Darling Olives in June!

Yesterday we were forced to go on a trundle. The problem? We were without power for the day as some major additions and adjustments were being carried out on our power here in Jacobsbaai.
So, unable to vacuum, do the ironing, bake or do anything else constructive, I reluctantly agreed to leave the dusting for the day and allow Rob to buy breakfast and lunch followed by an ice-cream for afters!! We loaded Alfie and his ball into the car, dodged Basil who was quite keen to come with us, and headed off inland.

Our selection of olive products, yum!!

Our first stop was the Olive Farm and shop in Darling. We have bought their products for years now and loaded the car with a five litre can of oil, a large bucket of pitted, broken olives (wonderful for baking muffins and bread and takes the fiddle out of eating them), two bottles of flavoured oil, one garlic and one chilli, some olive pesto and two jars of marinated olives. That should keep us going for a while and once the oil is finished, the can will make a welcome addition to our collection of tins and things. Alfie was very good and sat while we tasted the new infused oils.

We just loved this tree (Rob took the pic but it was my camera!)

Then a lovely trek along the back sand road past the Groote Poste Wine Farm. The countryside is looking lovely, washed and fresh after the rain, and the surface of the road was surprisingly good. We stopped to show Alfie a cow or two along the way. After all, it was his day out too!!

A happy Alfie!

We met up with the main R27 West Coast road and crossed over it, towards the houses that make up Grotto Bay. We were not impressed with the houses, huge and close together, so we re-named it Grotty Bay!! Then we headed down to the edge of the sea. And there we saw this:

Snoek inside out and flapping in the wind!

A washing line of snoek! This enterprising chap buys the fish off the large boats, turns them inside out, salts and washes them and hangs them over the fence for three to five days (depending on the wind) to dry out. Then he loads them and sells them in the village of Mamre.

Too many bones for my liking!

We ended up in Yzerfontein where we drove round for a while staring at all the locked up homes. So many of them are holiday homes that the place looks as though everybody has simply disappeared! We have friends that call Jacobsbaai a ghost town, but Yzerfontein really has an abandoned look about it. We finally decided that fish and chips (oh the diet!) would taste very good and we sat overlooking the sea and the gulls sat and overlooked us! Rob ended up looking like the Pied Piper when he walked to throw our packets in the dustbin. My daughter reckoned that he would be the Pied Pooped-on if he wasn't careful! I took a lovely photo on my Blackberry of this but unfortunately I had no idea how to get it onto my computer. Fortunately I 'whatsapped' it to Catherine who then emailed it back to me....... et voilà!

Rob surrounded by gulls! No poop though!

On the Yzerfontein road are the only two remaining lime kilns in South Africa and were declared a National Monument in 1980. They were built in the 1940's by a Mr B Killa to make use of the literally mountains of black mussel shells that used to wash up on the beaches there. The fire was built in the lower part of the kiln and the shells were placed on branches resting on a grid above the fire. Air was then forced through the oven by bellows. The quicklime was collected from a pit below the kiln and was then used for whitewashing buildings or as a cement between bricks when building the walls that needed to be whitewashed!

The kiln in good condition. The monument plaque is above the 'door'.

By then it was home time, so a quick nip to the Wimpy for a soft serve to keep us going and we arrived home..................to power!

By then it was much too late to vacuum, or iron or bake.....................................