Bridget Hilton-Barber: Unspoilt places
Wepener is not a happening place. Lying beneath the square-jawed Jammerberg mountains near the Lesotho border, it has that prickly, uncomfortable sense of desperation specific to so many small Free State towns. It’s poor and polarised. Stinking hot in summer, bone-bitingly cold in winter, Wepener has all the reassuring charm of a cross between Twin Peaks and Hitchcock’s Half Hour with Afrikaans sub- titles.
Mountainous gusts fling cans and debris down the broad, empty streets, and a dust- devil of debate surrounds the continued existence of the hideous concrete bust of Commandant Louw Wepener in the town centre. Plainly, we had been blown in on the breeze of adventure long before the winds of change.
It was a gesture of unparallelled irony that we stumbled upon a guesthouse whose brochure promised we would retire to our suites “relaxed, pleased about life and wondering why it cannot always be this way”. It was also a godsend. The Lord Fraser Guesthouse is an oasis in the hospitality wilderness of Wepener.
This elegant, creeper-clad building with its pampered lawns and manicured gardens was home for 60 years to one Lord Ian Fraser, a blind millionaire aristocrat who ran a trading empire here. No relation to comedian Ian Fraser – so relax. You won’t find giant rubber chickens under the bed or barmen with squirting lapel flowers.
When Lord Fraser finally flew up to that great big trading empire in the sky in 1974, the building was donated to the Wepener municipality, which showed a distinct lack of interest in this potentially colourful and educational venture. Unsurprising, considering the surrounding entrepreneurial melancholy.
In 1993, however, the Swanepoel family spotted the gap, bought the building and transformed it into a place where “for a time you will be able to feel like a millionaire aristocrat who ran a trading empire.”
The Lord Fraser Guesthouse has managed to recreate that old-leather-and-fine-cognac- type atmosphere without being contrived. Each of the nine rooms has been restored with love and obsessive attention to detail. We’re talking wooden floors polished to perfection, genuine antique furniture and welcoming crystal glasses of sherry.
And as the sun sets on another day of woeful economics beyond your doorstep, it’s time to toss that social conscience over your shoulder like spilled salt and don the metaphorical top hat and tails. In these rarefied surroundings, even the most shy and retiring will soon find themselves adopting all manner of civilised pretensions. The world of Lord Fraser is a delightfully euphemistic one. You don’t pass out, you retire to your suite; you don’t pig out, you have an elegant sufficiency. And if Sir wishes to have his way with Madam, the establishment respects your right to privacy and discretion.
The food is superb, the service excellent without being obsequious. The crisp, star- studded Free State nights reflect beautifully in a snifter of brandy and if you insist on some local colour, you may saunter across to the bar, where even the enormous stuffed bull’s head above the counter looks like it could say “how now brown cow” in the Queen’s English.
Stop-overs are the one night stands of travelling and an evening with Lord Fraser is one you won’t regret. Long-distance travellers looking for a stop-over should succumb to a little adventure and leave the N2 for the road to Wepener. The Lord Fraser Guesthouse provides a brief and pleasurable distraction – and, of course, the increasingly rare chance to feel like a millionaire aristocrat in the new South Africa.
Call the Lord Fraser Guesthouse on (051) 583-1481
The town’s white folk exude an air of tight-lipped tension, the black residents a glowering discontent. Disaffected youth here have perfected the art of hanging out in front of the town’s many boarded-up shops. In the scrawny squares of their thin-lawned gardens, pink-jerseyed pensioners sit blinking in the harsh sunlight, staring into the flickering test- patterns of their old age. Even the Royal Hotel, that once revered symbol of small towndom, is run down, its painted brookie- lace awnings rusting and peeling.