Mountain views, strolls through orchards, and tranquil nights in a stone cottage

Surrounded by orchards and soaring mountains, White Bridge Farm in the Witzenberg Valley offers an idyllic getaway. Its owners also contribute ingeniously to community upliftment. Brian Berkman reports.

- Brian Berkman

The road that connects Wolseley to Tulbagh and Ceres in the Western Cape is the R46, also known as Michell’s Pass.

According to a concise history of roads in the area, published on the Harvest Table restaurant menu at the Winterberg Mountain Inn, Jan Mostert (in the late 1700s) and Andrew Geddes Bain (in the mid-1800s) were the roadbuilding pioneers. Charles Michell surveyed Mostert’s Hoek Pass in 1830.

That road, and the white bridge that allowed wagons to cross the beginning of Breede River, became the major route to reach Kimberley and beyond during the diamond rush.

Like the people who created the roads, White Bridge Farm accommodation owners and operators Peppi and Paul Stanford have also been pioneers. In 2012, the couple started the amaWolseley Marimba Band as a community development initiative for Wolseley. Raising 50% of the initial required funding from local municipalities and the rest from private funders, they set up a non-profit organisation and arranged training for children from the local Pine Valley and Montana communities.

The band went on to perform at the Los Angeles Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in Dubai soon after. In 2019, they performed for the victorious Springbok rugby players at the Cullinan Hotel in Cape Town as they were returning home from the World Cup.

A more recent community-linked project is The Creative Hub (more on this later) on the road opposite White Bridge Farm.

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