Graaff-Reinet and the Valley of Desolation

Dolerite Columns A Hundred And Twenty Metres High Standing Over The Camdeboo Plain, Which Is What The Valley Of Desolation Is, With The Fourth Oldest Town In South Africa In The River Bend Below It Two Hundred And Twenty National Monuments Of Cape Dutch And Victorian Street Architecture In A Karoo Sheep Town Ringed By A National Park · Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape

Ten kilometres outside Graaff-Reinet, dolerite columns a hundred and twenty metres high stand on the edge of an escarpment looking out over the Camdeboo plain, and the place is called the Valley of Desolation because somebody in the nineteenth century thought that was the right word. It is the best short drive-and-walk in the Karoo: you park at the top, walk a few hundred metres, and the columns are below you with eighty kilometres of semi-desert beyond. The town in the river bend below is the fourth-oldest in South Africa, founded in 1786, and has around two hundred and twenty national monuments - Cape Dutch gables, Victorian ironwork and a Karoo high street that has not been knocked down, which makes it the best-preserved town of its period in the country. It is a sheep-farming centre entirely ringed by the Camdeboo National Park, and it is where people stop on the long drive between Cape Town and the Garden Route and Johannesburg.

In a bend of the Sundays River in the Karoo, 250 km north of Port Elizabeth, with the Valley of Desolation 10 km west in the Camdeboo park, Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape, South Africa

The Valley of Desolation road is inside the Camdeboo National Park with a SANParks conservation fee at the gate and daylight access, and the gate closes before dusk - get the time there, because the viewpoint is the place people want to be at sunset and the gate does not care. The town's museums - the Reinet House, the Old Library, the Hester Rupert gallery - keep daylight hours and most close on a Sunday or for lunch, which is a Karoo habit rather than an oversight. The Camdeboo's game-viewing loops and the Nqweba dam are separate drives within the same park. Accommodation in town is plentiful in restored Karoo houses. Nieu-Bethesda and the Owl House are fifty kilometres north on gravel. Graaff-Reinet is on the N9 about three hours from Port Elizabeth and six from Cape Town, and it is MALARIA-FREE.

Graaff-Reinet and the Valley of Desolation on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos