High on a hill lay a lovely Swiss farm

Franschhoek beauty dusts off her finery

- Jim Freeman

Every weekend when she was a child, Lodine Kriel and her family would occupy the same table at the Swiss Farm Excelsior in Franschhoek for Sunday lunch. As she grew older, she befriended one of the sons of the owners and, with other children from the town, would sneak onto the premises to play.

On more than one occasion, they’d be chased out by the owner’s stern wife. Little did she know the lady would one day become her mother-in-law.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous to call a four-star hotel with more than 60 rooms and suites as well as a dozen standalone villas a “well-kept secret,” but it is certainly often ignored in favour of smaller, fancier and much pricier establishments in the French corner of the Western Cape Winelands.

This is despite the fact that the 57-year-old beauty, now known as Le Franschhoek Hotel and Spa, compares very favourably in terms of setting with the grand dame of Constantia and one of the loveliest hotels in the world, the Cellars-Hohenort. Le Franschhoek is generally overlooked because it is literally off the beaten tourist track.

That’s because almost everyone who drives up the main road to the T-junction at the Huguenot Monument turns left towards the spectacular Franschhoek Pass or retraces their route out through the village.

Very few turn right onto what is still referred to as the Excelsior Road which ends in a cul-de-sac at the top of Bulhoek.

The story begins with the birth in November 1900 of Ulrich Herbert Maske, the youngest of seven children to an immigrant of 13 years previously from Germany, in Aberdeen near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape Karoo.