* Tours Updates
* Signs of the times
* Wild Coast Tour - Day 10
* Swartberg Tour - Day 3
* Garden Route Tour - Day 1
Novice / Intermediate 4x4 Training Day. Bookings are open for this popular event. The Grabouw tracks have dried out enough for us to run this course on Sunday, 24th September. Tickets are going fast. The course will entail an explanation of how drive trains, low range and diff locks work, as well as the various techniques required to drive in soft sand, mud and rocks. We will also explain standard and kinetic recoveries as well as self recovery. Each driver receives a 4x4 driving manual as well as a Certificate of Completion. At time of writing, there were 4 places open.
Book online here:
We've been working on this project for almost a year, getting all the technical and legal bits into place and have now launched the crowd-funding project to replace some of the missing and damaged signs. The first sign we are targeting is the sign at Kaaimans River Pass between George and Wilderness. If you want to contribute anonymously or publicly with any amount within your budget, you can do so via the link below. We have already had a donation of R10,000, so we are halfway there. Businesses making donations will receive publicity via our social media platforms.
The first five signs that have been given priority are the Kaaimans River Pass (N2); Karatara Pass (7 Passes Road); Hoogekraal Pass (7 Passes Road); Hexrivier Pass (N1) and the old Du Toits Kloof Pass (R101). As each sign reaches the target amount, the next pass will be added until this segment of the refurbishment project is completed. We will be using the original manufacturers: Otto Signs in Cape Town to complete the manufacture and installation.
MAKE A DONATION / CROWD FUNDING
This penultimate day of the tour is the toughest day in terms of technical driving and distance covered - a whopping 240 km on mostly bad Transkei roads. Our group was up and ready to leave the comforts of Kob Inn for our main point of interest for the day - The Collywobbles.
* Tours Update
* Flowers!
* Wild Coast Tour - Day 9
* Swartberg Classic - Day 2
* Garden Route Tour - Overview
* Podcast
* Featured Pass
SEVEN SISTERS TOUR
We've had a cancellation for this popular weekend tour.which will be taking place on the weekend of the 9th/10th September. Take the link to review the full itinerary and pricing. BOOK ONLINE SEVEN SISTERS TOUR.
We've had a number of requests for a novice/intermediate 4x4 training day. With that in mind, we've had a look at our calendar and can probably put a training day together in September. Our usual venue at Grabouw has taken a hammering this winter with a tad too much aqua, so we will take a drive to the venue and have a look for ourselves to see if our normal routes are still fit for purpose. The likely date will be Sunday 24th September. Email us if you want to advance/priority book.
All the other tours are fully booked at this stage, but we will take cancellation based bookings per email
New tours for 2024 will be loaded from next week.
With the abundance of rain over large parts of South Africa, we predicted the wildflowers would be sensational this year - and they are exactly that! Even the parched Richtersveld has opened up certain routes not normally open to vehicles to take in the spectacle of flowers all over the mountain desert.
Our recent tours through the Swartberg and Garden Route displayed fabulous wildflowers wherever we went. Namaqualand, the Karoo and the West Coast are all worth visiting. Make a plan, fuel up and get out there. It's a great idea to make use of our Master Map to plan a route that will get you to all the best spots. Try the Botterkloof Pass between Calvinia and Clanwilliam, the Biedouw Valley and anywhere in the Cederberg. If you're short of time, you can even go to Darling or Postberg, both are very close to Cape Town. It's all there waiting for you to enjoy nature's blessings.
The route for the day was from The Haven to Kob Inn - just 31 km as the crow flies. However, in a 4x4 it is a full day's drive getting there as we had to weave in and out of ravines and valleys going inland, then back to the coast several times as we gradually worked our way into the south-west.
The Mbashe Lighthouse is located just east of the Bhanyana River mouth on a sandy hill. There are two way to reach it from the hotel. You can walk via a bad road which can be very muddy and then walk back along the beach, which will require you to get your feet wet when returning over the mouth of the Bhanyana River - or you can walk it both ways via the beach, where the lighthouse is visible at all times.
* Tours
* Weather Watch
* Swartberg Classic (Day 1)
* Wild Coast V6 Tour (Day 8)
* Podcast
* Featured Pass
All the tours for the remainder of this year are now fully booked. We've had a number of requests to run a novice 4x4 training day. We are likely to run that in September at Grabouw. As soon as we have finality on dates, we will notify you via this platform as well as our Tours Notifications.
The bookings for our 2024 tours will open during mid August.
It's been (and still is) a long cold winter with more snow than has fallen in many decades. There has even been light snow in Aus, Namibia! Whilst there are always snow traffic related casualties, the bigger picture is very much good news all over South Africa. Perhaps the most significant is that Port Elizabeth's drought seems to have been broken with all of the city's feeder dams having made substantial gains. The beleaguered Kouga Dam, which was standing at just 4% earlier this year, has just registered above the 50% mark. There is jubilation amongst the residents and farmers in that area. We will be visiting the Kouga Dam during our Kouga-Baviaans Tour in October and see it for ourselves.
Speaking of snow, it seems that the situation at Tiffindell Ski Resort near Rhodes in the Eastern Cape is still in stalemate mode. We contacted one of the owners who has informed us that the property is still on the market. Imagine if the resort had been open this winter, how many tourists would have been attracted to the area?
In our previous newsletter we provided an overview of the tour, but now we will get into the day by day dramas and delights as we relate the first day of what turned out to be a fantastic tour.
Sunday 9th July - You’ll be able to follow our journey in detail, savouring the beauty, the drama, the friendships bonded, as we criss cross the Swartberg and Langeberg ranges. This is one our most popular tours. It offers so much diversity over a relatively short total distance. Quality overnight venues and the mid-winter time slot all combine to make this an unforgettable event. It rained and snowed over large areas of South Africa that weekend leaving the Western Cape awash with waterfalls, strongly flowing rivers, low cloud and plenty of snow on the mountain ranges. The approaches to Rooiberg Lodge were nice and muddy and it was good to see all the dirty 4x4’s before the tour even started. A sign of things to come!
* Trips & Tours
* Snow, snow and more snow.
* Wild Coast Tour Day 7
* Swartberg Tour Day 1
* Podcast
* Pass of the week
With the completion of the Swartberg Tour last week, we are well into the second half of the year. We have also just started with our 2024 calendar. Although we have not loaded any of the 2024 tours as yet, we can at this stage, give you the dates:
March 16th: MPSA Novice/Intermediate Training Day at Grabouw in the Western Cape.
April: 10th to 20th: Lesotho Mountain Kingdom V2 Tour
June: 5th to 9th: Kouga Baviaans Tour
August 12th to 17th : Swartberg Classic
October 10th to 15th: Great Winterberg Tour (NEW!) in the Katberg area
November 6th to 16th: Wild Coast V8 Tour
December: 2nd to 7th: Ben 10 Eco Challenge
Our next tour is the Garden Route Tour (7th to 12th August, 2023). Bookings close on July 26th. We have two spots open on this enjoyable tour, which has something for everyone. From the aloes of the Mossel Bay area to the indigenous forests of Knysna, quality overnight venues with great food, mountain passes aplenty including the old Bloukrans Pass, towering bridges and a grand finale at the Tstitsikamma National Park in Storms River. We can also take high clearance 4x2 vehicles on this tour.
What a winter it's turning out to be! Snow reports have been pouring in from many of our followers from the Cape to Mpumalanga, with many passes being closed to icy conditions. Arguably the most unusual one was the Long Tom Pass. That was a first for us.
At the time of writing this newsletter, snow is falling over many of the higher ranges. In our previous newsletter we featured a piece on the do's and don'ts of snow driving. If you intend going exploring this weekend, please read that bit of excellent advice and make sure you go well prepared.
The 7th day of the tour was an easy one. We would visit Mapuzi, Baby HITW, Hole in the Wall, Whale Hill, and enjoy tea and rusks at one of our guest's, Wayne & Mandy Williams, holiday home on the spot in the village and finish the day off with a stupendously long and enjoyable lunch at White Clay Restaurant.
