Ganzekraal - Near to home.

With the rising costs of petrol there days I have been looking for quick weekend getaway's that are close to home.

A few months ago, Colleen and I took a drive down to Ganzekraal one Sunday morning to go and check it out. The friendly security guard at the gate let us in when we said we wanted to go and look at the campsite. They have a lot of self catering cottages and a conference centre/event venue there as well but the 2 campsites are quite far away from these. They consist of Campsite A and Campsite B, about 300 meteres apart. We looked at both and decided we liked site A more as there were more sites with good sea view's.

The ablutions blocks are quite old and the showers quite small but had recently been re-tiled and were spotlessly clean. We found that they do have cleaning staff on both Saturday and Sunday mornings and as a result, they are acceptable.

We have now been there twice and will definitely be going again. The first time we chose a site on the upper level of Campsite A with a lovely view and the second time we camped on the lower level right on the seafront.

The only negative thing I can think of is that being a municipal campsite there is the possibility of noisy neighbours. The first time was fine. The neighbours played a bit of music but not too loud and not too long into the night. The second occasion there was a young group who started with heavy bass (Doef doef!) music out of one of their cars but I went and politely asked them to turn it off, which they promptly did, after apologising.

Another problem could be the Souther Easterly wind in the summer months as there is not much protection from this. One needs to just look at the long range weather forecast before booking.

You are most welcome to contact me by commenting below and I can give you their contact details and a list of the nicer site numbers. They will book a specific site for you.

Ganzekraal Sunset.

CampsiteA upper level

Campsite A lower level

New Adventures - Leentjiesklip Weekend

Now that we had made this investment in the Skipper Trailer Tent, I decided that we need to use it at least once a month to justify buying it. A lot of people buy caravans that stand around in their driveways forever and only get used once or twice a year.

I did a lot of research on local nearby campsites and various camping and caravanning forums to find suitable nearby weekend getaways.

A few weeks after getting the Skipper, I decided to give Leentjiesklip at Langebaan a try. We set off at about 4.00pm on a Friday afternoon and by 5.15pm we were booked into the campsite which is situated on Langebaan Lagoon. It still took us a while to set the tent up as this was only the second time we had done so. As soon as I had unpacked the tent I realised that I had left the key to the nose cone storage section of the van at home, which housed the wall sections of the tent.

Anyway this is what it looks like without the side and front walls.

The weekend was lovely apart from a bit of rain on Saturday morning. Fortunately I had erected the van with the front of it facing the weather and it stayed nice and dry under the awning.

We will definitely be back here again. The views of the lagoon from the campsite were outstanding. 

As we have got a bit older, the one negative about camping has become the effort of erecting our tent and even more so, packing it away at the end of our stay, especially when wet!

My brother-in-law, Robert, has owned caravans for as long as I have known him. At first, I used to think that it was quite a large expensive outlay for an item that you only get to use a few times a year, plus the expense of towing. However in recent years, we have been looking more and more at this option. One problem is the you need a fairly powerful and heavy vehicle to legally tow a large caravan in South Africa. Sprite Caravan's used to make a light caravan for the smaller tow vehicle called a "Scout". They discontinued the original light model in the 1990's and then made a much heavier version for a few years, but this has also been discontinued.

After spending many hours on the internet looking at various caravans, I eventually came across a site for the "Skipper Tent Trailer". 

This is more or less what one used to term, a "Pop UP" caravan. This would enable us to tow it with our present 1.6 litre vehicle with no problem. I found a used one for sale on Gumtree in Sedgefield on the Garden Route and contacted the seller. It was an almost new unit and his reason for selling was that his wife had developed back problems and could no longer camp. We eventually agreed that Colleen and I would travel up there on a Friday to inspect the van and if all was to our satisfaction we would pay for it and take it away. Sedgefield is about 5 hours drive from Cape Town. Anyway, the set day dawned and we set off on our journey.

We arrived, looked at the Van, which had been set up by the seller, liked and bought! An hour after arriving there, it was packed up, hitched to our bakkie and we were on our way home with our new aquisition. However, we had decided that it would be foolish to simply drive all the way home the same day and would stay over for the rest of the weekend and camp in our new van. We booked into the ATKV resort in Hartenbos and set up the van on a seafront site.

We did struggle a bit to set it up for the first time, but are now very used to it and have it set up within 45 minutes of arriving at our destination. The start of many new adventures to come.

The first big plus was our fuel comsumption for the trip. I calculated the fuel we used not towing to fetch the van compared to towing it home and there was almost no difference. It towed like a dream.