Somerset Gift Getaway Farm – a real gift!

4 December 2020

We had a booking for this special place for our 10th anniversary in May 2020. As a result of the lockdown and travel restrictions in place for COVID-19, we decided to rather postpone our visit. Jan’s birthday was a good time to celebrate, so the booking was changed to early December. There is a beautiful river and waterfalls and it would just make sense to rather go in summer time to enjoy a swim too… In my opinion we needed time alone, but at the end we decided to take Cinzi with us too. She always enjoys new places and it is actually more fun to have her with us… 🙂

I’ve first seen a photograph of this place on Instagram (by @Gavman19) and immediately fell in love with the serenity, the water, and water sports opportunities. One can kayak quite far on the “lake”, kayaks are available for free at the shore.

On Friday evening we arrived at about 19:00. Our little house (Little Bushbuck), right on the banks of a big dam (lake as they call it on their website). It was a beautiful evening, beautiful sunset and we had a great chicken braai, enjoying the tranquility of the place. The other houses were rented out to a big group of family/friends, also celebrating a birthday, so they were quite noisy, using the zipline (foefieslide) just in front of our house quite often, etc. But it was also good to watch them having so much fun!

It is also a dog paradise. There were literally one or two dogs at each house, so Cinzi enjoyed a few new friends too!

On Friday evening we discovered that the frogs also enjoy the lake. The choir was so loud, that we had to make a recording… it literally hurt my ears! But beautiful… It also was so loud that we could not hear the birthday party noise anymore, which was great!

On Saturday evening the manager came around to hear whether everything was ok. She told us then that this beautiful place belongs to a five year old girl. Her mom and dad who owned the place, divorced, and then the dad died, leaving the farm to his little girl. Her mom and a few other ladies now manage it on her behalf. A sad story, but I hope this little girl will really enjoy and appreciate her farm when she is able to. I found the mom on Instagram, and she is a yoga teacher and chef and is holding retreats on the farm.

On the last morning we did the hike across the koppie just above the farm. Cinzi enjoyed every moment, and trotted in front most of the time. We had breathtaking views on the river and the farm below… Well worth the few kilometres hike. And then after a lovely breakfast we already had to say goodbye. What a great place, we’ll be back as soon as we can!