Branded Blog

This past weekend the Bare-foot Mountain Guide and I went to the Karoo. The Klein Karoo, to be precise, because the Barefoot Mountain Guide is also a Barefoot Dominee (Minister, in translation) who has left much of his churchiness in his previous life but still does ceremonies for those looking to mark important days in their own special way.

So in order to be near to the wedding venue in a nearby private game reserve, we decided to make our base in Barrydale at the Barrydale Hotel, no less. With a capital “H”.  

Now we’ve been through Barrydale before on the bike, and had breakfast a couple of times at the Country Pumpkin, and gotten the requisite Route 62 bikers wings, so this little town is not new to us.  But staying in a country hotel in a little town the in Karoo is always an experience!

The Barrydale Hotel – resident friendly white cat and all – was bought and renovated by the new owner who has decorated it with a fabulously tasteful and slightly avant garde, if a little camp, eye. The naked photos of gorgeous men pouting at the camera gave him away, as did the fabulous line-up of paintings in the dining-room / lounge which, as a fellow guest pronounced at Sunday morning breakfast, were a bit of a drag!

A lot of the tourist stuff in Barrydale seems to hover either along the road of the actual R62, or around the Hotel.  Along the one side of the chocolate-brown hotel building you can also find a little restaurant tucked under the skirts of the hotel called Mez, and here you will find one of those fabulous little gem places where the proprietress’ spiky grey blonde hairdo and soft, kind voice are perfect accompaniments to the absolute passion she has for the food she creates and serves. And the Moroccan feel and nice wine list compliment the blend of vege Italian dishes and delectable Karoo lamb offerings on the menu. An awesome restaurant in Barrydale, you heard it here first!

But Barrydale also has some other fabulous things on offer – not the least of  which is Magpie which specialises in making homeware stuff from things recycled, abandoned and otherwise useless.

And if you hadn’t already fallen in love with their white branch & fairy-light chandeliers in the Hotel (which the guys at Magpie told us later were made from Peach tree prunings ie. stuff that would otherwise be thrown away),  you will definitely find something in the store just over the road from the Hotel.

But apart from being entranced by Barrydale itself, we also took a long meandering (read: dirt roads – A3 has always thought it was a 4×4) drive out to the wedding and really enjoyed the wide open spaces of  the Karoo, hoping at some level eventually to outrun the wind that had hounded us all the way from Cape Town (where it has been blowing for 5 days straight now, I kid you not).

But the wind, it seemed, was loving us and the wide open spaces as much as it had been the Mother City & surrounds and stuck by us faithfully for the whole weekend. Everytime you opened the car door there it was, panting with glee. Everytime you stopped to look at the river from the Tradouw Pass, it had a look over the edge too. Every picture you wanted to take, there was the wind – crowding the scene like one of those excitable sport-fans trying to wave at his mom from behind the sports presenter doing the live link.

Out in the Karoo the wind pats you down and whips you into shape as soon as you step out of the car, reminding you that there you are very small.

Along one road under the unexpected dark rain clouds hovering across the landscape and catching on the mountain ranges along the edge of the Karoo, we waved at a lovely wise-looking lady clad in pink dress and green apron, carefully finding and picking specific herbs for some no doubt highly effective remedy known to the locals. Her ginger cat playing along the edges of the bush she was working at, tripping and rolling and scampering behind her mistress at the sound of the car approaching.

And just around the corner a little tortoise was gallantly, with long extended legs and neck, making his way across the road towards waving pink bushes at an unusual road-side grave-stone which seemed to be his beacon on the journey across the fortunately mostly deserted dirt road.

We even spotted some rather put-out sheep who had taken to avoiding the rain on the stoep of a nearby house and were rather loudly complaining to all who would listen that this weather with it’s rain and wind was not required, thank-you very much.

On Sunday the wind was still blowing when we had lunch at another fabulous find in Robertson called Spaces  – an awesome industrial conversion that now houses 7 individual retailers varying from coffee importers to interior décor; and from chandeliers (again, gorgeous beads and seedpods and stuff) to the Fab Deli which served us the perfect roast chicken Sunday lunch, all of which is housed in one huge open warehouse with the spaces only defined by the colour on the walls and the quirky aerial decorations.

And strangely enough, by the time we were heading home on Sunday afternoon with Robertson behind us, I realised that somewhere along the road and between interesting places, both my Barefoot man and I had become calm.

We had blundered out there wind-blown and harassed and somehow along the way, the Karoo had calmed us down so that on our way back we could be still, driving more slowly than normal, watching the other cars rushing by, with not even the radio on to distract us. No longer needing the distraction. And we quietly watched the rugged dry and green Karoo mountains and plains flatten and reform into the Winelands, and the ridges of the Cape ranges and then fill out again into the bustling towns and cosmopolitan bright lights of Cape Town.

The Karoo wind that had frisked us and teased the clouds and chased the sheep, had also blown away all the chaff in the stuff that I carried out there with me. It blew away the cobwebs, the unnecessary gumpf that I’d collected this year, and left me only with the stuff that matters. The weighty stuff. The precious stuff.

And in that small moment of calm, I could look at it all clearly and see what was important again. And even more so, choose from the stuff that’s left what to pick up from 2010 and take with me into 2011.

And that’s the thing, really, when you look at your life / your business / your brand, make sure you know what the real stuff is, and then choose carefully what  you take with you. It’s always your choice, in the end.

So if you can, take a ride out of your city and onto your Route 62, and see what’s worth picking up when you get back. See what the wind lets you keep.

— 0 —

May you enjoy the end of year festivities this December and January.

May you be happy.

May you be safe.

And, if you can, may you help others who are not.

— 0 —

Links:

http://wemarryyou.co.za/

http://www.thebarrydale.co.za/

http://www.eatout.co.za/restaurants/6559/search/barrydale/mediterranean/mez

http://www.magpiehomefineware.co.za/

http://www.spacesr62.co.za/