We met our local guide, Mzo, at the Ocean View Hotel. He has an infectious laugh with a big smile and a booming voice as he interacts with guests, patiently answering a myriad questions about Xhosa customs and folklore. He adds a lot of value to our tours and smooths the way with the locals, ensuring things happen in an orderly manner.
* Important changes to our newsletter format
* Tours Updates
* Snow driving
* Wild Coast (Day 8)
* Podcasts
* Pass of the week.
Time is tight, according to Booker T and the MG's. After careful discussion at HQ we have had to make a decision about our newsletters. They require a lot of work - around 6 hours to produce one. As a consequence our ability to produce new passes has sufferred. It is critical to always move forward in terms of achieving our primary goal of recording all the passes. We still have around 200 to go so we need to create time for that.
With immediate effect the newsletters will be produced bi-monthly (every fortnight), but retain the formula you are used to. The newsletter gets around 350 views per issue, versus the social media posts which generate around 6,5 million views per week for roughly the same amount of man hours. We need to travel more and film passes.
There are 3 tickets left for the remainder of 2023. We have one ticket up for grabs on the Seven Sisters Tour in September and 2 places open on the Garden Route Tour.
For the Garden Route Tour, we start at the Rooiberg Lodge and stick to gravel roads as we head east over the Jan Muller Pass which crosses the Gouritz River then over the mountains to Herbertsdale via Cloetes Pass. We then cut in towards the Bonniedale road and exit near the 8 Bells Inn for a bite to eat and drink. The afternoon is taken up with an ascent up Robinsons Pass followed by a detour through a nature reserve as we bypass Oudtshoorn and descend to George via the Outeniqua Pass to our first overnight stop at the Wilderness Hotel.
The next day we head up the Outeniqua range via the Montagu Pass and on to Louvain farm, where we stop in for a cup of coffee before tackling the Old Voortrekker Pass (Duiwelskop) over the mountain all the way to Bergplaas Forestry Station and back to Wilderness for a second night in Wilderness.
* STORMS & TORNADOES
* FRANSCHHOEK PASS OPEN
* TOURS NEWS
* SOCIAL MEDIA RECORD
* WILD COAST
* PASS OF THE WEEK
* WORDS OF WISDOM
Whilst the Western Cape is licking its wounds after phenomenal rainfall a few weeks ago, the latest devastating weather system zoned in on KZN with heavy flooding and a tornado touching down in Inanda near Durban, causing havoc especially amongst the poorer communities. The Northern Cape has had another round of heavy rain. The N7 is currently closed about 10 km south of the border crossing where the road is under water.
Several WC passes were closed after flooding caused damage. Most of those passes have since been reopened including the Du Toitskloof Pass, Franschhoek Pass, Bains Kloof Pass and the Swartberg Pass. At Citrusdal a temporary road has been built allowing access to the N7. The Langeni Pass between Mthatha and Ugie remains closed as does the Montagu Pass near George.
We are pleased to announce that we have secured a booking at Portland Manor near Rheenedal in the Knysna forests for two of the nights of our Garden Route Tour in August. Portland Manor is a majestic historical country estate situated in the foothills of the Outeniqua Mountain range, bordering the famous indigenous Knysna Forest. In 1842, Henry Barrington, 12th son of the 5th Viscount Barrington, arrived in the Cape and went to Knysna. He brought lavish household items from England, which included a grand piano and a chandelier, and was on the lookout for the perfect home in which to place them. He purchased the Portland farm from Thomas Henry Duthie and set out to transform the estate into a “very perfect place”.
In 1862 he built the first home on the farm and styled it after the manor houses in England. Unfortunately, Henry Barrington’s joy in accomplishing this momentous feat was short-lived after the Great Fire of 1869 left his house in ruins. Henry spared no time rebuilding the house, but he had lost everything and the new house was not nearly as grand as the original one.
