Category Archives: World Cup 2010

Wednesday 23rd June (published 23rd June Andy’s blog)

After a dodgy night’s sleep I have woken up at 7am. Nervous, tense and frankly a little depressed. The adventure ends or starts today in reality as England are in the knock outs a game earlier than planned. Worries about over sleeping were needless, given we are under the flightpath to the airport and just the other side of the railway lines in the strip of land between shore and docks.

The local TV is dissecting Bafana Bafa exit from the World Cup and also theorising how the local population will take the situation. Talk of locals now reverting back to crime and ‘trying to make the most of the tourist Rand’ seem a little far fetched, but what do I know? Also plenty of talk about what will happen should England follow Bafana Bafana out of the competition, some commentators fearing mass riots and civil unrest! Not really sure that will happen, although it has done plenty of times in the past of course.

Breakfast is essential on match days given the uncertainty of when you will next eat and how much beer one can drink. The boys had had a good sleep, all bar Alan who had resorted to sleeping in the bath, given the unearthly sounds from the nostrils of Steve and Dave. Poor old Alan, he is by his own admission a ‘light sleeper’. At least everyone is still laughing, and Jack won’t stop nagging Steve about his jamjar.com deal. That is set to run and run…

Breakfast on the sea front – matchday -the World Cup – beers and laughs – what’s not to like? Other than it is England and we are in the docks!

At least this afternoon although a do or die game, win or go home, we will not have another ‘exit by penalty shoot out’. This fact alone gives me hope we will progress to the next round, play the Germans and start taking this World Cup seriously. England need big games. Fab has kissed John and made up, or maybe the other way round and I am sure David has given them both tips on man management and contrition. Lose to the Twin Peak shirted Slovenians and Terry and Capello will get hung out to dry. It really is as simple as that. Glad I am here and not at home where the atmosphere following yesterday’s budget will get even more depressed!

Tuesday 22nd June (published Wednesday 23rd June)

We had to say goodbye to our wonderful Wilderness retreat, which was simply amazing and our equally amazing hosts John and Judy and head 350kms to Port Elizabeth and the wonder of ‘Sir Roy’s at the sea’ (‘where everyone is treated like royalty’ ) our next port of call for a two or three night stay. We would like a three nighter, but there was no room at the inn on the day of the match, so we could be sleeping in the car. Hey ho, I have had worse places down the years.

The weather continues to astonish and the wet weather cum mountain hiking gear that we have brought with us remains neatly folded up in our bags. Yes it does get a little chilly at night once the sun goes down, but every day has been shorts and T-shirt weather, and this is winter!

The driving along the pictureseque Garden Route from Wilderness to Port Elizabeth is easy. Roads are new and straight as a die. It feels like the Romans have popped in to sort out the infrastructure. We stopped off in the rather wonderful coastal town of Knysna and had a plate of oysters and and a glass of white wine. Bliss. Knysna was the base for Denmark and the now hapless French and national flags of both teams were hanging off every lamp post. The boys had passed through earlier and seen the French football team’s coach which had had it’s tyres let down.

The only downside of our brief stop off was that we would be en route whist Bafana Bafana play their last game vs France in their version of mission impossible. Thus we were subjected to the rather interesting commentary on Radio 2000, official broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup and obviously part of the deal is to mention FIFA every 2 or 3 minutes, which, like all things FIFA from their over priced tat that poses as souvenirs to the face value of match tickets sold in US dollars to loyal fans, tedious. As if to symbolise the chaos in the French camp, the radio broadcast of ‘The Marseillaise’ was interrupted for 10 seconds with a complete blackout. When sound was restored, I could not recognise the tune. It turned out that the broadcast location had changed and we were hearing the second half of the Mexican national anthem! This then segwayed into the Uruguayan anthem, which sounds like it was written by Puccini or Mozart (listen to it at their next game and you will see where I am coming from!). The commentators out here get over excited, easily. It is impossible to know if a goal is scored, as even the tamest of attempts is accompanied by a roar. I thought Stephen Pienaar had scored when infact he had stabbed an effort tamely wide. As we all know Bafana Bafana went down fighting and were left to rue the two late and unneccessary goals conceded against Uruguay a few days earlier. It could have been so different.

