Lightleys Newsletter June 2009

Our Vaal River destination is located just off Millionaires’ Bend on the Vaal River Barrage, an easy hour’s drive south of Johannesburg. With 55 km of permanently navigable waterway, and a string of waterfront properties and prime real estate, it’s known as South Africa’s ‘inland Riviera’.

Be Captain of your own breakaway and dock at restaurants, bars, spas, golf courses and or even the Emerald Casino Resort along the waterfront. Try your hand at watersports or do some house-spotting. Test your skill with a fishing rod. Experience the buzz of the waterway by day and enjoy the peace after dark.

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At night there are numerous interesting spots where you can moor your houseboat including some riverfront restaurant jetties.

A Lightleys Holiday Houseboat is still the best value-for-money accommodation on the river! Click here for more information

Meander along the Vaal River Wine Route

If you’ve booked a Lightleys Holiday Houseboat on the Vaal River this winter, you’ll be able to enjoy the popular annual Vaal River Meander Wine Route. More than 25 different venues on and around the banks of the Vaal River have been selected to showcase wines from 50 premier South African wine estates. The venues are diverse and interesting, and will suit different tastes, budgets and preferences, from a relaxed country inn to a 5-star hotel or a cosy river pub.

At only R20 per person for tastings of eight different wines, the event promises to warm the cockles of your heart this winter! Best of all, you’ll be able to purchase bottles of wine to take back to your houseboat at almost cost price!

The Meander is open every Saturday from 18 July to 23 August, midday until 18h00 and will be preceded by a Cheese and Wine show at Emerald Casino Resort on the weekend of 10 to 12 July.

There are a number of locations where houseboats can dock along the river so that you can attend a wine tasting, including Waterfront Country Lodge, River Palace, Stonehaven on Vaal, Riverside Sun Hotel, Riverside Beach Club, Emerald Casino Resort and Riviera-on-Vaal Hotel & Country Club.

Contact the Vaal River branch for bookings and more information.
Mobile: 083 391 4884
E-mail: info@oldwillow.co.za

Team building with Lightleys on the Vaal River

For a fun team building exercise, join us for an Amazing Race on the river! Teams navigate their Lightleys Holiday Houseboats around the Vaal River looking for clues. The race takes about four hours. Each clue carries a number of points and the team with the highest score wins. You can choose to use our standard clues or design your own unique race.

To enquire email info@oldwillow.co.za

Knysna Oyster Festival
3-12 July – The Best 10 Days of Your Winter!

This year’s Knysna Oyster Festival has a record number of events spanning the 10 days, so you may want to stay a little longer and enjoy the full programme!

There are over 100 midweek events and four exciting new events.

New events:

• The Geo Oyster Geocaching Competition, a daily event which offers a fun way to navigate around the greater Knysna Basin. The event will take competitors to a combination of nature, sports and festival destinations to find clues that will unlock the finish location.
• The Pick n Pay Fun Event for the Disabled presented by DCAS, the first ever Oyster Festival sports event for disabled competitors, will see wheelchair athletes and able bodied assistants race in events of between 3 km and 5 km.
• The Navigation Drift Dive Challenge in which teams of scuba divers will attempt to navigate their way under water from The Heads to Thesen’s Jetty without surfacing.
• Night of 1000 Pictures, a two-night exhibition of photography, illustrations and paintings to raise funds for Knysna Hospice. Local artists have been asked to donate art works which will be sold to the public at R100 each.

Mid-week festival favourites:

• Wade Bales Wine Festival at Pezula Club
• Pick n Pay Oyster & Wine Mardi Gras presented by Tabasco
• The Knysna Oyster Company Shucking Competition in partnership with Tabasco
• The Longbarn Oyster Eating Competition
• The Admiral’s Masquerade Ball presented by Zanzibar
• Salomon Featherbed Trail Run
• Duesouth XTERRA at Pezula Private Estate
• Golf Digest Bell’s Knysna Classic at Pezula Championship Course
• Protea Hotel Knysna Quays Waitron Race

The SA Navy also makes its grand entry through The Heads midweek in a spectacle worth watching – if you’re in a Lightleys Houseboat, you’re guaranteed a great viewing spot!

And if you’re just coming to Knysna for the oysters, you’ll find 30 local Tabasco Hotspots where oysters will be served naked, cooked or garnished at very pleasing prices throughout the 10 days of the festival!

For more information and the full programme visit www.oysterfestival.co.za.

Lightleys Holiday Houseboat Photographic Competition

A photograph of your holiday could win you a great prize! We’re looking for the picture which best describes a Lightleys Houseboating experience at any of our destinations – Knysna, Vaal River, Port Alfred and Swaziland.

The prize includes: