The walls do the air-conditioning
Half a metre of stone and mud brick under lime plaster. In January the rooms stay cool until late afternoon without a machine running; in July they hold the day’s warmth well past dark.
The House
It was built in the 1880s. We only look after it.
Nadia and Pieter, at 14 Bourke Street since 2011.
How it started
We were looking for a house, not a business.
The cottage had been standing empty long enough that there was a bush growing through the back stoep. What it did have was half-metre walls, a yellowwood floor under three layers of lino, and a front veranda pointing straight at Spandau Kop.
It took two years to make it liveable and a good deal longer to get it right. We opened four rooms in 2011 and have never wanted a fifth. Four is the number we can cook breakfast for properly, and it is the number that lets us remember your name.
Nothing here is a copy of anything. The floors creak because they are the original boards. The doorways are low because people were shorter. If you want a hotel there is a very good one in the middle of town; if you want a house, this is one.
The fabric
Six things about an old Karoo house.
Worth knowing before you arrive, because most of them are the point.
The floors talk
Original yellowwood, sanded and oiled, not sealed in plastic. They creak. After a night or two you stop hearing it, and most people say they miss it.
Nothing is square
No two rooms are the same shape and no door is the same height. Watch your head going into Die Werf; everybody bumps it exactly once.
The shutters are not decoration
Close them on a hot afternoon and open them at six. That is the whole system, and it has worked for a hundred and forty years.
There are steps everywhere
A step up into the house, a step down into two of the bathrooms, and an uneven werf across to the family room. It is not a building we can make step-free, and we would rather say so now.
There is no television
Not in any of the four rooms. There is one in the sitting room for the rugby, and there is a stoep, which is better.
The two of us
Nadia answers. Pieter bakes.
That is genuinely the whole staff, and it is deliberate. It means the person who replies to your message is the person who will hand you a key, and the bread on the table in the morning was made in this kitchen by somebody you have met.
Nadia grew up on this side of the Sneeuberg and does the enquiries, the rooms and the map of the walks. Pieter came to the Karoo for a two-week holiday in 1998 and has been here since; he does the bread, the fire and anything involving a ladder.
We both speak English and Afrikaans, and we are on South African time — two hours ahead of London, one behind Dubai — so if a message goes quiet for a few hours it is probably just night here.
A word about water
This is a drought town, and we run the house like one.
Graaff-Reinet has lived under water restrictions for years. Nobody here treats a full bath as normal, and we would rather explain that than have you discover it in the shower.
- Short showers, please — four minutes is plenty
- Towels changed when you ask, not daily
- The garden is on grey water and hard plants
- A small inverter keeps the lights and wi-fi on
The Sneeuberg room has the only bath in the house, and we ask that it is used sparingly. The aloes in the courtyard, on the other hand, have never needed a drop.
The last thing
Die werf — the yard.
Behind the house is a walled yard with a lemon tree, the braai, a washing line and the old outbuilding that is now the family room. It is where the fire gets lit, where the dog would be if we had one, and where everyone somehow ends up standing at seven o’clock with a glass in their hand.