We hit Port Elizabeth just as the game was ending and sought out Sir Roy’s. Our directions were good and finding it was easy. Better still, we were greeted by the lovely Wendy with news that yet again FIFA’s travel department had cancelled a room at 3pm that day and we were in luck and would have a bed the night of the game. FIFA’s greed knows no boundaries – everywhere we go hotel and guest house owners regale us with tales of FIFA’s inepitude and lack of consideration. All accomodation is marked up a minimum of 30% which no doubt helped them get to their 4 billion US Dollars profit on the World Cup 2010. 4 billion!!!

We wasted no time, checked in, admired the ‘sea views’ across the docks and railway junction and headed off to meet up with the Evas ( now three on account of Jack Minimus arriving) Dave and Swiss Jimmy. The snoring fever had not stopped, indeed Alan (‘Moany’ as he has now been christened by his brother) was not on parade, as he had done all the driving and was ‘tired’. The rest suggested that it was Moany’s turn to ‘go to bed early with a headache’ (ie get some light relief so to speak). Much laughter and ‘Carry On’ humour surrounds these code words.

We also needed to meet up with Dom, Simon, Chris and Keith ( who had arrived on Sunday and replaced Pilks). A few beers in the local bar (Finnezz) and we jumped a cab to seek out the others. We found them at Kelways – probably the worst bar I have been in since we came to South Africa. Full of overweight, lary, bovine English geezers and a local bloke on guitar,with several synthesisers and amps playing ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, ‘Nights in White Satin’, ‘No Particular Place to Go’ and other such classics whilst the Argentina game played on in its own vacuum. Dom was being put to bed as he was very tired and Simon and Keith were weighing up their options, so to speak. I decided to leave and find somewhere else to eat and drink.

Lo and behold I only needed to look next door. ‘Blackbeard’s’ restaurant awaited, like a lone beacon of refuge on a foggy night. As soon as I descended the steps down to the ‘galleon entrance’, I got this weird déjà vu. I was entering the set of the 1968 Disney film ‘Blackbeard’s Ghost’ starring Peter Ustinov. Every detail was perfect, from ship’s wheels, rigging, cutlasses through to the Captain’s uniform. This was a time warp. The menu was confusing to say the least, a mix of nautical terms and cod (sorry!) phraseology with food items. The owner was overly obsequious a sort of nervous Basil Fawlty and if he had had a forelock, would no doubt have tugged it. Maybe he had lost his forelock through over tugging down the years. He clearly had some prawns and a T-Bone steak that were getting close to ‘sell by/best before’ as he insisted on showing these to everyone, hoverring over us, waiting on the slightest bit of positive body language as a sign of compliance. When I said ‘the steak looks great’, I did not actually mean ‘yes, I want that’. Ho hum. The others joined me for the second half.

The evening tailed off somewhat after Chris joined us, nothing to do with him, rather the fact that when the owner had asked Keith ‘if everything was to his satisfaction’, Keith a part time foodie replied ‘actually no. The mussels were gritty, the sauce had the consistency of refectory blancmange and the noodles were like worn shoelaces’. Basil Fawlty, immediately ‘sold’ Keith another plate of the finest prawns. With Bafana Bafana going out of the World Cup, every knocked back cover was a lost opportunity and this chap was a consumate salesman.

We bumped into a couple of lads later on in Blackbeard’s, Dave and Andy who we had met in Cape Town. T’s funny how small the world can be. Funnier still to see Dave enjoying a rather large T-Bone steak and Andy eating prawns. You have to hand it to Basil, he sold that T- Bone and its little pink friends. As salesmen always say, ‘it’s all about ABC’.

What on earth is going on? Not only we have a French Revolution, but now an English Civil War has broken out. Let’s look at England first of all, indeed let’s completely ignore the French, what they have done collectively is just plain daft, on every level.

Times have changed since Sir Alf and Bobby Moore led England to their one and only trophy, indeed they have changed beyond all belief in the 20 years since Italia 90.

