Paternoster

The name means Our Father in Latin, and the story is that Portuguese sailors shipwrecked near this stretch of coast prayed the Paternoster as they swam ashore. Whether that is true or not, the name stuck, and so did the character of the place. Paternoster sits at Cape Columbine between Saldanha Bay and St Helena Bay, 145 kilometres north of Cape Town on the West Coast. It is one of the oldest fishing villages in the country, and its lobster industry has been running since at least 1902, when a canning factory was already exporting crayfish to France.

What you see when you arrive is an irregular cluster of low, whitewashed cottages on sandy roads running toward the sea. Some are old fishermen's homes. Many are now holiday rentals. The lighthouse at Castle Rock was built in 1936 and still operates. The harbour is small but active. On weekday mornings in season, the boats come in and you can buy fish directly from the guys who caught it. The Redro fish paste factory operated here from the 1930s. That history, and the West Coast fishing economy, is still legible in the shape of the place.

The West Coast National Park is 15 kilometres down the road, and the fynbos around Paternoster is particularly good in spring, when the wildflowers come out. The Columbine Nature Reserve sits right on the edge of town. There is good snorkelling off the rocks, and in whale season — June to November — the bay gets southern rights close to shore. The restaurant scene has grown to match the weekend visitor traffic, with a few good tables doing West Coast seafood properly.

It has become popular. On weekends in summer and around public holidays it can feel overwhelmed, and the property market has pushed prices up significantly. But the bones of the place are still intact. The scale is right, the character is still more fishing village than resort, and on a Tuesday in June with a cold front coming in off the Atlantic it is one of the best places on the coast.