Beautiful Boutique Home for Sale in Fort Nottingham, Natal Midlands - Make that move to the Countryside and live your Dream ...

Have you ever dreamed the dream of having a beautiful place, tucked away in a magnificent country setting, a wholesome place you can call your own? Often the expense puts most of us off, but if you could make this into a business proposition, then that's a different matter. Read on ....

A River Runs Through it - Boutique Home in Fort Nottingham 
R5,995 Mil

 P r i v a t e   S e l l e r 

Run your own Boutique Hotel, and make your money work for you ....

Impress your friends with this stunning home, reminiscent of an 'English Boutique Hotel', one of the most beautiful properties in the area. Only a couple of years old, it has all the modern conveniences you could ask for, set on 5 hectares of land, your own piece of paradise. Sitting on the deck overlooking spectacular views with the soft sound of your own piece of river below, this is pure escapism. You need only move in and enjoy.
Run your own Boutique Hotel from this multi level property and make your money work for you. The main bedroom en suite is quite private, on the lowest level, quite separate from the three spacious bedrooms and two bathrooms above, all with a decidedly old worlde English feel .  Consisting of a large bedroom/sitting area with its own private patio with wonderful views to ensure you feel totally spoilt . The en suite has a spacious shower room leading through to a second room that has your own private Sauna and Jacuzzi and walk through dressing room.
The Farm House kitchen, with adjacent terraced Potager,  is open plan to a spacious dining area, with a separate scullery and store room and enclosed veranda leading to parking and carports. A separate TV room is on the same level. The middle section consists of a huge 'hotel style' lounge area with your very own 'English style' Pub and views from the deck that just go on and on. 

Horse lovers can enjoy trails with free reign over of their own land, modern Stables, Tack Room and feeding area.

Modern staff rooms would be an easy conversion to a separate cottage if required.

This is a lifestyle property for the discerning buyer

• 4 Bedrooms
• 3 bathroom (one en suite)
• Sauna
• Jacuzzi
• Pub
• Lounge
• TV Room
• Farm House Kitchen
• Terraced Potager
• Easy maintenance garden with working water feature at entrance
• Fully equipped Gym
• Dining Room 
• Scullery
• Wine Cellar
• Carports
• Modern Stables and Tack Room and feeding area
• 3 Staff rooms with ablutions
• River on 2 sides of property boundary
• Approx 20km from Nottingham Road

Register , giving your full contact details, for more information on this property.

20th Wedding Anniversary - paper or wood? ...

A twentieth wedding anniversary is a biggie. I know this because my last one, which was eighteen years, wasn't listed on the 'anniversary listing' of things to buy. However, Simply Sam Trading customer Charmaine, managed to convince her husband to purchase a lovely vintage Milliners Hat Stand Block, for their wedding anniversary recently - not because wood is what you buy for your twentieth wedding anniversary, but simply because she loves these interesting hat blocks which are quite a rare find.
Her current collection of Milliner Hat Blocks now stands at around twenty three and although the suggested gift for your twentieth anniversary is Porcelain or Aluminium, Charmaine says she just loves wooden objects. Her passion for wood even extends to wooden rolling pins, a love she thinks she may have acquired from her 'Ouma'.  I think Charmaine's husband couldn't have been happier that she'd managed to find the perfect gift for him to buy for her. Now that's love for you...

Simply Sam Trading - Open this Weekend

It is the last weekend of the month and Simply Sam Trading is open, Saturday and Sunday, from 10-4pm, in the beautiful Hamlet of Fort Nottingham. We are now located on our own property, in the original building of the 'Cafe le Fort' restaurant, at the entrance to the village . Besides our little haven of interesting antiques, vintage and gift items offered at Simply Sam Trading, there is so much more to see and do once you're here in this picturesque historical hamlet. 

We see Fort Nottingham as somewhat of a destination venue. Why is this? Well firstly you are transformed into another world, to a place where time has stood still, an escape from the bussle of City life. Fort Nottingham is the reason why Nottingham Road is so named which is due to the Sherwood Forester's 45th Regiment from Nottingham, England (my home town) being called upon to protect the local people and their cattle from marauding Bushmen. The stone barn (circa 1869), which now houses the Fort Nottingham Museum, was originally part of a camp erected by the regiment whilst more permanent quarters were being built. There are beautiful walks around the village and in the Fort Nottingham Nature Reserve and the owner of the Museum' is happy for people to picnic next to the museum. A children's play area, means the children are happy.

The infamous Els Amics restaurant of Pietermaritzburg fame, is open for lunch Saturday and Sunday (bookings only). The gardens are beautiful, with views across to the Cape Chestnut Forest, and Val is known for her love of Indigenous plants. For reservations telephone Val on 0824870922 or email elsamics@absamail.co.za

If you are keen to spend a few days in our little Hamlet Paula Davey runs the lovely Chameleon Cottage, once an original stable, which has been furnished with all your creature comforts in mind. Call Paula on 0829292275

We look forward to seeing you this weekend if you are fortunate to be in the area. If not, you can always visit our web store open 24 hours a day.

online web store: http://www.simplysam.co.za/ 

Deliveries are undertaken personally to Gauteng and Natal with all other South African or International deliveries arranged on your behalf.

