Day Six

The day, hour by hour

• Morning

  A last coffee on the terrace

  Bags go ahead by road. Nobody is rushed out of the house they have lived in for five days.

• Late morning

  Down the coast by helicopter

  Out across False Bay, then east along the shoreline — Betty’s Bay, Kleinmond, the Kogelberg mountains falling straight into the sea, and Hermanus on its cliffs. This is the whale coast, and in a few months it will be full of them. Around Walker Bay and down into the reserve.

• Just before lunch

  Arrival at Grootbos

  Two and a half thousand hectares of private fynbos reserve above the bay — a walk through the villa here. There are more plant species in this reserve than in the whole of the British Isles, and ancient milkwood forests that were old before any of this was named.

• 1.00

  Lunch

  Long, and with the bay laid out below the table. After five days of restaurants, this is the first meal in a place where nobody else is.

• Afternoon

  The spa

  A treatment each, included — and then the afternoon is entirely theirs. Sleep, swim, read, or walk out into the fynbos. Nothing is scheduled.

• Late afternoon

  Klipgat, and the people who sheltered here

  Down to the Walker Bay shoreline in the villa’s own open safari vehicle, with its own guide, to a cave in the cliff. People lived in it some seventy thousand years ago — and what they left behind is among the earliest evidence anywhere of human beings behaving recognisably like us. Your guests stand in the same doorway, looking at the same sea.

• Sunset

  Sopiesklip

  Out across the white dune fields above Walker Bay to a stretch of shoreline my family have been coming to for sixty years — my father before me, my son after me, three generations of John Winchester Sparks on the same sand. No road reaches it and no other vehicle will be on it. Fynbos gin, cold sparkling wine and something to eat, with the Atlantic in front and the mountains going pink behind. There is no schedule; they come back when they are ready. A look at the place here.

• Evening

  A braai under the milkwoods

  Dinner in an outdoor boma beneath ancient milkwood trees, lit by lanterns and strings of light in the branches. Cooked by the villa’s own chef over open fire, poured by its own wine steward. A South African braai done properly — long table, no ceremony. After five nights of fine dining it is exactly the right note, and it is usually the meal guests talk about afterwards.

Along the way today

• Hermanus and Walker BayThe cliff-top town on Walker Bay, where I live.
• GrootbosA private reserve of milkwood forest and fynbos above Walker Bay.

Films▶ Grootbos

Who is where