Durban to Cradock — prawns, more prawns, alpine beauty, and Pothole Hell

Liqueurs and other cherry drink products at Constantia Cherry Farm, Clocolan, southern Free State. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

By Tony Jackman

30 May 2025

I drove you to my home town of Cradock from Cape Town via three routes last week. Now let’s get there from Durban and even further north.

Our visits to KwaZulu-Natal are all about family and prawns. The Foodie’s Wife, Diane Cassere, hails from these parts — her/our former editor Tony Heard once said to her, “I hear you’re a Banana Girl!” And she is, still.

My brother-in-law Jules Cassere, meanwhile, eats prawns like I eat skaapstertjies — lots of them, and hungrily. All hands, no utensils. It’s the only way to eat a prawn — or a sheep’s tail. When the clan used to visit Cape Town Jules would take us to Quay Four at the V&A Waterfront where he would order himself, and me, a kilo of prawns. Then, after an hour and another beer or two, he’d say, “Tones, let’s have another kilo…” And we would, unapologetically.

Tony Jackman’s queen prawns with pepper-chilli rice. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

My sister-in-law Dawn is even worse (better?). Her idea of eating a juicy, crunchy prawn is to pick them up, open wide, and — yes, Dawn eats the entire thing, crunching right through the shells, head and all. The whole thing goes down, with a big smile and much licking of lips. Then we all laugh and I pick the shells off my prawns.

So yes, when we’re in KZN, out we go, somewhere, for prawns, and lots of them. On one trip we met old friends John and Erica Platter at Impulse by the Sea, and I have yet to find a better prawn curry than the one served at this restaurant that overlooks the beach at Tinley Manor. (Erica wrote about it for us.)

Which meant that, when we were returning home to Cradock, we started our journey all the way up the North Coast at Tinley Manor, so that Durban was our first port of call. Not that we stopped there. I found my way onto the N3 to Pietermaritzburg as swiftly as I could, and pointed the car forward while clenching my teeth that I could not get any further without first getting this horrendous stretch of stressful freeway behind us.

It’s the swathe of road in the entire country that I dread the most. In parts of it there’ll be four, even five lanes, and at any moment you’re not sure if you should slip over one lane to the left or right or just try to stay put and hope for the best. But if you try to hold your line in one lane there’ll be a slow truck all of a sudden or some #### in a giant BMW tank roaring past out of nowhere.

Then everything will narrow down to two tight lanes while you negotiate endless road works. It’s a fright. It’s a nightmare, all the way. It’s Hell, macadamised.

These days we skirt Pietermaritzburg because the state of the city now is heartbreaking for Di, who grew up there, and who can no longer bear to look at the urban decay where sweet memories of youth should be.

And Hilton, 11km north of Pietermaritzburg, is where we’ll be headed, to visit Jules & Co for the howmanieth time. If we haven’t already seen them in Ballito before leaving the North Coast, where they live part of the time.

Ah, Ballito. What to make of it? When we first went in the Eighties it was so much smaller. Quieter. No malls to speak of. Now it’s a coastal metropolis. Almost. Not cheek-by-jowl skyscrapers so much as what Americans call condos. This, once you’ve negotiated the mall upon mall vying for your attention and your money between the N3 north and what used to be the village on the sea side of Ballito.

But restaurants it has, with no shortage of great seafood and decks for watching the ocean.

But I’m happier in Hilton, gateway to the Natal Midlands, so leafy, often misty, a pleasantly cool (sort of) contrast to the steamy heat of Durban. The KZN climate is no good for this Yorkshire boy’s body.

The Kiddies' Menu at Rawdons. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

But my favourite spot in the Midlands, and in the whole of the province, is Rawdons, near Balgowan and Nottingham Road, and if you don’t know it, yes, it is the original home of the late hotelier David Rawdon of Matjiesfontein, Lanzera and Hermanus (The Marine) fame. And who once renovated the Drostdy Hotel in Graaff-Reinet before it was renovated again, losing some of the old character and replacing it with too much flash. It is still beautiful but I feel it has lost something of its soul.