With Sky and other media camped on the doorstep of ‘Team England’ in Rustenberg, there is a need for news every five minutes. This leads to journalists and players filling their endless hours with occasional snippets for us punters. If we just switch the lot off and take no notice, perhaps things will change. Then again, can we actually do this? Probably not. History however, suggests that we the punters actually drive the demand for ‘news’ whether it has any grounds or not.

If we go back to Italia 90, we go back into very different days. Not only did we not have social networking, we did not have mobiles ( really) digital cameras or indeed anyway of communicating outside of postcards, land line telephones and speech. Media controlled it all. TV and newspapers were king. I remember being in the Forte Village near Caligari in Sardinia, the hotel where Bobby Robson and his coach Don Howe were staying, the day after England had drawn with the Republic of Ireland. The English media, or more accurately the English press led by Harry Harris of the Mirror, Brian Woolnough of The Sun and Joe Melling of the Daily Express led mass assault on Mr Robson’s door, demanding to know what the hell was going on. These were the same newspaper reporters that had demanded that England be sent home, such was their display against the Irish. The same reporters that sat in a bar after the game and compared notes, got an accord on the ‘angle’ and drew their daggers as one. I know this not because I read it in their miserable ‘newspapers’ but because I saw it with my own eyes. Indeed a good friend of mine and I hounded Harris for years to come, because he quite frankly had it in for the England football team. I don’t know whether Harry ever played football, maybe he did, but he certainly never showed an ounce of sympathy with England players. Even the ‘respected’ journalist Jeff Powell (from the Daily Mail) would be seen to fall off many a bar stool post match, before meeting up with colleagues to discuss ‘what line was being taken’. Anyway, these were different days. The players, through senior professionals injured captain Bryan Robson and Gary Lineker, approached Bobby Robson and suggested a change of tactics. The tactics were duly changed in time for the last group game against Egypt, which we sneaked 1-0 through a goal by the new sweeper in th 3-5-2, Mark Wright.

The rest was history, Bobby Robson became a legend, the players all loved him and with a bit of luck England got through to the semi-finals and then lucked out against the Germans, just before we were able to take on our nemesis from four years previous, Mr Maradonna and his famous left hand.

Fast forward to 2010 and we have our ex skipper, ex for good reason, deciding to hold a press conference, yesterday. A clear the air meeting with the boss of all bosses is announced and flowered up with stuff like ‘I was born for this’. The press, through their Twitter accounts urge Mr Capello to ‘listen to the players’ after all the system and approach we have taken has definitely not worked. The meeting is then held and today another Chelsea superstar, Frank Lampard decides to hold a press conference to ‘lighten the mood, support ‘JT’ and the manager and tell us all about the merits of David Beckham ‘(off the pitch rather than on it).

The eventful 24 hours ends with Mr Capello doing his press conference and declaring that ‘John Terry has made a big mistake’. All very confusing and frankly a little too out in the open for anyone’s liking. Poor old Joe Cole, disregarded by Mr Capello and seconded by ‘JT’. He must feel like he is between a rock and a hard place ( you can put ‘JT’ and Mr Capello in either of those roles!).

I have no idea who is right or wrong, or indeed whether anyone IS right or wrong. All I know is of you look at winning managers, people like Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho, would they allow an ex Captain and still in the team, come out in public and criticise them? Really? Like it or not, and I happen to like it, Steven Gerrard is our skipper. If anyone was going to talk to the manager or indeed the press, should it not be him?

Mr Capello comes from the old school. Maybe a little outdated when managing or using post modernist language, ‘working with’ modern day footballing millionaires, but he has won at the top level. Ok not a World Cup, but pretty much everything else. In the modern era Italians have a vastly superior record to the English. Through rigid discipline, adherence to tactics, professionalism and a belief, they have won two World Cups since we last won one. Pop next door to Germany and they have won two since losing the final in 66.

Given our brilliant qualifying campaign and our equally woeful record in World Cups (one semi in 44 years, failing to qualify for three World Cups since we won) you would think that our players would have the sense to sit up and listen. Equally our players are not Italian and have different playing attributes. There are some major concerns with the way we line up, the tactics we play and the pace at which we play the game.

