape Dutch manor house. But behind the gates a lot of imagination and even
more investment has gone into making what informed South African friends say might
be the best place to stay in the Western Cape.
Babylonstoren is owned by media tycoon Koos
Bekker and his wife Karen, who use to be editor of interiors magazine Elle
Deco. She’s put everything she learned into creating a truly exceptional
environment, combining the best of modern Scandinavian style and 300 years of
Cape Dutch tradition into a seamless, authentic and very cool aesthetic. At its
heart French garden designer Patrice Tarravella (best known for Prieure d’Orsan
near Bourges) has made what is, essentially, a gigantic kitchen garden – a
beautiful and contemplative space where everything grown can be eaten. There is
order here, laid out on a grid; areas are given over to citrus fruit (with
paths made of crushed peach stones), or eight kinds of figs, or lawns of
scented chamomile and thyme. There are henhouses and duckhouses, beehives and
birdboxes. Carrots and pumpkins, blueberries and roses all seem perfect,
dreamlike versions of themselves, thanks to a perfect climate - and a lot of
hard work.
From the garden, fresh organic produce is chosen
daily by gardeners and cooks for the farm restaurant, Babel. In what was once a
cowshed, consultant Maranda Engelbrecht, chef Simone Rossouw and head gardener
Lisl van der Walt have put together a menu which combines fruit, vegetables,
flowers and herbs fresh from the garden – meat and fish are just the
accompaniment – in simple yet surprising ways with the guiding principle that
“if you touch the food more than three times, you kill it”. Ordering is simple;
salads, for example are simply red, yellow or green – though each might combine
twenty complex flavours – while deserts may be bitter, sour, savoury or sweet.
The garden, with Franschoek mountains in
the distance, is what sets Babylonstoren apart among Cape wine farms and the
guest cottages are designed to make the most of it. Floors are broad, antique
timber, bathrooms enormous and the furniture crisp, modern and extremely
comfortable but the focus is the view; lavender beds and citrus groves are
right outside huge glass walls, boxes of fresh produce arrive unbidden on the
table and there’s a stainless-steel, fully-equipped kitchen should the urge to
cook for yourself become unbearable. The gardens, design, food, people (and
excellent chenin blanc) conspire to create a feeling of deep calm; dispelled by
the next cricket match, during which our boys were quickly dismissed by some giant
Afrikaner boys.
So earlier than expected, we went into Cape
Town to a warm welcome at our second stop - Cape Grace, a luxury hotel which
has been a Waterfront landmark since the area was reclaimed from tank farms and
fish processors about fifteen years ago. The rooms are spacious, comfortable and
a little quirky; designer Jacques Erasmus (who also runs a hot local
restaurant, Hemelhuis) has decreed that chandeliers should feature discarded
pottery and kitchen implements while hand-painted fabrics show old ships’ logs
and nautical charts. Eclectic antiques give the feel of being at the focus of
centuries-old trading routes. Cape Grace is near Cape Town’s beautiful new
sports stadium and in easy reach of the city centre. There’s a car service to
ferry guests around for shopping or eating expeditions - Cape Town offers some
staggeringly good cooking, from top end like The Greenhouse through the
brilliant Bizercka (where the superb cooking belies its odd location) to lots
of great local delis.
Another day, another cricket field; this
time up in Stellenbosch, where we called for a pre-match lunch at the Delaire
Graff wine estate. Owned by UK diamond dealer Laurence Graff there are
beautiful rooms, an excellent spa and an exceptional Vietnamese restaurant,
Indochine. When we arrived at the cricket pitch (a little late – lunch was that
good) touchline gossip had moved on the epic game of beach cricket that morning
at Strand, a political scandal it would be impolite to detail and a family
Rottweiler which had nipped one of the boys – unfortunately ours. (He was fine
after sitting out the match, and we are now firm friends with the owner.) The
gossip was again better than the cricket; our total was rapidly overtaken by
one Stellenbosch boy who seemed intent on hitting the ball out of Africa.
Fully recovered, Luke had a good knock in
the last match and the series finished honours even. That wasn’t the point
though - they’d traded drizzly football for sun-drenched cricket; made new
friends, perhaps for life; been moved by Nelson Mandela’s cell, climbed Table
Mountain and got close to real lions. We came home (different flights, of
course) feeling we’d spent a lot longer away than five days – we’d shared big moments
with our son, enjoyed some astonishingly good food and wine (at prices that
seem a bargain by London standards), met some friendly people and stayed at a some
of the most beautiful places on the planet.
We’d watched some passable cricket. And had
a good old gossip on the touchline.
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