Hermanus

Neville and Alet Sherriff ... who, what, where, when – WHY?

I (the silly old fart on the left) was born and raised in Hermanus in the 1950s and 60s – a time when this was still pretty much a fishing village and the few whales who came to the bay could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Hardly anybody took notice of them.

Alet and I met in Hermanus many years later, when I returned from working in Cape Town to study part-time and she was the local librarian. Love took us to Johannesburg where we spent the next 21 years in the fields of marketing and information, returning to Hermanus in 1990 when we felt we'd had enough of big city life. I also wanted to spend more time writing, as my first novel had just been published by Pan MacmiIllan. In fact, my second novel, The Brannigans, is based on the town's history from 1916 till just after the Second World war. Since coming to Hermanus I also published a marketing book providing guidelines for small to medium businesses.

We started a small communication business which still keeps us pretty occupied,  but decided the time was right for us to share what we feel for this town of Hermanus.

It's not always that great, as no place or lifestyle is ever really perfect, but most of the time it's a joy to live and work here. We have so many delightful friends, both local and those who come from Cape Town for the occasional weekend. Plus, there's this growing circle of "swallows" I mentioned earlier, who live here for 4 or 5 months of the year and look upon us as their "other family".  

One of the reasons we created this website is because we've learnt that many potential visitors to Hermanus or other areas of South Africa would like to get information from an individual, rather than just from a corporate website. 

For that reason we invite you to contact us if you feel we might help in any way.  We are not travel or accommodation agents or specialists, but we are very willing to assist anyone who'd like to visit these beautiful shores of ours.

Get in touch with Neville or Alet at info@hermanuswhales.com

We truly hope we'll be hearing from you!