Montagu Weekend

We had not been away for a while because of the unusally severe winter weather we have been experiencing but got invited to the Cape Town Motorcycle Clubs annual rally at the Montagu Caravan Park last weekend.  This is around the 7th year that they have had it there and we had been to most of them and thus were very familiar with this fine resort, the last visit being 2 years ago.

Wow! is all I can say. The changes that have occurred since our last visit are mind boggling. There is a new pool area on the upper level with an additional indoor heated pool for when the weather is cool. They have improved the ablutions next to the new pool and they are without doubt the nicest I have ever seen in a caravan park. It is wonderful to see the owners of a park putting their profits back into improvements to the facilities. 

The weather over the start of the weekend was not great with persistent rain, however with our setup with the Skipper and a Gazebo we stayed dry and happy. Fortunately we had decided to stay on an extra day and were rewarded with stunning weather on Sunday. We chilled out for the day. I even had a swim! On Monday morning we packed up in fine dry weather and wound our way homewards.

Skipper Tent Trailer

Early on monday morning I walked around and snapped a few shots around the park and it's dam.

Lastly a shot of the Campsite Manager. A real colourful character! He is definitely in complete charge and it you go there you will no doubt meet him. You can click on any of the photo's to see a larger version.

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

Our Annual Holiday 2013 - Part 3

In the last week of Colleen's leave we decided to give Yzerfontein Caravan Park a visit.

March is still a fairly busy time of year, so we decided to go there for 4 nights, arriving on a Sunday Afternoon and departing on the Thursday morning, as this day was the start of a long weekend and therefore going to be busy.

I had done as much research on the campsite as I could find and nearly all comments I could find were very positive, so I was looking forward to our visit, although Yzerfontein itself has never really applealed to me on previous visits. It does have a stunning beach and pretty harbour but the town itself is not very attractive with lots of huge ugly holiday homes.

We spent an enjoyable few days there and I left with mixed views of the campsite.

It is well maintained and efficiently run. The whole campsite is near the beach but with no view's whatsoever. It is separated from the beach by a large dune with access via a wooden boardwalk. The individual sites are a very mixed bag. Those near the beach are small, have no grass, thick sand and some shade. Now, I prefer nice level grassed sites even if they come at the expense of having no shade as I normally erect a gazebo for this. I also like being able to relax under the gazebo and be able to take in a lovely view, be it of the mountains, a river, a dam or the sea.

We  settled on one of the much larger (it was huge) grassed sites a bit further away from the boardwalk to the beach. There are very nice high thick hedges planted between the blocks of sites which give shelter from the wind and some privacy. In fact the only negative about the site we were on was that the built in braai was back to back with the neighbours braai, which could have been a problem if the place was busy. 

The small ablution block near us was spotlessly clean and well maintained. There were clean up staff every day who were doing a sterling job. Not only in the ablutions but in the whole campsite, cleaning braais and bins, trimmimg hedges etc.  

On Wednesday night a lot more people started arriving for the coming long weekend and I was very pleased that we were leaving the next day. The ablutions started taking strain due to the increased numbers and we had a fairly noisy crowd of friends camped on 3 sites behind us. I would definitely not like to be there when it got really busy. 
Here are a few images.

Skiper Tent Trailer

Skipper Tent Trailer

16 mile beach, Yzerfontein

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.