This is my own coast, at the one time of year when three things happen together.

In September the southern right whales come into Walker Bay to calve, close enough under the cliffs to hear them breathe. On the West Coast, for a few weeks only, the land between the lagoon and the sea comes into flower. And on that same coast, in 1995, footprints were found in the rock that a woman left in wet sand about 117,000 years ago.

I was born on the West Coast, grew up in Constantia, and live now in Hermanus, where I wrote September Tides. The journey goes from the Peninsula up the West Coast to the lagoon where the footprints were found, down through Stellenbosch and the farm my great-grandfather named, and over the mountains to the whales.

Our sample departure runs from Friday 10 to Saturday 18 September 2027, when the flowers are still out and the whales are well in.

Why September

The southern right whales come into Walker Bay from about June and leave by December, but September and October are when the most are in and the calves are new. The West Coast flowers are shorter and less predictable: they depend on the winter's rain, and the Postberg opens only in August and September. The middle of September is when the two most often overlap.

It is spring, too. The days are mild, the mountain is green after the winter, and the canola turns the Overberg yellow. What the whales and the flowers do in any given week is up to them.

The thinking

Most long-haul flights into Cape Town land between late morning and late afternoon. This day has one job: to get everyone to their rooms and rested, with nothing else asked of them until dinner. I meet every arrival myself.

September is the turn of the season in the Cape. The winter rains have done their work, the mountain is green, the days are mild and clear, and in the bays along the coast the southern right whales are in to calve. It is also the one month of the year when the West Coast flowers. Everything on this journey is timed to that.

All three places we use in Cape Town look out over the water, so the first evening begins with the sea.

More about 21 Nettleton, at the top level →

The thinking

The Peninsula is the Cape most people come for, and it deserves the day: the road over Chapman’s Peak, the reserve at the tip of the Peninsula with the lighthouse above the sea, and the penguins at Boulders, who walk among the rocks and the swimmers as if they owned the beach. At the top level the morning is by helicopter, out round Cape Point and back along the Atlantic.

Then Constantia, which is mine. I lived on the edge of Klein Constantia from the age of eight until I was sixteen and trained as an athlete on the gravel roads between these estates. We taste from the barrel with a winemaker, and lunch among the vines.

Late in the day, the South African Museum in Cape Town, where the fossil footprints found at Kraalbaai are kept: prints left in wet sand by a woman about 117,000 years ago, among the oldest known of our own kind. At the top level the museum opens after dark for the group alone, with a curator beside the footprints. At the other levels the guide takes the group in during opening hours. Two days later they stand where she walked.

The thinking

The West Coast is where I was born. The road north leaves the city behind within half an hour, and by the time it reaches Paternoster the land is low, sandy and quiet, and in September it is beginning to flower.

Paternoster is a fishing village of white cottages. Wolfgat sits on the rocks above the beach: a restaurant of about twenty seats that was named the best in the world in 2019, where Kobus van der Merwe cooks almost entirely from what grows and washes up along this shore. His team takes the group foraging on the beach first, and then the restaurant is ours for a long lunch that runs through the afternoon.

From Paternoster it is about forty-five minutes down to Langebaan and The Shark Bay, on the edge of the lagoon, in time to watch the sun go down over the water.

More about The Shark Bay Boutique Hotel & Spa →

The thinking

Langebaan lagoon lies inside the West Coast National Park. After breakfast a small boat, for the group alone, takes us across it one way to Kraalbaai and the Preekstoel, the wind-carved rock that stands in the shallows. The cars go round by road and meet us on the other side, so there is no going back the way we came.

We walk the shore where the footprints were found in 1995. There is a photograph of me as a small boy on the rock beside the place, taken long before anyone knew what was there. Two days earlier the group saw the footprints themselves in the museum; here they stand where she walked.

Then the rest of the day is spent in the reserve. The Postberg section opens only in August and September, when the flowers come, and in a good year the hills turn white, orange and purple down to the sea. What the season does depends on the winter’s rain, and we go where the rangers say is best. Lunch is at Churchhaven, a hamlet of whitewashed cottages inside the park that most people in Cape Town know only by name, and if there is time in the afternoon we stop at the bird hide at Geelbek, where the waders and flamingos feed on the mudflats.

The thinking

From the West Coast, south and inland to Stellenbosch, about an hour and a half. Rustenberg belongs to the Barlow family, who are friends of mine, and we would arrange to taste in the barrel cellar with the winemaker rather than at the counter.

In 1928 my great-grandfather, Richard Stuttaford, renamed his farm here Stellenrust, because its name was too close to Rustenberg’s. My mother grew up on its upper slopes. The family sold it in about 2011, and Waterford now stands on part of the land, but the story is best told on the ground, and I tell it there.

Lunch is long, among the vines, and the night is in Stellenbosch, the oldest town in the country after Cape Town, with oaks along every street.

The thinking

This is the drive I describe in September Tides: up over the Franschhoek Pass, past Theewaterskloof, across the Overberg where in September the canola turns whole hillsides yellow, then down through the Hemel en Aarde, Heaven and Earth, to the sea.

We stop in the Hemel en Aarde for a cellar tasting and lunch, and reach Walker Bay in the afternoon, with light enough for a first walk on the cliffs.

At the top level the group flies it instead, by helicopter from Stellenbosch, and lands at Grootbos, in the hills above the bay.

More about Harbour House Hotel, at the entry level →

The thinking

Walker Bay is one of the best places in the world to watch southern right whales, and in September they come in to calve close under the cliffs. I live here, and I have been coming to this coast for sixty years.

In the morning we take a small boat out for the group alone, with a skipper who knows the bay. When the whales are near, the engines are cut and a hydrophone goes over the side, so that the group can hear the calls of a mother and her calf somewhere beneath the hull. The boat keeps the distance the law requires, and what the whales do is up to them.

In the afternoon, the cliff path: a walk along the rocks above the water, with whales below and dassies in the sun. If the sea is up, the boat moves to the next morning.

The thinking

Along the coast at De Kelders, Klipgat cave opens onto the sea. People lived in it in the Middle Stone Age, tens of thousands of years ago, and a guide takes the group down to it and tells what was found there.

Then Sopiesklip, a stretch of rock and sand that has been my family’s place for sixty years: my father’s, mine and now my son’s. No road reaches it. For anyone who would rather walk, the morning can be Fernkloof instead, the reserve above Hermanus, and the path up and over into the Hemel en Aarde that I write about in September Tides.

In the late afternoon, a small brewery in town with its owner, and at dusk a braai on the mountain, reached by 4x4, with the bay below. If the weather turns, the braai comes down to the hotel.

The thinking

The flights to the Gulf leave Cape Town in the evening, so the morning is free: breakfast with the bay below and, if they are in, the whales close under the cliff.

We leave after lunch, along Clarence Drive above False Bay, about two hours to the airport. I see the group through to check-in.

Some weeks after they are home, a parcel arrives: a printed book of the journey, which I write myself, illustrated with the group’s own photographs, with their names in it.