Six days in Cape Town and the winelands: the best value fine wine anywhere, forty minutes inland

Steep streets of flat-fronted houses in lime, cobalt and pink, with the country's oldest mosque halfway up. It is a lived-in neighbourhood rather than an attraction, so keep to the street when photographing and buy something while you are there.

The low ridge running north from the mountain, reachable by road in five minutes from the quarter below it. Locals bring blankets and a bottle an hour before sunset. The gun that fires across the city at midday every day sits on this slope.

Bobotie, denningvleis and koeksisters. The long-established restaurants in the quarter serve no alcohol, which is worth knowing before you sit down and no reason to eat elsewhere.

A sandstone plateau about 1,085 m high, reached by a cable car whose floor turns through a full rotation on the way up so that everybody gets every view. The top is windier and much colder than the car park, and bigger than it looks: an hour of flat paths, longer if you want the far end.

Founded in 1913 on the eastern flank of the mountain: proteas, a cycad amphitheatre, a stretch of fynbos and a curving steel walkway through the tree canopy. Two hours, and take the walkway at the end when the light comes through sideways.

The oldest wine estate in South Africa, granted to the Cape governor in 1685, with a Cape Dutch manor house, a cellar you can tour and a tasting room in the old wine store. The dessert wine made here was drunk by Napoleon on St Helena, which the estate will tell you about at length.

Seven kilometres offshore, a prison from the seventeenth century onwards and a maximum security jail for political prisoners until 1991, a World Heritage Site since 1999. Allow the best part of four hours door to door. Book well ahead and take a hat: there is no shade on it.

Forty two concrete grain tubes with an atrium cut out of the middle, opened in 2017 and the largest museum of contemporary African art anywhere. The building alone justifies the ticket. Go up to the roof terrace before you leave.

In a former Methodist church on the edge of the ground it commemorates. Some 60,000 people were removed from this quarter after 1966 and their houses flattened. The floor is a street map that former residents write their old addresses onto, and the guides usually lived here.

Four adjacent houses furnished as they would have been in 1709, 1789, 1803 and 1850, so you walk forwards through a century and a half of Cape domestic life in about forty minutes. Costumed staff, a herb garden, and much better than it sounds.

One of the oldest wine farms in the country, established in 1692, with an avenue of pines up to a Cape Dutch homestead and a tasting room looking back down it. Good Chenin and a serious Cabernet. Tastings run to late afternoon; arrive by four.

A wine bar, shop and restaurant in the middle of the old town, in a courtyard behind the street. A useful first evening: a couple of hundred labels by the glass, so you can work out what you actually like before spending a day buying it.

A colonnaded monument of 1948 at the head of the village, with a museum beside it holding the records of the Huguenot families who arrived from 1688 after Louis XIV outlawed their religion. The surnames are still on the estate gates all around you.

On a wine estate outside the village, four halls of immaculate cars from the earliest years to modern Ferraris, arranged chronologically and rotated from a much larger private collection. Worth two hours even if cars leave you cold, and mercifully cool in February.

A bistro on the main street of the village, unpretentious in a place that mostly is not, doing roast duck and mussels at a fraction of what the famous names down the road charge. Book, even at lunch.

Unveiled in October 1975 on a granite dome above Paarl: a 57 m concrete column for Afrikaans itself, with lower forms for the Dutch, Malay, Portuguese and African languages that made it. A strange, monumental, entirely sincere thing, and the view over the valley from the terrace is the best in the winelands.

A merchant's house of 1797 with a gabled front, yellowwood floors and a collection of eighteenth century furniture, copperware and kitchen equipment that has not been prettified. Open office hours only, so do this before ten.

The largest church in the town, built in 1863 in a Gothic revival that sits oddly among all the whitewashed gables, with a spire visible from most of the valley. Five minutes inside, and the oaks around it are the ones the town is named for.

On the main street, and the town's default breakfast and coffee stop. Good enough, busy with students, and the right place to pack the wine boxes properly before driving to the airport.