A princely visit
Our road trip takes us to Prince Albert, a tiny town in the Karoo. A town of surprises and delights, it filled our few days there with friendly faces and interesting insights.
Enabling The How #213. Reading time: 8 minutes, 44 seconds
We left Gariep Dam and turned our attention to our next stop. Prince Albert, a place we had heard a great deal about, and had been encouraged to visit. We had booked for three nights. As we had left mid morning and made two stops we were running a bit late. We would get there before dark but just.
As we barrelled down the road a sign reared up pointing to the left: Prince Albert. Matthew glanced at the GPS. The other option would take us 5 minutes longer.
“Five minutes? What the hell?”
We turned off.
The road appeared not to be tarred.
“Is the road sand that leads to Prince Albert?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been.” replied Chantal.
We continued on what was a very smooth sand road, but a sand road nonetheless. We had grown very quiet. Conversation stopped as we both stared at the road ahead. Both of us were thinking the same thing but not talking about it.
We had driven on sand roads before. They were notorious for eating tyres. We had just changed the tyres on the Kia. We did not want to contemplate having to change any more. Chantal spoke earnestly to her angels. Matthew looked ahead for gullies and dips that could snag the wheels.
Eventually we popped out the other side onto a tar road that, yes, we had been on before the detour. We sighed and swore silently as we drove into Prince Albert and found our way to our accommodation.
A town of surprises and delights
Estelle met us at our accommodation, a tiny cottage in the back garden of a larger house. She welcomed us with a warm mirth that made us like her immediately. She had lived her whole life in this little town, baring a short stint to Cape Town.
“To find a husband and bring him back here.” she said, chuckling.
The cottage was perfect for us. It was in a central position, within easy walking distance to the main road and all the places of interest there.
Prince Albert is a town of surprises and delights. Our first day was Easter Monday, a public holiday so many places were shut. It didn’t matter, though, because after a large breakfast at the Swartberg Hotel, one of 19 national monuments in Prince Albert and the only actual hotel, we walked the main road from the top to the bottom.
Kerk Street, the main road, hosts cafes and accommodation, a steepled church, the museum, a theatre, art gallery and several vintage stores.
We popped into the Prince Albert Art Gallery, which was open. Brent, the owner of the gallery came over to introduce himself and then left us to browse. There were a great many artworks on display. It would take a while to get through them all.
“It’s such a beautiful day,” said Chantal, “Let’s rather enjoy the outdoors while we can and come back later in our stay.”
Matthew agreed and we continued up the road.
On each side of the main road and most of the other roads in Prince Albert are water furrows. These are part of the leiwater system that gravity feeds the water from the Dorps River in the mountains to the canals and funnels that feed the homes and farms.
We wondered who was responsible for clearing these canals as some had become clogged with plants and litter.
We walked for several hours, exploring the town. The weather was sunny and mild, perfect to be out.
We made our way back via a different route and passed two working windmills. Matthew paused a while to take some photos.
A dairy, a bakery, a museum and more
The next day was grey and cold so we used the car to explore. We went to the Lazy Lizard for breakfast and left with soup for supper. We visited Gay’s Dairy for cheese. Hendry’s bakery provided us with a sundried tomato baguette for the soup; two hot cross buns and a panne chocolat for Matthew (of course).
We spent a good hour at the Fransie Pienaar museum, well worth the R30.00 per person. It was a travel through time from a prehistoric era of fossils and rocks, through the first inhabitants of the area, the Khoekhoe, later called the Khoi and the San, to the more recent arrival of the white settlers and the establishment of the town.
Across the road we visited the Prince Albert Gallery again. It was all colour and light, and chock full of art. Just up from that we took in The Showroom, an art deco theatre where live shows and movie nights are held. Sadly, we would miss the Wednesday night feature film.
We explored the gabled houses that dotted the town, especially looking for houses adorned with the “Prince Albert gable”, unique to the town, and then stopped off for a warming drink at the Irish pub, owned by a real Irish family.
Shells, looms and a forge
We drove to the other side of town and up the hill to a place called Avoovas. A lone woman was on duty. Her smile lit up a showroom filled with homeware crafted with crushed ostrich eggshell motifs. Beautiful and expensive it felt oddly out of place.
