Attractions in Nakuru County
58. Kembu Farm
Midway between Njoro and Elburgon nearby the Kenana Knitters, at the base of Mau Escarpment, sits the pretty Kembu Farm more popular as Kembu Cottages and Campsite. A beautiful woodland, therefore, dominates part of the landscape of this area, which is an added extra since the scapes of savanna are surpassing. Because of this, Kembu Farm offers a unique experience of the Rift Valley. Run by the Nightingales Family, it offers a most impressive range of unique cottages to include Beryl’s Cottage. It was the childhood home of the feted aviator Beryl Markham. This quaint wooden home, originally built in 1914, was relocated and restored for its centenary as a live-in shrine in honour of Berly. It has a double bedroom, a twin bedroom with an open plan lounge with fireplace, kitchen and dining room. A lovely verandah overlooks pleasurable views of the Rift. Another sumptuous Cottage is the Powys Cobb, a converted hardwood railway carriage jazzed-up with electricity, a bathroom and a covered cooking and picnic section.
Beryl Markham (26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a British-born Kenyan aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west. She wrote about her ventures in her inspiriting memoir, West with the Night.
59. Remembrance Church
“With its forty-five-foot-tall square tower, high-pitched roof, arched windows and weather beaten appearance, the yellow-grey stone Church of Remembrance could fool casual observers into thinking it dates back to Norman times. Except that the Normans never went to Mau Narok, the town 9,000 ft., above sea level on the western edge of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya that the church looks down on” – John Aglionby. Redolent of the ACK All Saints Church in Limuru, ACK Remembrance Church embraces an almost mirror-like classical Victorian formalistic style, affecting an easy-on-the-eye site, completed in the early 1960s. It was founded in honour of Edward Powys Cobb, memorialized as an amazing pioneer and a man of great vision. Cobb arrived in Kenya in 1909 and settled at the then 30,000-acres Keringet Farm in Mau Narok, a ranch he named after the Keringet River flowing nearby. It is found in Mau Narok, 31 kms south of Njoro.
60. Mau Escarpment
Mau Escarpment forms the western wall of the Rift Valley ayond Naivasha area. It is composed largely of soft volcanic ashes and tuffs with only rare outcrops of agglomerate and lavas. Part of the escarpment rises to over 10,000 feet (3,050 metres) in the region west of the Eburru Mountains, which is linked to the Mau Escarpment by a ridge standing about 8,500 feet above sea-level caused by the piling up of pyroclastics from Eburru against it. This ridge, like the escarpment, is deeply incised by vast water-courses. The slopes of the Mau Escarpment are heavily forested as well as portions of the highest parts. On the western dipping slopes the forests open out into grassy glades in the lower reaches, and on the lower ground the forest is largely confined to the valleys. The 11 kms ascend of the Mau Escarpment is scenically-flick with the views of Lake Nakuru and the savanna-dotted plains disappearing in the background. Mau Escarpment which averages an altitude of 2,400 ms (above sea level) is very important as most of its forests are located herein. The vast, especial Mau Escarpment runs along the west end of Kenya’s Rift Valley, reaches approximately 3,000 ms at the summit.
61. The Deloraine House
As it were then, if you had enough money, Kenya was a very pleasant place to wait out World War II. The conflict’s horrors appeared very far away from this bucolic and unpeopled savanna. The settlers of upper-crust English aristocracy had little to do but enjoy life and the Happy Valley Set, as they would later be famed, offers us a sincere lesson in the life and times of that era. Although there are dozens of grand mansions to choose from that exude the decadent lifestyle of Nakuru and its environs, few can top the grandeur and splendor of the lofty and magnolias Deloraine House built in 1920s by Lord Francis Scott. The main house consists of just five elegant bedrooms, while an adjacent cottage offers an additional three en-suite rooms. This charming colonial abode is surrounded by fairly mature gardens and horse stables, which house about 80 horses, croquet lawns, polo grounds, tennis courts, and 5,000 acres of undulating countryside. It is found 43 kms from Nakuru, taking a turnoff into Rongai just before Salgaa.
62. Mau Forest Reserve
On any given day, hundreds of people delve deep into Mau Forest Reserve in search of its riches. In recent times, many have found themselves permanently attached to the forest, even living in it, in line for a salutary supply of its stocks. Off to one side, the Mau Forest Reserve supports the livelihoods of millions of people in Rift Valley and Western Kenya. In the tea sector alone, about 35,000 jobs and the livelihoods of 50,000 small farmers, along with 430,000 indirect beneficiaries from its ecological services. It also forms the upper catchments of 12 main rivers that drain into 5 major lakes (Baringo, Nakuru, Natron, Turkana and Victoria) and supplies the Masai Mara National Reserve. The landscape of the Mau Reserve, the largest closed‐canopy forest in Kenya and the largest of the country’s five watersheds, is eminently salubrious, yet, in reality, it is a pain to come within doors of the Mau Forest Reserve without putting nature on one side and civilization on the other side. A symbolic relationship that answer to the frantic deterioration of the Mau, where some 1077 km2 representing 25% of the forest has been depleted in the past 15 years. In 2001, 61 km2 was converted to settlements. One is capacity, another is increased pressure on land for tillage.
63. Masaita Forest
At Masaita, 4 kms from the B1 Kericho-Kisumu Road en route Londiani, stands in the rural monastic setting enclosed by pretty hills the Masaita Forest Station that is home to the Kenya Forestry College. The place is conducive for study and research, and with the beautiful mountainous scenery rather pleasant for site-seeing, camping, mountaineering, bird-watching and other game and general recreation in a cool forest biome. Masaita Forest Station is part of West Mau Forest Complex with an area of 41 km2, and its forest block was formally part of the Londiani Forest which was gazetted as Forest Reserves in 1962. In 1972, the Masaita Forest Block was handed over to the Kenya Forest College (KFC) so as to be under one administration. Today, it’s used for technical training of Forest Managers and for testing of new forest practices for the benefit of Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and Kenya Forestry College (KFC) itself. The stocked sections of the Masaita Forest comprises substantially of Cypress, Pine and Eucalyptus as major commercial planting tree species that constitute 82%. It is a major source of Kipchorian River and its tributaries. Masaita Forest also is home to rich flora and fauna. It harbours Colobus monkeys, rare moths, wild hare, some species of antelope, wild pigs, porcupine, ant-bears, squirrel and bushbucks, among more.
Abiri Kenya 