When a picture doesn’t speak a thousand words …

UPDATED March 2025

10 things a photo does NOT show you

They say a picture speaks a thousand words but here are times when a picture is silent.

Here are 10 things you can’t see in photos on a guesthouse website:

1. Super-fast stable wi-fi internet. At Liz at Lancaster we have 100mbps (up and download) fibre optic cable directly to the guesthouse.
2. Great water pressure – no having to run around the shower.
3. Never running out of hot water. We have solar geysers with electrical and gas back-up.

4. As of 2024 we can add WATER SECURITY to the list to make it 11 things a photo does not show you. We have water tanks fed by borehole and rain water with a very large and efficient filtration system.

5.  Good heating options for winter.  All beds have electric blankets. Plus there’s under-carpet heating in the bedrooms; under-tile/wall heating in the bathrooms; a wood burner in the main sitting room and a log fire in the breakfast patio.

6. Great fresh air circulation. There is aircon in the west facing units plus overhead fans and best of all, all units have security grill doors enabling you to sleep with doors open to your patios and the fresh summer night air.
7. All outside lights strategically placed and blockout lining in curtains. There’s nothing worse than light shining into a room when you want a good night’s sleep.

8. Good quality firm mattresses

9. Photos can’t communicate how quiet the street and the neighbourhood is at night. You might hear our fruit bats or the night birds like the eagle owl and water dikkops, but no traffic or nightclubs.
10. Waking up to the call of garden birds. You will even get to like the hadedas.

11. Heady garden scents. You can see the garden in the photos but you can’t smell the gardenias, the syringas, the sweet peas and the star jasmine. And can you smell that fabulous aroma of rusks baking in the oven? Or coffee brewing?