The Porfolio Collection Travel Blog

How Graaff Reinet was named

View of the Dam and the airfield from the Valley of Desolation

 

 

There is a company called Karoo Connections that offers various trips around the area – walking tours of the town, trips out to the nature reserve.  

 

 

The Drostdy Hotel which is a historical monument - it is also our biggest hotel right in the centre of town. But no matter where you stay, you can walk anywhere. The Reinet House is directly opposite the Drostdy Hotel down the road which houses the Anton Rupert Theatre – the late Dr Anton Rupert called this his home town and spent a lot of time and money investing in our little spot. His family now own a racing stud farm out on the Middleburg/ Colesberg road.

 

 

The library houses many old books and is a great place to go and relax. The Reinet House has one of the oldest and larges vines living in the garden but unfortunately it is diseased and although they are trying to save it, it probably won’t last much longer.

 

 

 

 

 

There is so much history in our town, did you know that in the dinosaur age, it was a valley running from the ocean, and we have one of the highest concentrations of fossils. The Murray farm has its own fossil museum and some of the fossils found are displayed in the museum where the Tourist information centre is.

 

 

Our lovely Dutch Reformed church is our pride and joy and stands out amongst the rest of the town we also have what we call Magazine Hill which has a small building on the top, overlooking the horseshoe of the town and here is where they kept their ammunition during the Anglo Boer War I think..

 

 

 

The Valley of Desolation is amazing; from here you can see into the horizon towards Port Elizabeth the baron land stretches on forever! The town is in a horse shoe shape is neatly laid out in squares and in the centre is the church.

 

 

There is also Nieu Bethesda about an hour away in the middle of nowhere J here is where Atholl Figaro wrote his story about the Return to Mecca.

 

 

There are some great little restaurants in town – Andries Stockenstroom Guest House and Gordon’s Restaurant – Cold Stream is great and Die KlipHuis – there are many more.

 

 

 

 

 

And annually is the Interschools which is happening this weekend, it is the Afrikaans School – Volkskool vs the English School – Union schools – in a battle on the fields of Rugby, tennis and Hockey, if you win the Rugby, you WIN INTERSCHOOLS – does not matter what else you won or lost!! The chanting and singing of songs starts a month before and the cheerleading goes crazy, old Unionites and Old Volksies come the Graaff-Reinet in their droves to support their schools, those of us who married from the other school (of which there are quite a few) don’t talk to our spouses for the day, if we are home for this weekend, we sit in our respective school stands and chant, rant and rave and catch up with old school friends. It is like the Boers vs the English all over again. At the end of the day, we all meet in the pub, shake hands and reminisce of days gone by and how we loved going to a good old dorp school.

 

 

 

 

Oh there is so much to Graaff-Reinet and it is a forgotten little town – this is now going make me delve into the history of the wars, the building and founding of the town…

 

 

I am so proud of Graaff-Reinet as we won the Kwela Rapport Dorp van die Jaar 2010!

 

 

For more, have a look at the Graaff Reinet Facebook page.