Surely it is time for a rethink, a discussion and above all a coming together? Mr Terry and Mr Capello have crossed swords, never a good thing for two strong characters. Indeed did Terry have any hand in removing Grant and Scolari at Chelsea? But to do it in public feels wrong, maybe it is time to kiss, make up and stop including the wretched media all of whom seem to believe they have a right to not only pick the team, but blueprint the tactics and approach.

The talking stops in less than 48 hours. Let’s see what the players do, after all it is them passing, tackling and shooting. Talking off the pitch is great, but only when the talking on the pitch has been done.

Sir Alf and Sir Bobby would be turning in their respectie graves.

Tuesday 15th June (published Monday 21st June)

So we arrived in a damp and breezy Cape Town and met up with the boys, Steve (Eva Major), Alan (Eva Minor), Dave (Sweeney Todd) and (Swiss) Jimmy in the Ferryman’s bar on the wonderful Waterfront. Significant absentees from previous years were Shaun, John, Colin, Mark, Simon J , Shane, Rollerblade Ronnie, Robert and Uncle Nelson. If the tournament progresses from an England perspective, we will no doubt see a few late comers. Indeed word was out that Jack (Eva Minimus) was going to get out for the Slovenia game. Dave told me that Nelson did not come because his mum had asked him to stay in England ‘as it is very dangerous in South Africa and she would worry herself sick if he made the trip’. Nelson’s mum is in her 90’s so you can understand why he never made the trip. Maybe next time, in Rio when Nelson gets his Freedom Pass, he will be allowed to travel. Needless to say everyone misses him, especially when he refers to everyone as ‘mush’, although most of don’t miss the smoking. You really do notice the smoking out here, it is everywhere, indoors and out. Amazing, given that it was only outlawed in pubs a few years back, that it really does stink.

It was good to see the boys finally for a proper beer and something to eat. Banter button was firmly switched to ‘ON’ although it was difficult to keep up with the pace from the first minute, which ironically was somewhat in keeping with our footballers.

Steve announced that he had bought a new camera, two infact as he had already dropped one. When I asked him how much that had set him back it was only ‘two and an half’. Cheap ;-)) the boys had been sleeping 3 to a room, with Swiss Jimmy rooming alone. Clearly one of the trio had taken to snoring and so the other two had had less sleep than would be advisable on a trip such as this. The strain was showing on Alan and Dave’s faces, which pointed the finger at Steve, despite several denials. Indeed nothing is ever easy with these boys, as their luggage had gone missing between Johannesburg and Cape Town and they had gone a day without clean kecks, never pleasant. Their kit eventually showed up, and all was temporarily back to ‘normal’ although tempers as well as gussets were frayed.

The boys had met Viv Anderson and Paul Elliot the previous night. Viv was apparently in top form, but Paul Elliot took a dislike to Steve. Dave had asked which player ended Paul Elliot’s career, and prompted the conversation by adding it was ‘that long haired geezer from Liverpool’, (Dean Saunders) to which Steve chipped in with ‘who, Jimmy Osmond?’ I think the conversation went downhill from there on in.

The boys showed us their boxes of ‘Zee Trix’ which they had bought earlier – basically a card trick box with wires. Promises were made to entertain us all ala David Nixon in the days to come, so far however, we have had more Richard Nixon than David. Entry into the Magic Circle is being considered for next season, but practice will be needed.

We decided to eat and selected a wonderful restaurant, Belthazar which served brilliant food. Steve ordered ‘ostrich with a jacket’ and so it all the japery began again. Conversation ebbed from the wistful love of ‘On The Buses’, ‘turnips (which were actually sweet potatoes) tasting like cooked bananas’, ‘five hours to get back from f**king Rustenberg’, ‘we ain’t ‘ad time to text let alone call the Mrs’ and ‘we’ve ‘ad it rough’.

We left on a high, with discussions of what to do tomorrow ranging from shark diving in a cage (not Steve’s idea of fun), to a trip to Table Mountain. An earlier night than normal showed we were four years older, mind you, with Steve and Dave unable to read texts or a menu at normal length without their bins, I think we all know we are a little older, but none the wiser. Happy days!

Match Day – Friday 18th June published Sunday 20th June (Kirsty’s blog)

So match day has arrived, excitement is in the air but there’s definitely an undercurrent of nervousness.

We head down to the Waterfront to meet the Evas, Dave and Jimmy. Simon has texted to say that they’re having Lunch at a sushi restaurant around the coast a bit, that sounds lovely to me but ‘im indoors says we can’t go out to lunch on match day…eating’s cheating! (In retrospect this turns out to be a suspect decision as Simon and Chris enjoyed lunch alongside three breaching whales and I’ve been hoping to spot whales the whole time I’ve been here, they didn’t rub it in though…much). Pilks is on his way from Joburg for his eighth game in eight days, mainly by car, amazing!

We find the boys in fine fettle in the Ferrymans Tavern and the banter begins. They’ve been on the blog and Eva Major is disgruntled that he’s been discussed in derogatory terms and that his snoring and abluting habits have been broadcast to all and sundry, though I pointed out that I’m only reporting what I’ve been told. Loads of pictures were taken and as I posted them on facebook, the question of everyone’s World Cup 2010 nicknames arose as I needed a caption for the pics. So we have Swiss Jimmy on account of him being neutral in arguments and not taking sides, Sweeney Todd Dave due to his cut throat bloodfest shaving antics, Grisly Adams Al (he’s hasn’t shaved at all yet!), Ewok Eva because of a picture with his hair everywhere, Santa Payne as the pictures revealed a grey beard that was invisible to the human eye and ‘bird in the wilderness’ (I’ve booked a getaway in the Wilderness region for Andy and I and refuse to tell the boys where it is in case they follow us) or ‘waste of a ticket’ – the old favourite’.

Though you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve got my own back secretly and they won’t realise until they read this but I’ve managed to convince them that they’re staying in the heart of the gay and lesbian district where the annual gay pride festival takes place (Cape Town has a fantastic thriving gay scene) and that their accomodation is listed as ‘pink friendly’ in the gay hotel guides, as all four of them are staying in the same room, the other guests won’t be able to figure out who’s with who! It could be Ewok with Swiss or Sweeny with Grisly, though the lack of shaving means that at least two of them could be ‘bears’ ;o)

Anyway, after a lot of drinking and a lot of laughing we head to the stadium and the atmosphere is fantastic, you might not have heard it over the vuvuzelas on the TV but the England fans are singing loud and proud…until kick off.

All I can say is that the dissapointment at England’s performance was all around the stadium, by the end of the game the players were booed off (something that Rooney took exception to apparently), though the game was poor and England were poor, we’ll have to pull something completely different out of the bag to even get past the group games. In my humble opinion, we didn’t look like we even wanted to win, there was no heart, soul or passion and I know the Algerians are big and physical but they easily got us off the ball and all of our players looked like they didn’t want to get stuck in and risk getting injured. We seem to have an abundance of ‘career footballers’ who want to earn the money and protect their career, the old days of a sense of pride in playing for your country might be gone. Compare our performance to USA and Slovenia, we saw heart and spirit in that game. Though I’ll go along with Andy and remain positive, England always play better when under pressure, so let’s see some passion in Port Elizabeth, get behind the team and hopefully we’ll be rewarded for our support.

Our last day in Cape Town tomorrow, we’ll certainly make the most of it.

Thursday 16th June (published Sunday 20th June – Kirsty’s blog)

Apparently Andy’s Mum and Dad have now spotted us on Look East TV too, the newsdesk have now asked us to try and send them some video footage as well as more stills, I’m guessing Mrs Miggins has found her missing cat and they have to fill the empty news space.

We had another early start and arose in the dark in order to tackle Table Mountain – well tackle the cable car queue, as apparently if you don’t get there first thing then the average queue is about 2 hours.

Simon arrived in a cab at about ten past eight, though despite military precision planning I had forgotten my handbag so had to go back upstairs for it (it’s obviously always essential that you take a handbag on a mountain trekking expedition).