The Fort Nottingham Nature Reserve is a small reserve 15km west of the village of Nottingham Road. It consists of grassland, wetland and afromontane forest biome. The Tony Kerr hiking trail starts in open grassland at the picnic site near where the Khathaza Stream. It traverses the slope of a thickly wooded hill and dips in and out of several gullies and seasonal watercourses. The walk should not take more than two hours. Even during the dry season, the trail is cool and damp in places due to the thick canopy cover of the indigenous trees. The lower slopes of the hill are fairly densely covered with Ouhout (Leucosidea sericea), an invasive indigenous shrub. Some of the trees in the indigenous forest are Common Spike-thorn, Forest Knobwood, Red Pear, Sneezewood, Yellowwood, White Stinkwood, Cape Chestnut and Tree Fuchsia different species of ferns, orchids, lichen and mosses. A stillness hangs over the forest, broken by the occasional bark of a bushbuck, samango monkeys calling and a myriad of bird calls. Porcupine and bushpig leave evidence of their presence where they have rooted in the undergrowth for food. Reedbuck is often seen on the grasslands. Late stone-age workings bear evidence of the history of this site. The stone cairn near the entrance was part of a temporary tented campsite used by the 45th Regiment whilst stone was being quarried to erect permanent quarters at the village. Wagon wheel tracks made by the Voortrekker settlers en route to Loteni are still evident. Of interest are the unexplained faces carved into the sandstone bank along the Soldiers Road to the quarry. Dobie, a trader who traveled through the area from Kokstad in the 1860’s drew a sketch of the first Fort Nottingham buildings against a backdrop of the forested hills. Visit the museum at nearby Fort Nottingham to learn more about the history of this area. The Lions River Honorary Officers are involved with restoring the Fort Nottingham reserve to its former glory. As with so many natural areas, the reserve is being threatened by invasive alien plants. Along the eastern border pine trees and Australian blackwood from a neighbouring farm have started to invade the reserve. On the western border bugweed and black wattle are making their presence felt. The grasslands are also being threatened by bramble and the indigenous Ouhout.

This excerpt taken from the Lions River Honorary Officers website http://lionsriverho.co.za/30422/48657.html

Simply Sam Trading now at blueberry Hill

Simply Sam Trading     
now at blueberry hill  Cafe & Gallery

As our second outlet on the Meander, this piece of 

Simply Sam Trading brings you convenience just 

off the highway. blueberry hill is arguably one of 

the best 'spots' on the Meander, with views that go on 

for a life time and blueberry cheesecake to die for. Well 
worth getting fat for!  

R103 opp Fordoun - find us there 8am-4pm 7 days a week.
Tel Sam 0726059909 or Chris 0723973464

Julie and Julia

So this morning we planned to cycle to 'Nothing Ordinary' an antiques and art weekend hosted by Gina Brown at her stunning property 'Lion's Bush' at the entrance to the Hamlet of Fort Nottingham. Whiling away the hours in bed, re-designing my web store www.simplysam.co.za, put pay to that idea. Especially when my daughter announced that 'Julie and Julia', the wonderful cookery movie about the life of Julia Childs and Julie Powell was about to start on TV. Well that really re-organised the day as the whole family lazed around eating popcorn and just being a family!
Whilst watching I remembered the movie was the inspiration for this blog, but I've not written in ages. Call it lazy, bad time management or even lack of inspiration, but Julie and Julia has inspired me to put my 'blogging' hat on again!
I don't have anything quite as exciting as cooking loads of recipes, as Julie Powell did, but something you should know about me is I love cooking and taught basic cookery to men and women in Pretoria from my home. This had to be one of the most joyful times of my life. Some of these people, believe it or not, had never even eaten with a knife and fork before (in Africa one eats with your hands!), so I taught my students how to set a table and at the end of each session we would sit down to enjoy the food we'd made (usually a starter, main and desert) and get to know each other better. At that stage I was dreaming of living in the Midlands, so I kind of pretended I lived on a farm by growing my own herbs and keeping a couple of chickens. Well besides teaching the students cookery, I also taught them a bit about home grown herbs and  sometimes we would even charge through the garden trying to find the proverbial need in a haystack when we realised we were short of an egg or two for a recipe. Well have you ever .....
So after watching Julie and Julia, my eleven year old was inspired enough to dig out my old 'cookery school' files and after playing a game of squash in Nottingham Road, we had to purchase all the ingredients for Choc Chip Cookies and Chocolate Cheese Cake. It wasn't until we started making the Cheesecake that we realised there was no Gelatine in the house, so our fridge Cheesecake was quickly turned into a baked one and  and  very yummy it was too.

Your front door leads the eye to what lies beyond

In South Africa the front door to our home is not quite as visible as a rule to those in Europe and I wonder if that's why we pay so little attention to how attractive they look. The entrance to your home, says a lot about what lies ahead. Here are a few examples of ones I found whilst on my travels in the UK.

French Toast - Cape Town Restaurant