Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I would not have had this opportunity of travelling to the Cape of Good Hope without the support of Bucknell University. I thank the office of the Provost for awarding me the Harold and Gladys Cook Travel Award; and I thank Harold and Gladys Cook for their enlightened recognition that scholarly work is imbedded in…

My interest in walking in the footsteps of Lady Anne Barnard was prompted by my admiration for her extraordinary and rather eccentric gesture of walking up Table Mountain. Table Mountain was also on my bucket list: even having lived in Cape Town in my (very) early years, I had still never been up the mountain,…

Our 4th day was our last following in the footsteps of Lady Anne Barnard in the Western Cape. From Tulbagh we planned to cut through Oudekloof Mountains, across the Klein Berg River, locate Leeuklip (in Saron), cut across to Darling and then up to Geelbek, on the Langebaan Lagoon, on the West coast. Lady Anne…

On day three of our journey in the footsteps of Lady Anne Barnard in the Western Cape we planned to move fairly quickly along the slopes of the Langeberg, through the Breede River Valley, from east to north west, past Ashton, Robertson, Worcester, Wolseley to Tulbagh, where we had an appointment with Mr. Calvin van…

The Barnards seemed not to take full advantage of the farms between Zoetmelkes Valley and Riviersonderend—Jose Berman remarks on their “ignorance of the country and lack of a guide [that] had deprived them of an interesting day visiting farms“(73). Lady Anne’s Diaries are unclear as to whether they stopped at the farms Lindeshof and Het…

Like us, the Barnards were pressed for time—we because of the number of venues we were trying to visit in only four days, the Barnards because they were concerned about the coming rains and the possibility of not being able to reach Swellendam. In Genadendal Lady Anne opines: “I regretted much our leaving this place…

      On Monday May 11th we met Dr. Isaac Balie at 10 am in the square of old Genadendal, a few miles from Greyton. Genadendal is one of several places in the Cape settled by the Moravians in the eighteenth century. Known then as Baviaanskloof, the Herrnhuters’ mission was established by Moravian Georg…

We set out in our Ford Ranger on the morning of Sunday May 10th intending to follow the route taken by Lady Anne Barnard in May 1798 as closely as possible. Time constraints, of course, meant that we were unable to stop at every farm; and in many cases both the road taken and the…

In May 1798, after a year at the Cape Colony as the colonial secretary under Sir George Macartney, Andrew Barnard and his wife Lady Anne Barnard traveled into the interior of the colony (on a kind of working vacation), and Lady Anne’s diary account of the experience offers some fascinating insights into the life, culture…

Why Lady Anne Barnard? In May 1797 Lady Anne Barnard wrote as follows in her journal: “All I asked as a reward for my correspondence in his [Lord George Macartney] absence, which I had two opportunities of continuing was that he should accompany me to the top of Table Mountain before he went, where no…