Epic Adventure -- Day 12 -- 10/09/2012 -- Cape Town to Wolseley

This morning Chantel woke up very early to leave for work (5:30) and Jenny and I slept until about half past 7. Jenny had detailed a list of things we needed to do today and I can assure you the schedule was very full. We packed all of our bags and loaded them into the car for our eventually journey to the wedding venue tonight. I was delighted that we planned to leave all of the wedding things with Chantel to lighten our bags for the time until the wedding, we packed all of these items into one of our carry-on bags and left them in the corner of Chantel's flat before departing for the first of our many stops.

Lunch at La Cuccina

Our first task was to travel to Hout Bay to meet with Alisdair (the owner of the land rover) to go over insurance particulars and he also very kindly made copies of our passports, identity cards, licences and visas so that we have them to hand in case our things happen to be stolen. Whilst meeting up with Alasdair we also found out that a good school friend of mine from DSG who is his daughter, works for the same company, so we were able to have a lovely quick catch up! Alasdair also pointed out to us where the police station was to get our passport copies certified and told us where the local bank was so that we could transfer some money to pay some people for the wedding. He came and had a quick look at the car with us just to check on some of the repairs that Doug had done before we bid him farewell and drove up the road to meet with our marriage officer Charles Mercer.

Thankfully we chose to drive there, and not walk as we had originally intended, as it was much further than we had expected. La Cuccina is a gorgeous little restaurant, with a sort of deli counter in the middle a rustic tables around the outside. We were a little early but Charles was very easy to recognise when he walked in. Dan and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with him for the first time, as he certainly calmed me down as to how the wedding ceremony was going to play out, and exactly what Dan and I need to do. After ironing out the ceremony details with Charles, he left and recommended to us that we stay for lunch, and I am so very glad we did! They had a sort of buffet style selection, where you got up and chose whatever you wanted, there was a lot of choice, salads, all different veggies, pies, curry and fish. Dan and I both opted for the chicken pie, which quite honestly is the most delicious pie I have eaten, some butternut squash, parsnips(amazing!!) and salad.

Our next port of call was the florist, and if I'm totally honest I was quite disappointed. The flowers are not exactly what I wanted, nor what I expected them to be, and they are double the cost. So, we are going to look around Ceres for a florist to see if they can offer a competitive quote and we will switch to them :)

The drive from the florist to Olive Rock was so scenic, and Dan drove us! It was his first time driving on the left hand side of the road (which is of course the right side!) so I was glad to get a break and give him a chance to get used to it. Parts of the drive were very misty and Scotland like, but after a few kilometres the sky parted to reveal a brilliant blue :) the sat nav, not knowing where the venue was exactly, took us into the centre of Wolseley, and we were a bit disconcerted as there are road works on the main street so we felt like we were driving around in the middle of no where going through the diversions. We stopped at the local supermarket, Check In, to grab some dinner of two huge rump steaks at £2 and £3, some lettuce, tomatoes and feta cheese.

We arrived at White Bridge farm (where Olive Rock is situated) at about 6:00pm, and drove around like numpties for a little while as we had bypassed Peppi's(the owner's) house, but on the second trip round she was outside waiting for us. She handed us the keys to our cabin, called Otters Landing, and left us with the very wise advice to light a fire, it was really cold!! The cabin is beautiful, made out of wood and stone, with a thatched roof and a deck that looks out over the river, and the fire made it very cosy and romantic!

Dinner was absolutely divine, and exactly what we needed. The steaks had a marinade of some sort on them and were just exquisite, and the salad was yummy too, Dan loved the feta cheese. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying some red wine and red J C Le Roux by the fire, what more could a girl want?