One winter holiday we took a road trip around the western half of the Western Cape, with the idea of driving over as many Bains’ passes as we could.
That’s both Bains, the father Andrew Geddes, a Scottish saddle maker, and his son Thomas. Between them, and with the help of a lot of convict labour, they opened up large chunks of the interior to the coast, providing desperately needed access for trade and travel.
Andrew Geddes was said to be a man with a theodolite eye, riding the contours of a mountain on horseback and unerringly picking out the most obvious potential routes.
One of the nearest Bains’ passes is of course the gorgeous Bainskloof, near Wellington, built by Andrew Geddes, but the nearest to Cape Town is Victoria Drive from Clifton to Hout Bay.
With the change in transport from ox-wagons and coaches to fast cars and buses, many of the konkels in the Bains’ passes have been smoothed out and widened, but there is one that is almost exactly as it was built more than a century ago: the glorious Swartberg Pass, which twists up over 2 400m and links Oudtshoorn with Prince Albert in the Little Karoo.
The Swartberg Pass is magnificent – dirt-surfaced, narrow and winding, with Bain’s original stone-retaining walls still preventing the the roadway from sliding down the slopes. When you look back on the road from the Prince Albert side you marvel at the hubris Bain showed by building a road there. It was and remains an astonishing feat. Driving over it today is a pretty astonishing feat too.
Halfway down on the Prince Albert side there is a turn-off to Gamkaskloof, popularly known as Die Hel. And if you thought the Swartberg was impressive, you should try going down the Elandspad Pass into the kloof. It might be fine for eland, but we needed to do a three-point turn to get round one of the hairpin bends. They say that ordinary cars, non 4x4s, have only one trip up and down to Die Hel in them.
Should all this elate rather than terrify you, you need to buy the latest Slingsby map and head into the hills. It’s a map of the Swartberg and Klein Karoo, and is highly detailed.
It covers the entire mountain range from west to east, and includes the towns of Laingsburg, Prince Albert and Willowmore, Ladismith, Calitzdorp, Oudtshoorn and De Rust. The southern boundary of the map is the Langeberg-Outeniqua range, and the towns of Barrydale, Vanwyksdorp, Uniondale and George are included.
All roads, from national highways to minor gravel roads, are shown, including the wonderful Route 62 from Barrydale, at the northern end of the stunning, beautiful Tradouw Pass – another Thomas Bain pass – all the way to Oudtshoorn.
There are also 28 mountain passes, GPS co-ordinates in DD MM,mmmm format for every road junction, tourism facilities and accommodation are shown, as well as street maps for the principle towns.
And if you want to go further afield, this map overlaps with the Slingsby maps for Baviaanskloof, the Garden Route and Overberg.
* Another newly published and splendid Slingsby map is the Wild Coast edition 3.
When originally published several years ago it was the first comprehensive map of the area, stretching from East London in the south to Port Edward in the north.
But things are different now. Peter Slingsby says: “When we came to update and revise the map for the third edition, we were amazed to discover how much has changed, particularly the intensive work that is going into road development.”
The route of the contentious toll road has been marked on this edition as “proposed”.
For more information about Slingsby maps, go to www.slingsbymaps.com