Spring weather is holding up nicely for the final weekend of the school holidays. Whether you're catching a show at Die Boer, visiting the final day of the CY Market at Durbies, or checking out the new ceramic shoe exhibition at Rust-en-Vrede, here is your verified local guide for the coming week.

If you’ve ever stopped for a wine tasting at Signal Gun on Hooggelegen Farm, you’ve visited a place that once formed part of one of the Cape’s earliest long-distance communication networks.

From the 1700s, long before telegraphs, radios or phones, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a network of more than 50 signal cannons across the Cape. The system stretched from the Cape Peninsula through the Tygerberg hills and into the surrounding countryside.

When a threat was spotted approaching the Cape, cannon fire was used to sound the alarm. Gunners stationed at strategic points would hear the signal and fire their own cannons, relaying the warning from hill to hill. The message summoned burgher militia from outlying districts to help defend Cape Town.

Hooggelegen Farm in Durbanville was one of these signal stations, with its cannon positioned on Hoogeberg Hill. The system could carry a warning an extraordinary distance – when a British fleet arrived at the Cape in January 1806, the cannon signal reportedly reached Swellendam roughly eight hours later.

And there’s still a tangible link to that history today: the original signal cannon remains at Hooggelegen Farm, now home to Signal Gun Wines.

More than 300 years later, it’s a fascinating reminder that Durbanville’s quiet hills once formed part of the Cape’s early-warning network – the 18th-century equivalent of sending out an emergency alert! 📣

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