Qualla: Simon's Town

Simon's Town: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bl1zz4rd-editor, CC BY-SA 4.0. Only one dog has ever been formally enlisted in the Royal Navy. His name was Just Nuisance, he was a Great Dane, and his bronze statue stands in Jubilee Square in the center of Simon's Town, gazing out over the harbor with the dignified bearing of an able seaman who has seen his share of service. The story is absurd and entirely true, and it captures something essential about this small town on the eastern shore of the Cape Peninsula: Simon's Town takes its history seriously but never quite solemnly. It is, simultaneously, the home of the South African Navy, a Victorian-era village with museums on every other block, and the gateway to a beach where endangered African penguins waddle among granite boulders and into people's gardens.

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Image: Bl1zz4rd-editor | CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon's Town: The Harbor and the Navy

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Travel Manuel from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Simon's Town has been a naval town since the Dutch East India Company built a dockyard here in 1743, choosing the sheltered eastern shore of False Bay over the more exposed anchorage at Table Bay. The British took it over in the 1790s and held it for more than a century, and toda...

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Image: The Travel Manuel from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Simon's Town: Penguins at the Boulders

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bgabel, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just south of Simon's Town, at Boulders Beach, one of the few land-based colonies of the endangered African penguin has made itself permanently and conspicuously at home. The birds nest among the smooth granite boulders that give the beach its name, raising their chicks in burrow...

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Image: Bgabel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Simon's Town: Getting Here and Getting Around

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olga Ernst, CC BY-SA 4.0. The journey from Cape Town to Simon's Town by train is one of the great commuter rides in southern Africa. The Southern Line runs down the False Bay coast through Muizenberg, Kalk Bay, and Fish Hoek, with views that shift from urban to suburban to coastal as the train rounds the ...

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Image: Olga Ernst | CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon's Town: The Road to Cape Point

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Collier Michell (1793-1851), Public domain. Simon's Town is the last settlement of any size before the Cape Peninsula dissolves into the wild landscapes of the Table Mountain National Park. South of Boulders Beach, the road climbs through fynbos-covered hillsides toward Cape Point, where the peninsula narrows to a rocky he...

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Image: Charles Collier Michell (1793-1851) | Public domain