Much-loved Klein Karoo hotel reopens

Published Apr 29, 2011

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Closed for many months when the previous owners sold up, the neglected Barrydale Country Hotel property was bought by a Cape Town businessman with a fondness for this part of the world, and he has restored it to its former glory.

The hotel has just 13 rooms, including a luxury garden suite. The hotel garden features huge potplants, a terraced garden and several water features. There is also a swimming pool.

Barrydale is on Route 62 between Montagu and Ladismith, an easy 260km from Cape Town, which is appreciated by bikers, of course, who have a fondness for the picturesque hotel’s bar.

Barely 60km from Swellendam over Tradouw pass, the landscape is pure Klein Karoo – indigenous fynbos, low shrubs and the majestic Langeberg mountains rising behind.

The town is worth a visit with its restaurants and cafés on the main route, as well as the overnight accommodation now available.

Travellers are often in a hurry and can’t be bothered to turn off to Barrydale, but we decided to. We gave the ubiquitous farm stalls a miss to find the hotel, which was not hard – it’s the only hotel in town, and painted the colour of pomegranate seeds, now scattering the Klein Karoo roads.

Owner Theo Nel has plans to incorporate the old next-door movie house, long since abandoned to flea marketers, into the hotel. The platteland is littered with these old movie houses, mostly converted to warehouses after television did away with the need to go out at night.

They are large spaces, often luridly named Venus or worse, but with wonderful reclining seats and peanut galleries, whence people of colour were banished if they wanted to see flicks. They threw peanuts at the privileged patrons below.

Barrydale is one of the few towns on the busy route to Oudtshoorn to retain its character. Its over-large NG Church, a beauty of this architectural style, dates from 1904 and served a congregation of farming families with their many children at least once a month.

Nel said: “We wanted to create a space where families and their children would feel welcome and would want to enjoy chef Lisl-Anne de Lange’s excellent food. There is no formality. Over lunch people can kuier as long as they like and sleep over before resuming their journeys into the Karoo.”

During our visit many visitors relaxed here with glasses of port and sweet muscadel wine, also the many bikers who favour the newly refurbished bar, a cosy place to watch TV and chat at the long, old-fashioned counter.

The restaurant, known as Nettie Pikeur’s Country Karoo Kitchen, is named after a food writer from Montagu. It is a pseudonym, a well-kept secret.

The food is the best of the region: bobotie and rice, lamb bredie, green beans with almonds, cauliflower with cheese sauce and the best lemon pudding with cream, from the Afrikaans repertoire going back 100 years.

p Barrydale Country Hotel is in Van Riebeeck Street, Barrydale. Call 028 572 1226. - Weekend Argus

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