Blinds, Roller Shutters & Awnings, Simonsberg-Stellenbosch
Farms on the Simonsberg's lower slope read the mountain directly — decomposed granite across the widest elevation range of any ward on the route, and a peak that decides the sun timetable more than the calendar does.
Elevation from 101m to 1,200m, one mountain deciding the light
This ward runs decomposed granite soils across the widest elevation spread of any of the four wards on our route — 101m up to 1,200m — and 600 to 1,040mm of rain a year. What ties it together isn't altitude, though; it's the Simonsberg itself, which sits close enough to most farms here to shape their light directly rather than as a distant backdrop.
Morning sun square-on, gone by mid-afternoon
Homesteads and cellar-door buildings tucked against the lower slope catch the low morning sun directly on east-facing glass, then lose it fast behind the peak from early-to-mid afternoon. Breakfast rooms and east-facing cellar-door glass carry the real glare load here — west rooms, by contrast, run cooler for longer than you'd expect this far inland.
Some of the route's oldest homesteads
A number of the working farms on this slope date back to the 17th and 18th centuries — well past the 60-year threshold at which the National Heritage Resources Act automatically protects a structure. Original sash and casement windows here take an internal timber venetian or roller with no facade impact at all; it's the newer cellar-door wing, built specifically to frame the mountain, where external shading has room to work.
The mountain does some of the wind-sheltering
Positions tucked directly against the lower slope get real shelter from the Simonsberg's mass, more than the open farmland further from any mountain. It doesn't remove the need for a wind sensor on a motorised awning or screen — the south-easter still reaches most terraces here by mid-afternoon — but the exposure is generally less severe than Banghoek's pass-funnelled gusts or Bottelary's shelterless flats.
Alongside Simonsberg-Stellenbosch, we measure and fit right along the route.
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