Rawdons by contrast has every iota of its original soul and substance. Character that cannot be imitated in modern newbuilds — they can try but it cannot be done authentically. And you haven’t eaten a good country meal until you’ve had a pickled pig pie (it actually doesn’t even have pork in it; the Picked Pig is the beer that is the hero of these famous pies). Read my take on it here.

Oh and the Boar’s Head pub, and its adjacent restaurant — there are few places anywhere that I’d like to be more than there. Of course, there’s the Rawdons Brewery as well.

The famous Pickled Pig beef pie. (Photo: Supplied)

Once our latest KZN visit is over we’ll be off up the N3 towards Harrismith, but instead of going there we veer off towards Winterton and Bergville, before climbing up and up, skirting the magnificent Sterkfontein Dam and finding our way through the Golden Gate Highlands National Park.

And it’s while you’re driving through there — no entry fee, you’re not even stopped as you enter and exit at the other end — that the world changes.

The mountains are not merely majestic; they’re works of art. You’re in the Free State by now and headed for Clarens. It’s almost Swiss in its postcard-perfect beauty. And Clarens, with its Swiss name (for good reason), is perennially lovely and unspoilt despite the numbers of Johannesburgers who own homes and guest houses there.

Last time we were there, early last year, the Cassere crew joined us and we had a massive braai in the huge garden of a house we’d rented together. It helps when there’s more family to offset the costs, as rented accommodation in Clarens is not cheap.

Guess what? Skaapstertjies (sheeps’ tails) cooked twice, first for hours with saltbush, then grilled. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

I horrified some members of the clan by insisting on braaing skaapstertjies and that they at least try them. (I don’t only bother strangers and you with my quest to popularise these Karoo delicacies — my family are victims of it too.) Heidi was the champion, putting back several of them. But Kerry and Lolly put up a decent show. Before long, two of them were married off, and now Jules finally has a (grand)son. I don’t recall Jules eating a skaapstertjie. I might need to have a word about that. Next time.

Once we leave Clarens, however, there’s trouble ahead. Not immediately — the stretch to Fouriesburg, when last we did it, is okay but almost immediately the potholes became not a mere nuisance, but dangerous. Even when you crawl, painstakingly shifting left and right to worm your way between the craters (yes, some are more crater than pothole).

Liqueurs and other cherry drink products at Constantia Cherry Farm, Clocolan, southern Free State. Photo: Tony Jackman

Ficksburg was once an attractive, large Free State town. It’s horrendously run down now and best bypassed. The same, sadly, applies to Ladybrand, and somehow the fact that this town sits in a spectacularly beautiful spot near mountains and a landscape of extraordinary beauty makes its dilapidation seem worse. Those who run the town ought to be ashamed of what has been allowed to happen on their watch.

But before you reach Ladybrand you need to have stopped at the Constantia farm stall which I wrote about here, just when my grandson, now six, was about to be born.

And some of my ramblings above were detailed in this piece that I wrote in August 2023.

But there’s worse to come. It’s once you leave Ladybrand that you think: actually, those potholes back there weren’t that bad at all. In fact, they were a cinch compared to these.

They’re not so much potholes as entire sections of road in parts of the road where the potholes have joined together so that the effect is of a gravel road where you could believe no tar had ever been laid.

And those are the good parts.

Ultimately you finally leave Hobhouse and Wepener behind you and reach Rouxville and the road home. There’s not much to get excited about in this part of the Karoo, where even Aliwal North, with its bridge across the Orange River, has joined the ranks of scores and scores of neglected small towns.

Burgersdorp, Steynsburg, then Hofmeyr — where the Victoria Hotel is a strangely luxurious contrast to everything else — and soon you’re home, to light a fire, make some soup, and think about yet another journey that has taken you home safely. Despite the potholes. DM

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