Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa

Franschhoek is Afrikaans for French Corner, a name the valley owes to the almost 300 Huguenots who arrived at the Cape in 1688 and were given it to settle. Le Franschhoek puts a French article in front, in case anyone had missed the point. The hotel is a cluster of white Cape Dutch buildings under thatch, set in gardens under six kilometres from the town centre. Behind it stand the Franschhoek mountains, a long range of grey rock that takes up most of the sky.

The thatch is best seen from underneath. In some of the rooms there is no ceiling but the roof, reed laid over pale pole rafters and pitched high above a white four-poster, with French windows at the far end onto a balcony and the mountains. Under one roof window a bath stands free, with a peak framed in the glass. The Classic Family Rooms put a king-size bed in the main room and two single beds up in a thatched loft, which is where any child will want to sleep. For two, ask for a Suite: a deep bath, and a balcony over the vineyards and the mountains.

Breakfast is in La Pavillion and comes with every room. After that the valley does the work. Haut Espoir is 600 metres away, close enough to count as a neighbour, and the hotel gives access to around twenty local estates for tours and food and wine pairings, which is more estates than three nights can hold. The Franschhoek Wine Tram runs hop-on, hop-off through the vineyards with tastings and cellar tours, and spares anyone the drive back. For the afternoon that runs out of ambition, a long blue pool lies below the garden terraces with white parasols along its edge, and the Camelot Spa treats children and teenagers as well as their parents. With a spa named Camelot, and a chapel among its event venues that it calls fairy-tale, the hotel does not stint on legend.

The Terrace Bar has the winelands view, and Sauvage, the smarter of the two restaurants, cooks à la carte. From Friday to Sunday, between one and four, there is high tea with Cap Classique, in case the tea alone was not enough. We had three nights here in March, between Cape Town, an hour's drive away, and Welgevonden, and could not fault it, which not every guest can say: some reviews report leaking showers and broken air conditioning.

The Huguenot Monument stands at the end of the town, two kilometres from the hotel, for the settlers who named the valley. Before them it was Oliphants Hoek, for the elephants that roamed it, which lost first the valley and then the name.