The Rissington Rag - June 2025

Welcome to the June 2025 Rissington Rag – a light, short, fun winter edition. Back to more of our old favourite subjects and some lovely photos, this time of Rissington as it is now. At 30 years old. Three decades.

Firstly, a little cameo ‘Day in the Life of an Hotelier’ story...

The Small Nut-Brown Gentleman

I was walking with Rusty and Bruno the other day, when we came across a small nut-brown gentleman of a certain age, camera in hand, halfway up a tree along the Rissington driveway. (Yes, people of a certain age do still carry cameras. Remember cameras? And they do seemingly still climb trees too.)

Convinced he was onto a rare avian species, I asked him “What have you got?”

The small nut-brown gentleman replied “Nothing, but I saw a small blue one yesterday” and gingerly descended to ground level, carefully shielding his camera from scratches.

Me: That would have been a blousysie, a blue waxbill.

SNBG: Would it? It was on the ground and making short flights with others the same.

(His accent was guttural and difficult to place. I settled on Portuguese but it didn’t seem right. Anyway, now we got chatting.)

Me: Yes, that would be it. What else have you seen?

SNBG: I am more interested in insects. You speak very good English.

Me: That’s very kind of you to say so. It is my first language.

SNBG: You are very good at it.

Me: That’s great to hear; I have been speaking it all my life.

SNBG persisted: It’s clearly a strength of yours. You should keep it up.

Me (exhausted from all the adulation and changing the subject): Thank you. I intend to. Where are you from that you have developed an interest in insects?

SNBG: Malta. But we don’t have a lot of insects. Many other problems though. But it is very beautiful. A bit too small perhaps.

And so we chatted for a while about insects, birds (he showed me dozens of fuzzy photos of blue waxbills and scrub-robins), spiders, Malta, South Africa, big and small countries with and without problems. We also talked about sunshine and about a friend of mine who lives part of the time in Malta. We stayed off corruption. And the Malta Convoy. And that old ‘How do you make a Maltese cross’ joke. I love my job and the SNBG is the perfect example of why. A happy half-hour of meandering discussions in the afternoon sunshine with a true gentleman from another world altogether.

SNBG: You have a very beautiful place.

Me: Thank you. I am so glad you found it and are enjoying it.

SNBG: Keep on with speaking English.

Me: I definitely shall. You keep on taking photographs and don’t fall out of any trees.

We smiled and went our separate ways. The magic of Rissington.

Another Guest Story. This time a Traffic Cop.

One of the spin-offs of Covid - which, amazingly, was five years ago – is an increased steady flow of local South African guests. A large number of them are from Johannesburg, naturally, for weekends and longer breaks. Also, at this time of the year, many are from the Cape enjoying our warm winter sunshine when it is cold down south. Quite a few, though, are business people either with their own businesses here or passing through on a rep route every month. A recent visitor was attending a conference of traffic officers at the Traffic Training College in Mkhuhlu, a nearby town.

I once addressed that college’s trainees on the thorny subject of traffic officer corruption. As many readers will remember, this was a problem a few years ago, with officers preying on tourists for bribes. The action we took then has borne good results and cases of extortion have dramatically reduced.

I told the senior officer, who was staying here, about our efforts and about my interactions with the college and he said. “Good. There is a lot of work to be done.”

He then said that he, personally, had never taken a bribe from anyone and never ever would. "Not even five rand," he said. "In fact," he stated firmly “Now only eight out of ten traffic officers are corrupt.”

ONLY EIGHT OUT OF TEN! Wow. Yes. There is indeed still a lot of work to be done!

Remembering Guests. And Oil Barons.

Social Media has many faults. Many. But it also has so many reasons for existing and for us, the main one is for keeping in touch with our guests. We love talking to you, day after day, and telling you what’s happening here. We love the comments you post in our feeds. We love the memories you share. We love the reminders you post, telling us that you are coming again and we make sure that we are ready for you when you do return.

We try to check the bookings every day and to pick out the friends and the returning guests for an extra welcome. Even an upgrade if possible.

There are also, naturally, some names which catch our eye and we wonder whether they are politicians or celebrities. One such was ‘Getty’, booked in at the end of last year. There were no other details, but then if you were a Getty, you probably wouldn’t expect to have to put down a deposit or give away your contact details. So it was a case of wait-and-see.

On the day, though, it became clear that this actually was not a famous Getty, in the billionaire sense, at all. Every year in early December, we invite all the members of Team Rissington to stay over with a partner in the rooms on the night of their choosing, as a Christmas present and so that they can experience dinner, bed and breakfast the way the guests see it. This was not a Getty, therefore. It was Gertie, the Head Chef in the Rissington kitchen. A celebrity in her own way, of course. I have been working with Gertie (fourth from the left in this photo of our six talented chefs) for more than 40 years, here and at the late great Cybele Forest Lodge, where we both trained. I hope she felt like a billionaire that evening at Rissington in early December last year.

Tea and Cake

A longstanding client returned this weekend after a longer-than-usual absence and her comment was that what she loved about Rissington is that it just gets better and better and that every time she comes, she sees more and more new ideas and improvements.

There have indeed been many steady improvements – the new mountain bike trails and walks, the Nespresso machines in the rooms and the fresh milk in the fridges, the new magazine selection, the ‘new’ swimming pool (now, amazingly, 5 years old), the new dishes on the menus, the fantastic WiFi Internet, all of which are exciting and, now, the new ‘spa’ which we are currently putting in.

It is important to see all of this in perspective. It’s such a balancing act for us to keep Rissington up-to-date and to institute new ideas, to make improvements, to keep up the team upliftment with its own succession plan (as some of us are slowly getting a little older) and to maintain what we have built, but all of this has to be done without changing the ethos of our lovely place or losing its delightful country vibe. There’s always going to be pressure from certain quarters to upgrade Rissington to something that it isn’t and doesn’t want to be. The art is to continue with improvements to make our little lodge into an even better version of what it is. And not to turn it into something else. I hope we get that right.

Now, back to the important stuff. For those with time to spend wallowing in the warm winter sunshine, Rissington has introduced a Tea (and Coffee) and Cake Menu, available all day. You know you want to. It might just turn out to be the best Chocolate Cake and/or Lemon Cheesecake or Scone you have ever had. Made by Gertie the Getty, of course. And, if you’re really feeling daring, try the Swahili Dawa Tea.

A New(ish) and Utterly Fascinating South African Tourism Offering

A couple of months ago, on a drizzly day in Cape Town and on the way back from a day out in Paarl, we stumbled across 'The Long March to Freedom' statue collection at Canal Walk in Century City, just off the N1 about 10km North of Cape Town itself.

We actually thought, in almost passing it by, that it was a bunch of oldies playing bowls in the rain alongside the highway but don’t make the same mistake! It’s an absolute must.

It was Heritage Day when we visited, and we were lucky enough to have a wonderful guided tour with a highly-knowledgeable local historian. There are 99 (soon to be 100) life-size statues here, featuring all the great names in the fight for freedom in South Africa dating back to the 1600s and coming right up to the present, each with their own board giving details of their backstories and their contributions to the creation of our country. Please go. It was a gloomy day (and the very-dashing umbrellas, as used by Lungi and his Ndebele King Mzilikazi, were supplied!) so my photos really don’t do it justice but it seems to be a little-known venue and it deserves great support and acclaim.

And if you can’t imagine what we were doing in Paarl, well, then you really need to head there for a day or more. Among other attractions, there is wine- and cheese-tasting, olive oil, a spice trail, chocolate-tasting, the Toeka tractor museum, spectacular Cape Dutch architecture and, of course, the Afrikaans Language Monument, all the more interesting this year as we mark the centenary of Afrikaans becoming one of our official languages. Yes. Paarl is where it’s all happening.

And The Long March to Freedom is on the way there. Google it!

Animals Caught on Camera

It has been a while since I updated you on the fauna of Rissington and we have enjoyed some great sightings recently. The banded mongoose run amok daily in their dozens and the grey and the red duikers bound around, day and night in the donga, no doubt celebrating the fact that the crocodile has gone although its cousin, the leguaan, still scrabbles around in the sunshine on the edges of the fast-receding dam. The gymnogene (African harrier-hawk) soars and whistles overhead and a woolly-necked stork stalks around on the lawns in the mornings. In fact, the birding is still great, despite the absence of the migratory species on trips to the north. The other day, a guest also had the enviable experience (although it was not exactly her cup of tea) of seeing a magnificent four-metre African rock python crossing the dirt road in front of her as she drove in. We know they are around but we rarely see them. I found the tracks in the road. It’s amazing how light the impact is. 

This last sighting prompted me to put out the bushcam for a few days and it came up with some great photos. Here are a few of them. Our genets are still clearly very busy at night and this is the first confirmation that we have scrub hares at Rissington. Maybe not surprising, but nice to have proof.

Let's hope the python doesn't know.

Good to see Rusty and Bruno are keeping an eye on the monkeys as well!

Exhaustion and Travel Trends

I like to keep up with what the world (according to the media) is looking for in terms of travel trends. This piece came out a few months ago and combines the expectations with the realities of being young today. According to this report, 79% of Gen Zs are exhausted from online dating – yes, from the utterly knackering process of online dating! – so one of the trends for them is to 'travel and meet real people'. Who would ever have thought it? Actually meeting real people, unannounced and without a single swipe left or right. In 2025, we’re all finally going the full Shirley Valentine.

Read the piece here for some more trends. It’s short and interesting.

SEVEN TRAVEL TRENDS

This next one is similar but it also deals with the ways in which Gen Z (and others) are being encouraged and enabled by TikTok to stretch their holidays. The good news is that mass tourism has finally been identified as the real issue that it is. The days of endless selfie poses balanced on cliff-edges might be coming to an end. What a relief!

2025 - TRAVEL TO FEWER PLACES

And here’s a really extraordinary story. A trip to avoid at all costs. Talk about melting icecaps!

EXTRAORDINARY ANTARCTIC TRAVEL CONCEPT

Finally (inevitably) an old hobby horse of mine. No-one seems to be taking any notice of TripAdvisor these days, especially since they have undermined their own integrity by becoming an online booking agency and thus shooting their impartiality firmly in the foot. In this very short piece, it seems that booking dot com is also under fire from the industry. We don’t take bookings from them any longer, preferring to deal direct with our clients for reasons of good personalised service, but the whole industry is now up in arms because of the site’s entitled and bullying tactics. Not to mention the fraud problems from fake bookings and hacked contact details:

THE CASE AGAINST BOOKING.COM

Back to the Books

Many South African readers will know of Jennifer Stern, an old friend of mine and a popular travel-writer and media contributor. The time has finally come for Jen to write her own book and here it is : A Big Hand for the Spirits.

It’s a fascinating amalgam of travel, culture and psychological, philosophical thought, played out in Southern Africa and taking the reader on a mind-stretching journey around many of our favourite playgrounds with all the makings of a great whodunnit and some very fine recipes too. It’s a most unusual book and I really recommend it.

You can see more and pick it up here: A BIG HAND FOR THE SPIRITS and the Amazon e-book link is : AMAZON E-BOOK LINK

From the Loo

Rissington’s bathrooms off the dining room have always been a place of humour with some great memories from Rissington’s past scattered across the walls. The other day, I rediscovered this – a serious 2011 newspaper article from Zimbabwe. It always makes me feel chortle so I have taken a photo of it for you.

Well done to the blind guys! Gosh, I love Zimbabwe!

Competition Time

The March Rag featured a tricky competition in which you had to name as many team members as you could from this photo, taken in 2005 when Rissington turned 10 years old.

You received an added point for every correct name and a deducted point for every incorrect one. This was intended to stymie those people who might go through old Rags and name everyone who has ever worked here, although it didn’t stop a few people from coming up with fanciful lists, as long as their arms, of team members over the years. Those also brought back some good memories too, so thanks for sending them, even if you received fewer points than Alan Davies on a bad QI day!

The correct names were as follows. From left to right and from the top step (the back) to the bottom step (the front), see if you can see some of your favourite people:

Connie, Frances, Dixon, Betty M, Cindy, Phumzile, Victoria

Sipho, Joseph, Differ, Colgate, Tutos, Cassim, Julia

Anton, Melanie, Kuki, Sithembile, Anna, Joyce, Jeanette

James, Mercy, Shirley, Nomcebo, Amanda, Shaun, Chris (actually, I took the photo and was cut out and superimposed in a piece of cunning early-days photo-shopping!)

And the winner is Rosalie Williams. Great job! The prize is a stay for two people of anything up to two weeks at Rissington at the 1995 accommodation prices of R160 per person per night bed and breakfast.

Rosie correctly named seven people from the photo. The lowest score was (in good old QI style) minus 33 from a person (to remain un-named) who clearly lifted all the names they could find from the website Blog page and somehow got 11 right answers and 44 wrong answers, so a nett of minus 33. Nice try!

Now, Back to the Present – Another 30-Year Competition. This time it's creative.

This month’s competition plays out in the Rag, as always, but also on Facebook and Instagram as we continue our 30 Year Celebrations with a different competition every month.

For June, we are asking you now to tell us about your best-ever foodie experience at Rissington. We’ll post some of the finest answers. The judge will be Suzi Holtzhausen, a South African celebrity chef with whom I am currently collaborating on a writing project.

Just email us a quick, brief description (any format but maximum 50 words) of what you remember as your best or most enjoyable Rissington meal and why.

Entries by 1st July please to [email protected] and keep an eye on our social media for the monthly competitions for the rest of the year. We have given away some amazing prizes including plenty of long stays and even some flights and safaris.

Specials for June – Name Your Price

Winter is still my favourite time in the Lowveld and this year we are offering you the chance to name your price. Simply tell us when you would like to come (between 1 June and 7 July but not including the public holiday weekend of 13 to 16 June) and suggest how much you would like to pay. We’ll check availability and see if we can slot you in at your chosen rate. Minimum R300 per person per night for a budget room but if you would like a bigger room, you might want to offer a little more.

Email [email protected] or WhatsApp 082 327 6842. Give it a go!

For all Rag readers, but only if you are already on the Rissington Rag mailing list or if you already follow us and find the Rag on Instagram or Facebook, we are still offering you a 20% discount on your bed and breakfast for any number of stays during the remainder of 2025. The deal is not transferable and can be applied to new direct bookings only. It rises to a 30% discount if you stay for a week or more.

Spend your birthday here during 2025 and get a free night, as long as you book for two nights or more. You MUST be here on the actual night of your birthday. (NB Deals may not be combined.)

Rissington at 30

Last time, we gave you plenty of interesting photos of Rissington over the years (See the March Rag HERE if you missed it) so this time, we are giving you a quick gallery of what it looks like nowadays, just as a reminder or an update if you haven’t been here for a while. A few more photos are also dotted around the Rag and the new spa is shown below these ones so keep scrolling.

Back to the Spa

Now, more details on the current building job, which is almost complete. Here are the new steps and railings on Saligna, one of the original Rissington rooms. All looking very spruced up, I am sure you will agree.

The interiors and the landscaping are still underway for the spa, which will be accessed from under the Euphorbia steps at the other end of the building. Finally, we get to go to Mr Price Home and buy some of those kitsch LIVE LOVE EAT posters and amass collections of pots, fancy grasses and pet rocks, knowing that we have a real home for them. We are still working on the new Bush-Zen garden outside, with sliding doors which will allow for massages in the sun, the shade or inside the room. There's even going to be flowing water and a sand rake. It’s going to be wonderful. I am drawing the line above wind chimes though!

The Rissington Inn-Spirations Spa will offer a great range of treatments with professional masseuses who will come here especially, at a time to be arranged with you. If you would like a guaranteed booking, ideally you should try to tell us before you get here but we will always be able to find someone even at the last minute.

By special request from an old friend, we also now have bathrobes available on request, for use in the rooms or in the spa, which will open at the beginning of July.

Social Media

If you want to keep up with our news in-between Rags – or maybe to post a message to tell us when you are coming, so that we can be sure to be extra-ready for you – please find us on INSTAGRAM HERE or  on FACEBOOK HERE.

It’s well worth it and you’ll see some good photography too.

And with that enticing thought, we hope to see you soon. Come down in the winter if you can, for a blazing fire in the dining room, soup, coffee, cake, warm blankets and endless sunshine. And maybe a massage?

All the best from all of us.

Chris, Shirley, Nonhlanhla, Natasha, Nkateko, Anita, Lindokuhle, Sindile; Gertrude, Dudu, Yvonne, Angel, Conny and Dellina; Futhi, Betty, Noggs, Patience, Bonisile, Rosa, Lilian, Maureen and Thandiwe; Sipho, Aubrey, Selby, Lucky, Pieter, Thabiso and Coco; plus Philippa and Simphiwe in the office, whom you may email on [email protected] for all your booking requirements. Or simply book online on www.rissington.co.za and tell us all about yourself in the ‘Special Requests’ box.  Oh, and Rusty and Bruno…