Page 67 - KBHA Bulletin 13

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“Then the village of Kalk Bay opens up, with its long row of detached, picturesque

cottages, between the slope of a towering mountain and the sea, forming the
favourite watering place of the Cape, and one of the prettiest watering-places in the
world.”

After turning the angle of the mountain at the former Thermopylae of the Cape they
arrived for lunch at Rathfelder’s in Diep River before journeying on to the Castle:

“……. by a road unsurpassed in beauty or interest by any even in England itself.
The traveller proceeds the whole distance through richly-wooded avenues of pine
and oak, and waving plumes of Australian blue-gum; passes an unbroken
succession of picturesque villages – Wynberg, Plumstead, Claremont, Westerford,
Rondebosch, Mowbray - ……” (Prince Alfred’s Progress, 1861: 3).

Perhaps the lack of any mention of the coast road’s condition is sufficient condemnation

of it, and had there been a more comfortable alternative over the mountains it would,
presumably, have been preferred? We may presume that there was no equivalent and

alternative “Ou Kaapse Weg” connecting Simon’s Bay and Table Bay.

A little over twenty years later, in January 1883, four months before the railway arrived

in Kalk Bay, the editor of the Cape Times described the experience of travelling in a
Cape cart to Kalk Bay: During the south-easters travellers were not only subjected to

“the miseries of a jolting Cape cart” but also had to endure the “clouds of pulverised
road metal” that swept along the unmade road. Upon arrival they found “a barren place

devoid of shade trees, and a straight, narrow and dusty track resembling a long trough in

which wagons and carts churned up the dust and etceteras mixed up with it.”

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So, in mid and late 19 century, the traveller would have experienced the Military Road
and adjacent country as in depicted in Figs. 2.5 – 2. 16.