The cab dropped us at the cable car and we went straight on with no queues, we were extraordinarily lucky with the weather too as we had planned this expedition in advance but every other morning the mountain had been shrowded in cloud and mist, though this morning it was bathed in glorious sunshine and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, perfect conditions for a spot of gentle trekking.

The view from the top is absolutely amazing, we’re so high that the new stadium and even Robben Island are dwarfed from up here. We don’t really start out with a particular planned route, our philosophy was to walk towards the sun as it was perishingly cold in the shade.

We had the most wonderful walk with stunning scenery for an hour or so without actually being worried about where we were geographically or whether we were lost or not, but after about three hours it started to cross my mind that none of us had any idea of where we were on the mountain. I idly started to ponder on the tricky question that if we were lost/stranded for any length of time, who I would eat first. I made the mistake of voicing my concerns about our whereabouts and also sharing my quandry about where my next meal was coming from, in answer to this, both Simon and Andy pointed out that it would make sense to eat the person with the most superfluous flesh…mmm, that would be me then! I quickened my pace, picking up considerable speed, began consulting the iphone compass app and took our current location far more seriously than I had previously.

As we trekked on, we reached the far end of the long flat summit (hence the moniker Table Mountain) and after a couple of photo opps at the highest point, Simon and Andy decide to take a steep looking route that required a bit of a tricky descent and some scrambling and clambering, I on the other hand decided to go back the same way, as I didn’t like the look of their route. Unfortunately I’d forgotten that on our ascent the climb was just as steep and scrambly. After a couple of attempts to get down with my handbag strapped to me and completly getting in the way, I had to give up and shout for help. Andy duly returned for me and we successfully negotiated what seems like a ten foot rock face with nothing to hold on to (in reality it was just a bit steep), just about got down without having to set up an intricate rope and pulley system.

Now I don’t think I have a particular problem with heights, I’ve never suffered from vertigo and have enjoyed sky diving in the past, however the sheer drops of thousands of feet off the edge of Table Moutain are scary as hell! As we turn back along the opposite ridge the paths get narrower and narrower and I’m starting to feel more uneasy. A young American boy fell and died here last week and a couple of weeks before that a young Brit also fell to her death in bad weather conditions, this was going through my mind when we found ourselves on the tiniest ledges with the most enormous drops…it was horrible! In fact I can’t describe how horrible it was, I was leaning as far away from the edge as possible but I was still more than aware without even looking, at how high we were. This wasn’t helped by Andy and Simon keep exclaiming how high we were and what a huge drop it was, while standing right on the very edge and looking down and at one point leaping from one ledge to another with about a two thousand foot drop gorge between!

I’d never experienced it before but I felt sick, dizzy, sweaty, shaky and my stomach was churning worse than any roller coaster…I think I might have mentioned it one or twice but it was horrible!

As I’m now writing this, you can surmise that I survived and so did the boys, though they enjoyed the scary bits far more than me but they probably enjoyed winding me up even more by standing right on the vertiginous edge!

We checked out the Rock Dassies, cute little guinee pig type things that seem to sleep dangling precariously from the south face of the mountain and then made our way back down to sea level.

Given that we’d trekked for four hours, we decided to treat ourselves to a slap up lunch of sushi, prawns, squid, ostrich and fine wines! Followed by a trip to the aquarium (probably a little insensitive given what we’d had for lunch but hey ho) where we spent a brilliant afternoon.

A perfect day and nobody died on the mountain…hurrah!

‘There are few misfortunes in the world that you cannot turn into a personal triumph if you have the iron will and necessary skill.’

Just one of the quotes from the great man, Nelson Mandela. England, believe and deliver

Wednesday 16th June published Friday 18th June (Kirsty’s blog)

Before I start I have to mention that Scouse John was in touch last night to tell us that when he sat down to have his tea one evening this week and he happened to hear the names Mr & Mrs Payne mentioned on the news (Look East region) and looked up to see a picture of Andy and I at the Holland vs Denmark game…all I can say is that it must have been a very slow news day, though I’m guessing that Mrs Miggins’ missing cat was still the lead story.

