Extraordinary Africa>South Africa>The Winelands>Boschendal
For travelers who want the Winelands without too much work, Boschendal is ideal. This charming old wine estate has tons to do, including for children, and is a glorious spot to hole up in for a few days and eat, drink, and explore to your heart’s content.
What’s Boschendal really like?
The heart of the Boschendal Estate is the tree-lined avenue leading to the Old Manor House, now converted into a wine tasting room. The smattering of buildings around this house the restaurant, gift shop, butchery, deli café, and on Friday evenings there’s a local produce market. Almost all of the food served at Boschendal comes from the farm- we regret to report that chances are you may need to loosen your belt a notch or two.
Beyond the kitchen garden are the seven old Werf Cottages, traditional, low white cottages decorated in a pretty country style. Each has a large bedroom and bathroom, and there’s a small kitchenette which even our ex-chef reviewer reported was well-equipped.
On the other side of the country road which bisects the estate, you head up into the orchards, where there’s the 3-bedroomed Rhodes Cottage and 14 self-catering Orchard Cottages, which have a slightly more contemporary, Scandi-style décor. If you don’t fancy food shopping, the deli can drop off a breakfast or braai basket for you. We rather like it over here- it’s so very peaceful and there’s a large pool, but you should expect to drive or hop onto a golf cart down to the main restaurants.
Families at Boschendal:
Visiting Boschendal with children… One of the things that has so thoroughly charmed us on our visits to Boschendal is how incredibly family friendly it is. As well as having babysitting (and which parent isn’t just a little tempted to take a few hours for a languorous lunch while the children are well looked after?), there’s a fabulous farm school and activity centre for children aged 4-14, so they’ll be having far too much fun to even notice you’re gone. Tree-climbing, egg-collecting, learning about farming, helping with the planting etc. There’s a small TV room as well.
What can I do at Boschendal?
Whether or not you come with children, this is pretty much the perfect place to either put your feet up and enjoy a glass of the estate’s finest by the fire, or get out and about and seriously active. There are farm tours, wine tours, wine tasting, horse riding, proper mountain biking trails (your reviewer was emphatic on this point) and good quality bikes to hire.
Want to know more? We’ve stayed here, so just
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