Reconstruction started the following year and the family home, named Portland Manor, still stands today. Barrington’s dedication to revolutionising Portland was unwavering. Along with his newly built home, he also constructed a dam on the estate with a sawmill. Beekeeping and the planting of mulberry trees and apple orchards were at the order of the day. Henry’s other endeavours on the estate included cheese and breadmaking, growing tobacco and barley, and farming livestock. He also campaigned for the Seven Passes Road to link Knysna and George which he believed, quite rightly, would open the markets for all their produce. Sadly, this project was only finalized after his death. Henry played a very significant role in turning Portland Manor into the awe-inspiring property that it is today.
Guests on our Garden Route Tour will be treated to a historical tour of this property. Fortunately we have two spots available on this tour. Online bookings can be done here. GARDEN ROUTE TOUR.
We have had a cancellation for our Ben 10 Eco Challenge Tour in December. Book here: BEN 10 ECO CHALLENGE.
The Seven Sisters Tour in September has 2 places open. Book here: SEVEN SISTERS TOUR.
Our planned visit to the airstrip at Mount Thesiger (Port St Johns) had to be abandoned due to the inclement and the fact that the concrete road from the village was closed due to flood damage. We shuffled the itinerary around a bit and after carefully looking at the weather forecasts, we figured a trip to the Mlengana Pass and Execution Rock might just work.
Light drizzle continued as we left Umngazi after another glorious breakfast and headed up the R61 towards Mthatha. All the rivers were in spate - evidence of the volume of rain that had fallen the previous day. There was considerable damage to the R61 in two places, where half the road had collapsed. This had happened in the January storms.
* COLDEST WINTER IN 40 YEARS
* TOURS
* WILD COAST DAY 4
* PASS OF THE WEEK
* THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Weather experts in the Western Cape are touting this winter as the coldest in 40 years. A staggering volume of rain has fallen over the Western parts of South Africa over the past few weeks. Whilst it's good news for the City of Cape Town having their biggest dam (Theewaterskloof) at 100%, it's come at a fairly big cost which experts are estimating at R1b. The worst hit areas have been Paarl, Wellington, Worcester, Ceres and most of the Cederberg; the latter which has taken a real hammering. Please don't go sightseeing there in the short term as farmers, businesses and local government are still busy with mop-up operations and the repair of roads and infrastructure. Then there's the 'elephant in the room' question: "So how come there's hardly any load shedding?!"
There are a few places open on some of the tours for the second half of the year.
Garden Route Tour (August) - 2 places open.
Seven Sisters Tour (September) - 2 places open
Ben 10 Eco Challenge V7 (December) - 1 place open
It rained hard all night at Mbotyi as we lugged our luggage into our cars in preparation for a 0900 departure to Port St Johns. The plan for the day was a visit to Fraser and Magwa Falls and some fun drag racing on the old airstrip at Mount Thesiger, before heading for our next venue - Umngazi River Bungalows.
Even the best laid plans need a Plan B, and so it was as we drove over the same bridge we had recovered the bus from two days before, which was then only just above the level of the little stream, which had since become a raging torrent. The muddy roads in Mbotyi had turned into shallow rivers as we slowly made our way up the Mbotyi Pass for the last time. The weather forecast was bleak at best, with heavy rain predicted for the next two days.
Fancy a weekend in the Boland mountains with a difference? On this tour we take you to places you can't go on our own.
1. Drive through the service tunnel with a SANRAL guide/escort and discover the real facts behind the engineering and scope of South Africa’s longest road tunnel.
2. Drive the Seven Sisters Pass to the Suzie Tower where you will enjoy amazing views over Paarl and Wellington.
3. Enjoy a first class mountain top open-air lunch on a private farm.
4. An address by the head of Cape Nature, Mr. Deon Rossouw.
5. Drive the old Du Toits Kloof Pass and learn about it's pre and post WW2 history and old manganese mine.
6. Drive the Slanghoek Valley with its towering mountains and serried vineyards.
7. Drive Andrew Bain's opus magnum, the Bain's Kloof Pass.
8. Overnight at Val du Charron wine estate, which includes wine tasting, dinner and breakfast
9. Visit the historical hand carved canal known as Gawie se Water within Cape Nature property high up in the Wellington mountains with our seconded guide, Kuba Miszewski (a mine of information on the area).
