ROSENDAL – The best kept secret of the Eastern Free State

By Daniel Vorster

 

South Africa offers a variety of getaway destinations, ranging from going to the beach to hiking in the pristine mountains. For business people flying into South Africa there are also numerous options available for a quick weekend away or even longer holidays.

I fly into South Africa for a short break and opted for peace and quiet, so I travelled to a small town in the Eastern Free State called Rosendal.

This little town is situated on the edge of the Witteberg mountain range, which forms part of the magnificent Maluti Mountains.

Rosendal is slowly becoming a sought after tourism destination with a growing number of guesthouses and places to eat to accommodate all the visitors. Weekends are busy and most of the places to eat and art galleries are only open during weekends and then you also have the local street market every last Saturday of the month that draws large groups of day visitors from the neighbouring towns.

It’s a photographer’s paradise offering picture opportunities ranging from old sandstone building to the great outdoors, and artists and writers come for inspiration. It’s also a place where families can come and reconnect, enjoy good food and safely ride their bicycles on the dusty town roads. For those feeling more energetic you can test your mountain biking skills on one of the number of different trails in the area.

Rosendal offers a variety of activities that includes hiking on one of the nearby trails, go horse-riding in a nature reserve surrounded by wildlife, test your 4×4 driving skills on one of the nearby trails or join the sunset tour up the mountain with a local guide where you can enjoy sundowners in a cave.

The town has also experienced a sudden growth in property development and this is largely influence by the Covid pandemic, since more people realized that they are able to work from home and thus does not need to stay in the big cities.

Since I wanted to get away with my wife and enjoy some peace and quiet away from our busy schedule we opted to visit Rosendal during the week, and were still surprised by the number of restaurant and attractions open, and since it’s a small town so we dug out our hiking boots and explored the town on foot, looking at the old houses and the magnificent church all built from sandstone.

Exploring the town on foot makes you hungry and thirsty and we ended up stopping at Oppidam coffee shop where we enjoyed homemade pecan nut pie with a big wallop of fresh cream from a nearby dairy farm and awesome coffee.

We also visited Kaboedel weave and glass studio where you can buy hand crafted items, and we were lucky to have Dewald that practices warm glass art personally show us around the gallery. He shares the gallery with his wife Zaria, that is also well-known for her work that includes painting, mosaics, pottery, spinning, weaving and hand-painted yarns.

One of the highlights on our visit to Rosendal was Benjamin’s. This local eatery is well known for the two donkeys, Oscar and Basjan that are always available for a cuddle and for their Belgium waffles. We decided to have breakfast at Benjamin’s and ordered the Brie and fig waffle, and it was delicious, but since I shared the waffle with my wife we decided to also share another waffle and ordered one with honey and ice cream for dessert.

We stayed at the Studio Cottage and this restored art studio built from wood has a single room with separate bathroom and is hidden under trees. The self-catering cottage is situated on the edge of town and thanks to the big widows in the unit we found yourself sitting in bed enjoying our morning coffee looking at the field filling with colour as the sun started filling the area with light, and then the highlight was the cattle grazing just on the other side of the fence.

What more do you want to recharge your body and soul.

Isuzu South Africa provided me with the new Isuzu X-Rider double cab pick-up and this gave me the opportunity to take some of the backroads around Rosendal. We drove on one of these backroads to Iona Cherry farm where we tasted some Cherry liqueur and jam. We were unfortunately just too early for the annual Cherry festival that normally takes place around the 3^rd week in November.

From Iona we continued our road journey to Fouriesburg, another little town worth spending a weekend in to explore, where we stopped at the Orange Apple for lunch. We returned late afternoon back to Rosendal passing the famous Destiny Castle overlooking the hills of the Eastern Free State.

The Isuzu X-rider with its 2.5lt engine provided more than enough power to travel comfortably and combined with the comfortable seats, stylish interior and media entertainment touch screen radio of the Isuzu we could link our phones to the Bluetooth system. The media entertainment hub also offers you the opportunity to put on a video for the kids through the USB connector point and thus keep the kids entertained on the road. The Isuzu also features Command Terrain Dial, a rotary dial mounted behind the gearstick that allows you to easily engage fourwheel-drive on the move, and allows you to access low-range gears, so your vehicle can climb up and over what lies ahead with ease.

 

Rosendal pace of life is slow and it’s the perfect place to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. It’s just more than three hours’ drive from Johannesburg via the Riemland tourism route, and an ideal base for day trips to Katse dam & Afriski in neighbouring Lesotho or to Golden Gate National park. There are also numerous small towns in the area that can be explored such as Clarens, Ficksburg, Senekal and Fouriesburg.

Make sure you plan your next trip to Rosendal.

 

For more information you can visit the following sites:

https://www.rosendaltown.co.za

https://www.rosendaltown.co.za/studio-cottage

https://www.facebook.com/Rosendal-Eastern-Free-State-Oos-Vrystaat-231184353581257/

https://isuzu.co.za/double-cab-bakkie

 

https://showme.co.za/tourism/the-riemland-route-north-eastern-free-state/

 

https://orange-apple-country-shop.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral