McGregor

McGregor sits at the foot of the Riviersonderend Mountains at the end of a good tarred road that goes nowhere else. The original settlement was called Lady Grey, which caused confusion with a town of the same name in the Eastern Cape. In 1906 it was renamed after Reverend Andrew McGregor, a Dutch Reformed pastor who had served Robertson for 40 years. The town has the best-preserved 19th-century architecture in the Cape — white-washed cottages on wide unpaved streets, Victorian stoeps, almost nothing built or modified since about 1950.

The Boesmanskloof Overnight Trail starts from outside McGregor and crosses the Sonderend Mountains to emerge at Greyton, 17 kilometres and several hundred metres of elevation later. It is serious hiking with genuine exposure, waterfalls, and views that pull visitors from all over the Western Cape. Day sections of the trail are also walkable on a permit. The permit system limits numbers and keeps the route in reasonable condition.

McGregor has developed a reputation as a place where artists, alternative healers, and ley-line enthusiasts have settled alongside the old farming families. It sits on a documented magnetic anomaly and the local community includes people for whom that matters. Whether you find it woo-woo or interesting, the atmosphere it creates is distinctive. The restaurants and guesthouses are genuinely good for a village of this size.

Come on a weekday when the Cape Town weekenders are not here. Walk the main street slowly. The architecture repays attention. The scale of the place, the mountains behind it, the end-of-road feel — it all works together.