10. Closing ceremony, snacks and drinks at Val du Charron.
Book online here: SEVEN SISTERS TOUR
We had a rain forecast, but it held off for most of the day. Our first port of call was a stop at the attractive Angel Falls in the Magwa Tea Estate, where the guest’s cameras were kept busy for 10 minutes.
Our main point of interest for the day was a visit to the Msikaba N2 Bridge construction site which we reached 30 minutes ahead of schedule (an unusual event on the Wild Coast!). The site had enjoyed a very long run of accident free days, but in the week prior to our visit a fatal accident occurred at the batching plant.
* WINTER
* TOURS
* ROAD CLOSURES
* WILD COAST
* PODCAST
* PASS OF THE WEEK
By all accounts and long range forecasts it's going to a cold, wet winter. Rain has fallen in generous quantities over large parts of South Africa, including the arid regions. Even drought beleaguered Port Elizabeth has received some welcome rain. The Kouga Dam near Patensie which feeds the Gamtoos citrus orchards was down to a desperate 4% at one stage. At time of writing the latest readings show it is at 23,7% which is a big improvement, but a lot more rain needs to fall before they are out of the woods.
In the Western Cape (our winter rainfall region) things are looking quite promising with the provincial dam levels averaging out at 54% and the City of Cape Town is currently at 63%.
Late rains and snow over Lesotho, Eastern Cape, KZN and the Highveld have resulted in the major storage dams like the Vaal, Gariep and Vanderkloof dams overflowing again.
For now South Africa seems to be OK.
We are almost halfway through the year with the next 6 months being a busy time.
July: Swartberg Tour - Fully booked
August: Garden Route Tour - 2 places available
September: Seven Sisters Tour - 5 places available
October: Kouga-Baviaans Tour - 1 place available
November: Wild Coast V7 Tour - Fully booked
December: Ben 10 Eco Challenge - Fully booked
Langeni Pass (EC) between Mthatha and Ugie is closed to all traffic
Montagu Pass (WC) between George and Heroldt is closed.
Robinson Pass (WC) between Mossel Bay and Oudtshoorn has been reopened to traffic after a tanker caught alight.
The second day of our Wild Coast Tours involves choices. You can choose to do the hike to Waterfall Bluff and/or Cathedral Rock, or you can stay at the lodge and fish, swim, read a book, go birding or work on your laptop - all of which some of our guests opted to do.
The group that wanted to tackle the hike was 18 strong of which there were those that knew they were fit; those that thought they were fit and those that had no clue what was in store for them. The weather was playing along nicely and the day was crisp and clear as we got our reduced convoy size together and headed up the Mbotyi Pass (which we would be driving a number of times over the next few days) in the general direction of Lupathana.
* Tours update
* Wild Coast - What a ride!
* Lesotho - It's a wrap
* Langeni Pass - Closed
* Podcast
* Pass of the Week
You will get to enjoy 6 nights and 5 thrilling days, discovering the very best this breath-taking region has to offer!
Join us on this guided, self-drive adventure, driving to beautiful places off the beaten track, in the camaraderie and safety of like-minded explorers, under the expert guidance of Trygve Roberts.
For other tour availability, visit here: MPSA TOURS
Our group consisting of 26 people, gathered at Resthaven Guest House in Matatiele for our 6th Wild Coast Tour. Elrita was on song in the kitchen as we all quickly got to know one another in the convival atmosphere of the ever popular guest house of Philip & Elrita Rawlins. There's a good reason (other than the food) that we start our Wild Coast Tour in Matatiele and that is because it allows us to drive some very enjoyable gravel passes on the way down to the coast, with the most important one being the Mzintlava Pass.
We woke to a crisp morning with a temperature of 4C and after a good breakfast ran our first radio comms checks with no apparent issues and took the potholed R56 east to Cedarville, where we gratefully left the tar (and the traffic) for the sanctuary of the rural roads.
First up was the Nungi Pass, which very few people know about. It connects Cedarville and surrounds with the villages of Mvenyane and beyond.
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