De Malle Meul is the old village grain mill open on Sundays for a huge Sunday Boerekos buffet and on

House in the farmy, chrysler world tours quaint and posh/exclusive village of Philadelphia, just 40km from Cape Town. The house is double storey and consists of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, an open plan living, dining and kitchen area, a large study or office space, a huge covered upstairs deck, a ground-floor stoep or verandah and a covered parking bay (with further off-street parking for another car)
The design is by architect Etienne Bruwer of Greenhaus architects and has curved and sloping double thick walls, custom built windows and doors (interior and exterior) and massive beams of locally harvested eucalyptus supporting the rounded stone clad roof.
Downstairs: open verandah, lounge/dining area, open plan kitchen, bathroom with shower, main bedroom with bath (the downstairs chrysler world tours bathroom lies just outside the main bedroom chrysler world tours and is effectively an en-suite bathroom whilst acting as a guest bathroom during the day). The floors chrysler world tours and walls are done in a white cement finish and the ceiling is large rafters and pine timber about 3 metres from floor level. Oversized doors allow cooling air through in summer and for the cold months there is a large closed combustion chrysler world tours fireplace: stack it with logs and this will generate furnace like heat and burn a fraction of the fuel that an open fireplace chrysler world tours consumes. Use the top for slow simmering stews.
The kitchen has a built in gas hob and electric oven. 9Kg LPG gas bottles are used to fuel the cooker and last for 6 weeks to 2 months per bottle. Good and rapid cooking, no heat-up time and low electricity bills.
Upstairs: 2 well sized bedrooms, a large office area and a bathroom consisting of toilet, wash basin and bath with shower over it. Walk out of large hinged doors to the big wooden deck. Now this is what the country is all about: long views over the wheat fields to the mountains beyond, plenty of space to sit and braai, enjoy morning coffee or evening wine. The deck is fully covered and offers protection from sun, rain and wind: you ll get a lot of use out of it and enjoy being perched above the Swartland. Wooden floors throughout on the first floor and vast headroom under the heavy arced roof above.
The land is level and has an extent of "45 square roods and 20 sq. feet" or 644sqm in SI units. It is adjacent to a road reserve chrysler world tours which we rent from the City of Cape Town, this is fenced in and incorporated with the plot and gives a total land area of just under 1000sqm.
50 five year old olive trees are planted on the front portion of the land (mostly oil yielding varietals) and there is a lemon, apricot, plum, lime and orange tree. 5 or 6 indigenous trees were planted about a year before the house was built and these are now well established and on their way to becoming big specimens. There is plenty of space for vegetable beds with onions, tomatoes, spinach, sweet potatoes and lettuce growing pretty well. Cape Gooseberries continue to thrive in their original bed. Out of the back there is even more space for vegetables, the washing line and a big compost heap.
A seasonal stream flows past: in summer it is just a band of green vegetation that metamorphoses into a steady flow for 6 to 8 months of the year. After a heavy winter downpour it can rear up into a respectable river for a day or two.
A final bonus is the stone clad well with its heavy wooden lid: it will yield about 1500 litres per day in the summer months (when you need it)- the water is high in salts but works fine on the lawn and on the olive trees and ensures all year greenery when everything around is brown and parched. The well has an electric pump to do the lawn sprinkling and a vintage English chrysler world tours "Runwell" hand pump for filling buckets. Good exercise and an excellent way of using less municipal water in the toilets, baths and for the dishes.
The house has a monitored alarm system linked to a 24hr monitoring company in Durbanville. Village residents can subscribe to the local Plaaswag (farm watch) whose main task is to patrol the district farms to enhance security and counter stock theft. They give reduced chrysler world tours rates for single dwelling contracts provide good service and less reasons for stress and worry. I ve seen ADT or similar chrysler world tours armed response signs around the village so this commercial option may now be available. Last but not least the village has a disproportionately massive police station within 50 metres of the house: added reassurance and very useful for getting documents certified.