So an early start and getting up in the dark just so that we can squeeze as much into our few days in Cape Town as possible. We’re off to drink copious amounts of wine surrounded by stunning scenery…I mean we’re off to a very civilised wine tasting in the Stellenbosch, Franshoek and Parl wine regions, apparently you’re supposed to spit it out!!! What the devil are they thinking? Spitting out perfectly good wine, I’ll want to get my money’s worth and enjoy both the taste and the effect.

A lovely guy called Dave turns up first thing to pick us up and already ensconced in the minibus are an American couple, Andrea and Xavier, we then drive across town to pick up four more day trippers which turn out to be from Falkirk, Willy, Kevin, Barry and Scott. They’re out here for a holiday and a bit of football regardless that Scotland didn’t qualify, in fact for the first time ever I’ve heard a Scot say that he would like to see England do well, refreshingly different to the usual ‘anyone but England’ standard Scottish answer.

After torrential storms last night, so much so that the ceiling of our hotel room was leaking in the massive downpour, this morning is clear bright and for the first time we can see the top of the glorious Table Mountain and Lion’s Head Mountain…stunning.

Talk in the minibus is all about football and when we get to the first vineyard which is renowned for sparkling wines, Andy and the Falkirk boys are still talking football non stop while the poor wine guide guy is patiently trying to explain about the wines to what appeared to be a bunch of heathens knocking back bubby and talking tactics.

We visited a couple more vineyards before lunch and all of us soon really got into the wine tasting, it was really interesting to learn about the different processes and blends and the wines were gorgeous, despite small measure of each one, I was starting to feel a bit squiffy and when we arrived at Fairview vineyard I though I was seeing a live goat at the top of a small stone helter skelter, now the wine over here is strong but I didn’t think I’d drunk that much! I consulted Andy who could also see it but thought it was mechanical, on closer inspection it was indeed a live goat at the top of a stone helter skelter, brilliant!

The reason for the goat is that this particular vineyard had won a famous legal case when they were taken to court for using the name ‘Goats Do Roam’ on their bottles, needless to say this really really Pee’d off the French, though Fairview won the case and they continue to use the name ‘Goats Do Roam’, ‘The Goatfather’ and ‘Goat Door’ the French are probably absolutely seething.

We stopped for lunch at a great place called Franshoek, a very colonial/New England little one street town and invited Dave our wine guide to join us. It turns out that Dave is originally from Walsall in the West Midland but him and his wife have been here for thirty five years, on first meeting him we assumed he was South African as he has a gentle South African accent but on closer inspection he had a little twang of a black country accent which was a hilarious combination…don’t think I’ve ever heard a South African crossed with Walsall accent before, had the sudden urge to call him ‘bab’ though.

A great lunch, followed by more wine tasting (hic) and then a really great unexpected surprise is that just next to the last vineyard we visited was a Cheetah sanctuary. Now I’ve never been known to leave a drink before but I couldn’t resist and Andy and I left our fellow drinkers and skipped over to see the cheetahs. They are absolutely amazing creatures, so graceful and beautiful. I instantly forgot all about the wine tasting and we spent some time just watching them and watching people stroking them (they’d been hand reared and were very placid). The numbers of wild Cheetahs had been diminishing fast over the last few decades as they are shot by farmers looking after their sheep, so the sanctuary funds the breeding of very large Albanian Shepherd dogs which have a ferocious bark and are raised with the sheep flocks which makes them fiercely protective though they are an extremely effective and humane deterrent to cheetahs looking for lunch as the dogs can’t catch the cheetahs but will scare them away, which in turn stops the farmers shooting and trapping the cheetahs. Thanks to this project the cheetah numbers are on the up in South Africa.

So all in all, a fantastic day, good wine, good company, I forgot to mention the cheese and the olive oil but that was great too and the amazing cheetahs…who says alcohol and wild animals don’t mix!

Early night as we’re getting up in the dark again to make the most of Table Mountain, a bit of strenuous trekking for a few hours will help work off the gorgeous food and wine we’re been consuming (well probably not).