Possibly the finest discovery of 2011. In keeping with the cliché that good things are worth waiting for, this one came in late November, and it arrived entirely by accident.

En route to Knysna and a Garden Route that has been hammered by the recent global recession, we called to check if Eight Bells Country Inn had a room for three of us – me, my six-months pregnant Alison and our well-travelled toddler Fynn.  The positive answer meant we would change plans, and stop over instead of driving straight through to our destination.

Eight Bells started life as the only watering hole for mid 19th  century travellers heading over the Attikwas Pass into the Little Karoo in the southern Cape. Since the 1970s however, the Inn has gradually been fashioned into a getaway that’s ticked all the right family boxes.

How else do you describe a really affordable place that has under-floor heating for that inevitable mountain chill? Or that manages to feel luxurious yet simultaneously safe while your busy toddler creates his own world of relative chaos?

Truth be told, we didn’t know it was four stars. A bit like those almost legendary Wild Coast family hotels here in South Africa. There’s nothing fussy about this almost century old inn, yet parents’ every need is catered for – and I reckon therein lies its success.

At an obvious level there’s a large playground in a sandpit, and an indoors dining area with toys and TV for those little people who can’t restrain themselves in a formal dining-room. We take full advantage, eating our meal there while Fynn gets busy with the old plastic farmtruck- plus-trailer.

A little earlier, while owner Rene Bongers told me over a beer on the patio how he came to buy Eight Bells four years ago, Fynn had taken huge delight in the old tractor in the sand-pit. Coming from a mostly arid Cape Town, I enjoy the varied birdlife on offer in large, indigenous and forested landscapes – something beyond the various starlings back home in the city bowl.

 

Fynn appears to enjoy them too, and while his perfect mimicking of the ubiquitous hadida ibis is a crowd-pleaser, our early morning walk in pyjamas across the wet lawn introduces new pleasures: funnel spiders, long shadows lent by the rising sun, and ‘ooh, horsies!’.

 

For R10 kids are taken for a ride on a karretjie, a horsedrawn cart. ‘See you later Mommy!’, says my beaming son from his position in the front-seat. He is sitting next to a six year-old named Ben- who he has just met and naturally admires. Ben is with two younger siblings and an assortment of friends. Speaking to his mother while walking alongside the cart, I learn that families have been coming here for generations. On the subject of longevity, the karretjie is led by a 30-something horse-handler named Sidney, whose father worked at the inn before him. Sidney reminisces with another guest – who first come here as a child himself – about the horses they’ve been riding together since childhood.

 

While I was away on the horse Alison had enjoyed having other mothers around. One such Mom, noticing she was heavily pregnant, wouldn’t let her carry the plus 13kg Fynn, while another Mom and Granny shared her enthusiasm for our impending new arrival. There’s an empathy between mothers that the rest of us simply don’t and can’t get. Keen for a dinner not surrounded by plastic diggers and bulldozers, we arrange a babysitter for the night, night, a young woman from the local village named Kelly, at a very reasonable price. This guy has been visiting Eight Bells since he was a child. Having a drink on the verandah, we observe ‘life with our boy’ from the outside, as we see the patient young woman trotting this way one minute, and that the next, on the heels of a busy young man.

 

The next morning we swim before we leave, with Fynn embarking on his first ‘dive. Gregarious and enthusiastic to his cuddly little core, he shares laughs with a quartet of mountain-biking grandparents also looking to cool off.

 

With a rare, shared certainty, we know that we’ll be back, that Fynn will be diving in this pool again. Because places like this are few, and we really like it here.