We found out that the factory was established in Prince Albert, but the company exports globally and there are outlets at the V & A Waterfront and Franschoek in Cape Town. The creamy shells speckled and sparkled across wood, metal and leather inside the shop. Outside, the leftovers marked out stark white parking bays and crunched underfoot as we walked back to our car.
Across the gravel road was the Karoo Souk which housed a weavery, a blacksmith’s forge and a coffee shop. Karoo Looms, a traditional weavery, was dark and quiet. Some of the fluorescent lights were not on and one flickered annoyingly overhead. Four women sat near windows spinning wool and two others stood at a large loom weaving a carpet.
It felt like we were encroaching on their sacred space. Matthew moved to the women at the loom as they wove and wacked. He asked how long it would take to finish a carpet of the size they were working on. One week came the reply. Weave. Wack. We tiptoed out.
Next door at Striking Metal a man hammered at a glowing rod. When we poked our heads in he invited us closer to see what he was working on. Kasief, the blacksmith, is an artist who started out studying deep sea fishing.
“My heart was not in it,” he told us, “I ended up here.”
An open studio
Our time had come to an end here in Prince Albert. We planned to have breakfast on our way out but not before Matthew went back to find the windmill. He needed another photograph.
Chantal waited for him in the warmth of the car. After some time, there was a flurry of activity as Matthew flung open the back door and started clearing the seat of stray coats and hats.
“We’re just going to the Spar,” he said to a surprised Chantal. “We’re giving someone a lift that I just met. An artist.”
Of course he had just made a new friend, or rather friends. Not having her own car, Annamarie, or Anna, was about to take a walk to buy electricity tokens when she bumped into Matthew making friends with her cat. They started talking and she invited him to view her art. But first she needed to be able to put the lights on.
Soft spoken, with a wide smile and a shy demeanour, Anna Stone came to Prince Albert from Hermanus and moved there permanently after only two weeks.
“It was hard at first,” she admitted, “I didn’t know anyone. But once I got out and started drawing the buildings and the people, I started feeling like I belonged.”
She specialised in pastel portraits crafted with an eye for detail and depth. We felt honoured to have been offered such an intimate viewing of her life through her work. It was a small taste of what the Open Studios event in June was going to be like when all the artists open their doors to the public.
We said goodbye to Anna and her cat and stopped in at the Fig Leaf Cafe for breakfast. The quiet spoken young server explained that there was one choice on the menu. We sat on the verandah and had plunger coffee, fried eggs, toast, mushrooms (instead of bacon) and spinach that tasted so fresh as if it had been just picked. It had!
Waved and beckoned
We waved good bye to Prince Albert, the colourful, friendly, creative town in the Karoo and took a small detour back down that sand road to visit O for Olive. Here we were encouraged by another friendly woman to taste all the different types of olives while she explained how they were grown and prepared. We bought a bottle of each: green olives, black olives, olives with pimentos and pink olives. The olive oil was out of stock. Just as well, we were weighed down already.
“Everybody is so friendly in this town,” remarked Chantal as Matthew, not to be tricked by the GPS again, pointed the car towards the tar road and our way to our next destination.
Our drive through the Swartberg left us slack jawed in awe. It always does. One of the best-exposed fold mountain chains in the world, there is something about the majesty of these mountains that left us speechless.
The sway and carve of land pushed up by the swells of earth as it moved over millions of years formed another kind of bridge from the tiny town bustling with creative souls and courageous settlers.
A brief stop to explore the Meiringspoort Waterfall reinvigorated us for the last stretch of the journey. Over more mountains we would land in George, where we were going to reconnect with family and friends and stay for a while.
As we wound through the rocky outcrops of the Swartberg we took with us the memories of more. That abundant place, named after a prince from a once conquering nation, now populated with so many friendly faces and warm smiles, both waved and beckoned to us to visit again.
Until next time.
Yours in feeling,
Matthew & Chantal
P.S. If you'd like to see more images from the road trip, along with some etched interpretations of the beautiful sights, you're welcome to follow us: Matthew’s Instagram & Chantal’s Instagram. 📷 🤳
