Paul Curtis fishes the wild waters of Rhodes and revels in the quiet of the village

Rhodes is a little like Dullstroom used to be before the developers moved in - a quaint Victorian town of broekie lace and bull-nose tin roofs; where the Monday morning rush-hour traffic on its dusty streets is no more than a man with a hand trolley bringing beer to restock the local pub.

And, like the Dullstroom of 20 years ago, what Rhodes depends on today, and is most famous for, is trout fishing. That's why my fishing pal, photographer Franco Esposito, and I were there - part of a party of 40 trout enthusiasts keen to sample the best that Rhodes and its environs could offer at their annual Wild Trout Association get-together.

There's not much to Rhodes: a couple of places to stay, a small general dealer stocking just the essentials, a sometimes-out-of-petrol petrol station and a tiny but well-stocked fly-fishing shop. That's about it. There are no faux Victorian buildings, no fake mud to decorate your Pajero or Disco, and no stocked trout - just the true wild fish, generations of which have bred naturally from the first few brought into the district nearly 100 years ago.

There are no crowds on the waters either. The local Wild Trout Association can put you on more than 350km of pristine streams rippling through the high, far-southern Drakensberg. The only other souls you may rub shoulders with are the ghosts of the Bushmen who, while leaving no tracks, decorated their cliff-cave homes with visions of a lost world. Or maybe you'll hear the muffled shouts of long-dead Xhosa raiders driving cattle down the War Trail from the Basotho citadels they'd stormed in the high Lesotho valleys.

One thing Rhodes has in abundance, though, is time. Time to do the important things in life such as grow an eccentric beard or watch the clouds go by. The most stressful decision you'll ever have to make is where to fish that day. Or, indeed, whether to fish at all.

Rhodes nestles in the Bell River valley at 1821m above sea level in the Eastern Cape Drakensberg, just south of the Lesotho border between the comparative metropolises of Barkly East and Maclear. The GPS co-ordinates are latitude: 30.798447, longitude: 27.961882 (and for those of you who haven't yet joined the Garminites, that's 60 to 100 kilometres of dirt road from anywhere).

The village, established in 1891 and originally called Rossville after the local NG Kerk minister, was renamed after the then premier of the Cape Province, Cecil John Rhodes. The idea was that some of Rhodes's vast wealth would wash down to the town (and to the townsfolk presumably) in appreciation of the honour they'd bestowed on him. And some actually did: Rhodes sent a cheque for £1 11s 6d to buy a box of pine-tree seedlings to line the main street. Or so the story goes.

Franco and I had approached Rhodes from the KwaZulu-Natal side, taking a leisurely five-hour drive from Franco's farm at Kamberg via Nottingham Road, Underberg, Kokstad, Matatiele, Mount Fletcher and Maclear. We skirted the high Drakensberg and passed through a surprisingly prosperous-looking rural countryside, full of laughing and chattering, spick-and-span uniformed kids walking in large groups to school. (It was surprisingly tidy countryside too - clearly former Environment Minister Valli Moosa's banning of plastic bags is one of the greatest environmental successes of the past century.)

From Maclear, Rhodes is another two-hour drive over Naude's Nek on 100km of dirt road. And with 1000m drops on either side and hairpin bends round what could pass for a one-car-only goat track, speeds over 40 km/h could quite literally be described as breakneck.

(If you approach Rhodes from the Jo'burg side, there's only 60km of winding dirt from Barkly East.)

In the village, we stayed at the Walkerbouts Inn, renowned in fishing circles and owned and run by Dave Walker.

Walkerbouts is comfortable and cosy but with all the mod-cons. It's renowned for its well-stocked bar and outstanding table, with two restaurants - one in the inn for guests, serving wholesome, hearty Eastern Cape farm cooking, and one on top of a nearby mountain for passing Cape and bearded vultures to drop in on.

Walker, who believes Rhodes to be the centre of the universe, reckons that, in general, its main attraction is that it's a great place to chill out - and with sometimes serious snow in winter (the Tiffindell ski resort is nearby) "chill" is perhaps an understatement.

Franco and I had three days of fishing and were allocated beats on the nearby Bokspruit and also enjoyed a day's fishing on the more distant waters of the famous Balloch farm in the War Trail district. The streams were running low and gin-clear - the rains had been very late - and the trout were skittish in the thin runs. But we caught (and my, did we catch!) glittering little rainbow trout that came out of the water like speckled jewels. We put them back carefully.

On Balloch, fishing the Willow stream, I had the rare fortune of catching a perfect little brown trout, far from its ancestral home in the highlands of Scotland. Balloch is set in spectacular scenery and is worth a longer visit than a day trip from Rhodes.

Owners Graham and Margie Frost are from an old Eastern Cape family, generations of whom have farmed Balloch. They have two very comfortable self-catering cottages on the farm and, besides fishing, offer hiking, mountain biking and caves with bushman paintings.

Now for the not-so-good news: you may have to get yourself to Rhodes pretty quickly if you're to enjoy its affordable fishing, space, solitude and laid-back chill factor because there's talk of EU money coming in to build an airport. Why, you ask? Because the very thing that makes Rhodes so special and attractive is its remoteness. It's just too far away from anywhere, so hard to get to that even an extended long weekend is too short. So flying in is apparently the answer.

And who are the planes going to bring? Sure, there'll be new people to "discover" Rhodes and its charm to the possible benefit of its residents but, unfortunately, I imagine those new visitors will be closely followed by the "let's-build-little-Tuscany-on-the-veld" so-called developers who have ruined so much of our countryside and coastline. Perhaps the town fathers and local farmers will find a way to avoid such a disaster happening to their unique, beautiful, isolated piece of paradise. I hope so. I really do.

• To find out more about Rhodes, fishing guides and things to do, see www.walkerbouts.co.za or www.wildtrout.co.za.
• To book at Walkerbouts Inn, e-mail dave@walkerbouts.co.za.
• For info on the War Trail district, visit www.wartrail.co.za.
• To book at Balloch, e-mail frost@balloch.co.za.