Artistic Side of the Town
Visit the Owl House and Camel Yard. Helen Martin’s unique artwork regenerated Nieu-Bethesda through Athol Fugard’s ‘Road to Mecca’.
Her captivating sculptures in concrete and glass, out-of-this-world figurines and the use of bright paint and multi-coloured glass are fascinating.
Walk around town and admire the world-class sculptures at Frans Boekkooi’s Studio, the Nieu-Bethesda Arts Centre or Nieu Ceramics. Book into the Fairy Tower.
This is a quirky town, so you won’t think it strange booking into The Tower at the Bethesda Art Centre with its round room and round bed!
Drink, Eat and be Merry
Have lunch at the Two Goats Deli in Pienaar Street or buy some of their delicious homemade cheeses and homebrew like sweet Honey Ale or bitter Karoo Ale. Fill up and visit ‘The Karoo Lamb’ for your next red meat fix.The Great Outdoors Await
Go Karoo Cranking on your dirt bike and Crank the 100 km Compassberg MTB route passes through the Sneeuberg ranges along a network of gravel roads, ascending in excess of 1,000 m.
Explore the Ganora guest farm, which caters to all outdoor needs, including a meerkat rehabilitation centre, a fossil museum, a Bushman artefact museum and several Bushman shelters with paintings, plus Anglo Boer War history and medicinal plants exploration. You can swap the gravel town roads for some serious hiking trails along the slopes of Compassberg.
Enjoy Sidney Rubidge’s collection of fossils on the farm Wellwood, at his meticulously kept museum. Alternatively, join local resident Jacob under the pepper tree in front of the Owl House for a very ‘local is lekker’ guided tour on his donkey cart.
By Jacques Marais