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Visiting Quiet Mountain Country House is like stepping into another era. This idyllic guesthouse at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountain range is just an hour's drive from Johannesburg, and is the perfect antidote to everything that city life offers. Your stay here will be marked by warm hospitality, pure relaxation, and lovingly homemade meals. Find out more and make a booking here.
The first impression
We arrived at Quiet Mountain Country House on a Friday, leaving the busy work week behind, just as the late afternoon sun began to slip behind the Magaliesberg ridge, casting long shadows across the garden paths. Set at the foot of this ancient range, just over an hour’s drive from Joburg or Pretoria, the property unfolds like a well-tended secret. What greets you is the welcoming quiet.
A house with history
Quiet Mountain is a country house, not a hotel. It’s inviting and warm, from the lush gardens with their pathways that invite you to explore to its lounge filled with a thoughtful selection of books, the owners’ antique furniture, and many souvenirs of a life much larger than the countryside.
Spread across the property are seven suites, with the dining room and lounge located in the original farm homestead, which is said to date back to the late 1800s. The small gabled cottage was built in 1932, and the main house was once a tobacco-drying shed.
Owners Terence Barker and John Nelson-Berg have spent the past 40 years restoring and reimagining Quiet Mountain with extraordinary care. As young men, they made the decision to build a life in the countryside, and this is the place that drew them. Quiet Mountain feels deeply personal: antique wood furniture, polished brass fittings, wide verandas, and fireplaces that speak of winter evenings. Objects abound that tell stories of other worlds and add layers of history. The pair are collectors, and there’s something quite special about being in a place where all the decor wasn’t ordered at one time from the same place.
The landscape
The farm stretches across 150 hectares of indigenous bush, and the land climbs up the mountain. Being 700 metres lower than Johannesburg, the climate is milder. Mornings are crisp, afternoons gentle. This is a place for long walks, chasing butterflies, reading, writing, pausing next to trickling water features, getting lost in the garden, taking in the mountains from a well-placed bench, or listening under the arched trees to the sounds of rich birdsong.
Meals worth the drive
Dining here is a slow, considered affair, with dinner and breakfast included. Everything is home-made or sourced locally. Jersey cows on the farm produce the rich milk that goes into the homemade butter, yoghurt, and cream. You can even buy some of these to take home. Vegetables and herbs are mostly grown on-site, and eggs are bought from a nearby chicken farmer.
The food is fresh, tasty, and wholesome. Dinner is a set menu with choices, three courses served on fine crockery and with plenty of silverware, inviting you to linger. This is no place to rush anything. The dining here is only open to in-house guests, so no day trippers are to be seen.
John is front of house each night, and slowly you’ll find yourself looking forward to a light catch-up about the day with him. Dinner is preceded by a gathering in the adjoining lamplit lounge for a drink, and in our case, a backgammon tournament.
Our cottage
Home for the weekend was a comfortable and inviting bed in a two-room cottage with an immense bathroom en-suite and a roomy bath. A fireplace in the lounge was prepped for easy lighting, and outside the front door, the veranda beckoned for autumn afternoons. Our arrival on a late Friday afternoon was greeted with homemade scones, jam, and cream, along with tea on a pretty tray, delivered quietly to our door. It was an autumn weekend when the temperature had a sudden drop in the evening, but every room was thoughtfully warmed for pure comfort.
Gracious hosts
Terence, John, and their team are present in the way that matters most. They don’t hover; rather, they stay tuned in. Across the property are a series of intercoms that invite you to just press a button for service. It’s like magic. There’s even one at the swimming pool, when the need for a cold drink and a lunch toastie or salad arises. You’ll be greeted by name, they’ll remember how you take your coffee, and they’ll somehow manage to make the experience feel entirely your own. It's no wonder they have a loyal return guest list, one that spans generations, and the kind of reviews that read like love letters.
Steeped in the mountain's time
Nearby and noteworthy
If you manage to pull yourself away from your veranda chair or that chaise at the poolside, there’s plenty nearby to explore in the area. Over two days, we never made it out of there, seduced by the idea of staying put. Quiet Mountain does not permit children to visit, so you’ll find no busy family activities, but if the idea of action strikes you in some irresistible way, we noted that there nearby zipline adventure through Ysterhout Kloof with Magaliesburg Canopy Tours, while at Saddle Creek Adventures just down the road, you can enjoy quad biking or horse trails. Black Horse Brewery, a scenic stop for craft beer or a gin tasting, and Bill Harrop’s hot air ballooning are all within easy reach.What you leave with
Besides the farm butter and cream that we bought for home, you might leave with something else – a sense of grounding, maybe. A reminder that time can stretch and slow when you're not rushing through it. As Terence and John put it, "We draw tremendous strength from the mountain and are greatly affected by its changing moods through the seasons and years. We trust that when you leave, you will take a little of the Quiet Mountain home with you in your heart."
Who goes there
We first visited more than 15 years ago, and to be honest, Quiet Mountain is always the kind of place you don’t want to broadcast, so imagine this review being shared with you in a hushed whisper. You might arrive needing a break from city noise or looking for a romantic weekend. It’s a lovely place for a retreat with friends or family, and one where groups of writers have found some peace.The visitor’s book reads like a who’s who over many years, from academics to political figures. The late Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer was a guest, as was prominent anti-apartheid cleric Beyers Naude, along with the vintage queen of the theatre, Taubie Kushlick. More recent guests we are not at liberty to share. That’s the charm of Quiet Mountain. You leave the whispers among the trees there.
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