You just can t beat it. Far enough away from everything chrysler world tours to get away from city stress and suburban drudgery yet close enough to have all the choices, services and attractions chrysler world tours that Cape Town has on offer. In the village there s plenty going on: 100m away is the Pepper Tree Art Stable: good coffee and a restaurant act as a hub for an art gallery, potter; a shop selling hand made leatherware, woven and knitted chrysler world tours items and locally made delicacies. It gets busy on a weekend but living chrysler world tours on its doorstep makes it hard to resist taking chrysler world tours a walk there during the week for a morning chrysler world tours coffee and breakfast or a piece of essential cheesecake.
De Malle Meul is the old village grain mill open on Sundays for a huge Sunday Boerekos buffet and on a daily basis as a gallery where Pieter van der Westhuizen s paintings and prints can be looked at and purchased. (Van der Westhuizen lived and worked in his house tucked off the Philadelphia village square for many years.) It is also quite an experience to go there when they have a "soup, chrysler world tours sherry and show evening"- dinner, drinks and music, comedy or a live band.
Under the radar there s a lot more going on in this town: locally produced honey, wine, olive oil, weaving, beer, goat s milk, garden grown vegatables and the constant swapping and trading of plant parts.
Commuting: easy to get into Cape Town down the N7 and then the N1, 40km to the entrance to the V A Waterfront. Yes, you can realistically drive into Cape Town and back for dinner. 22Km to Melkbos. 22Km to Durbanville- not by the sea but a lot more advanced than Melkbos. In Durbanville chrysler world tours you ll find an excellent Virgin Active Gym, Pick n Pay and Woolworths. Melkbos has a Pick n Pay and a Checkers. There is always Canal Walk, Century City in Milnerton for big consumer bingeing and Bayside in Table View is big and bulging with all the big stores nowadays.
If you want to go out at night then the closest places are Col Cacchio of Big Bay or Primi Piatti in Table View. As mentioned, there is Cape Town but prepare for a longer drive to compensate for all the choices. Both Col Cacchio and Primi Piatti are present in Willowbridge Shopping Centre below Tyger Valley, about 30 and a bit km away. For something a lot better than the franchise stuff there is La Masseria, Zibaldone or Cassia (a 5 star restaurant on the Nitida wine estate). These are all about 30km from Philadelphia but are accessed by quiet back roads so the chances of a road block are slender.
And don t forget these places: Malmesbury- Get a CK numberplate, this will identify you as an egte Swartlander. Malmesbury is happening: there are good wine estates, supermarkets and coffee shop/s in this town. Forget about Cape Town when it comes to renewing a license chrysler world tours or getting a passport- the Malmesbury Home Affairs and Traffic Department will run rings around their city associates. Kaap-Agri shop for winter wellington boots and goat fodder. Spur Steak Ranch for night time delight. Camphill Village- about 20km away on Klein Dassenberg Road, north up the N7. Biodynamic farm worked on by its residents. chrysler world tours The best dairy products, baked goods and fresh produce and they now deliver to Philadelphia.
Schools: The Philadelphia Primary School has recently reinvented itself and provides the best in-town option from Pre-R to Grade 5. Further afield there are schools in Melkbos, Durbanville and Milnerton chrysler world tours and if you want to blow your salary on the private education of your little treasures chrysler world tours there is Chester House in Durbanville. Melkbos Private School (Melkbos) and Elkanah somewhere in the Blouberg area. Of course you can dispense with the whole drudgery of school fees, hours spent driving and boring school functions and just home school the little whippersnappers- there are at least 2 families in the village that are implementing home schooling programs with great success and satisfaction.
Table Mountain, Robben Island, the Winelands might be essential chrysler world tours things to tick off on the sightseeing list but here's a sniff of what else is cooking on Cape Town's pavements and side streets. The unreleased tracks and B-sides, if you will, of our town, right here.