How we plan
How we plan
Five steps, in this order, every time. The driving in the middle is the part that takes the longest and the part that nobody else does.
01
The brief, in three questions
Where you want to go, what you will be driving when loaded, and how many hours a day you are genuinely willing to be at the wheel. The third answer changes everything. A four-hour ceiling makes Bainskloof and Ceres a two-day trip instead of a long single day, and it is better to know that at the start.
02
Driving the route, loaded
If we have not been on a road recently, we drive it, with weight in the boot, at the time of day you intend to travel. Morning glare over Helshoogte westbound and afternoon glare are different problems, and harvest traffic on the R44 does not exist in July. We note gradients, surface, pull-offs, fuel, and the places where overtaking looks possible and is not.
03
The weather window
We work out which side of the mountain your passes face and what each one does in a south-easter and in a winter north-wester. Then we put the exposed pass early in the day and write a reserve route for the morning the cloud base sits at four hundred metres. On a seven-day plan we assume two days will be wet.
04
Matching the car to the road
Ground clearance against the gravel you have chosen, tyre size against stone, boot litres against the luggage, seat adjustment against hour four, brakes against the Franschhoek descent. Where the car is the limiting factor we say which part of the route to drop rather than suggesting you buy something.
05
The sheet you keep
One page per day, printable, legible at a petrol pump in low light: turns with distances between them, fuel and rest stops with hours we have checked, the bail-out option with its own distance, and a short note on what the road does when it rains. You get it as a file and, if you want, printed to collect from Plein Street.
We re-drive the popular routes two or three times a season because surfaces change, pull-offs get closed off and farm stalls change their hours. When a guide is older than that, the hub page says so, and we would rather tell you a sheet needs checking than let you drive on stale information.