Eish, Quiet Mountain is well ... Quiet!

Caron and I have survived 10 years of married life and given the amount of hours that Caron has been working we wanted some real peace and quiet and that is exactly what we got. Quiet Mountain is aptly named and at only an hours drive out of johannesburg is pleasantly close but it was like coming to a stop after a 6 hour journey; it feels a little surreal to 'do nothing'. We didn't actually do nothing because we read and slept and ate and had one walk which by normal weekend standards is pretty sloth like. Actually I wouldn't mind being a sloth at the moment!

Arriving, the first wierd thing that took some getting used to was that there isn't any reception at all. Instead there are speaker phones and bells located at strategic locations which actually works really well. One never sees the staff except when one actually wants something and with only 7 rooms, one doesn't see to much of the fellow borders either.

Above is the view from our front door which, although one of the more modest rooms, was quite comfortable. The tree on the left is a knobwood and viewed a bit closer looks like below. Not the ideal climbing tree I would say.

Being a sort of a semi-retired farm there were about a dozen cats around and one jack russel who thought it his duty to chase the cats. The cats, for their part would follow the jack russel around as he would chase the nearest cat. It was very strange seeming a dog with a moving entourage of cats slowly navigating its way around the garden. There were a couple of swans around as well which would've been quite the menace if they had been able to get out of their ponds pictured below.

There were actually two beautiful white swans but they shared more than their colour, they shared an inordinate love of biting anything they could get their beaks onto. I let them have a chew of my shoe which they found a bit distateful but not before I had a clear indication as to how hard they could actually bite. No wonder they used them as watchdogs during the second world war.

On sunday we went for a bit of a walk because I was tired of lazing around waiting for the gout to clear; not the brightest thing that I've ever done. Foot was really quite eina by the time we got back.

The food is fantastically good, I couldn't recommend it enough and John, the proprietor, is quite the queen of the castle and very entertaining indeed.

Overall it was a great break from the rush and hubbub of johannesburg.