Who is behind this
Who is behind this
A small group of private individuals in Stellenbosch who drive the Winelands passes most weeks and got tired of answering the same questions in car parks one at a time.
The site grew out of a habit rather than a plan. Several of us have driven over Helshoogte on the way to work for years, taken the long way home over Franschhoek Pass when the light was good, and spent weekends on Bainskloof or up the N7 towards Clanwilliam. People started asking us which way to go, and the answers kept needing the same detail: the gradient, the gear, the fuel stop that is closed on Sunday, the pull-off that holds four cars.
Writing it down turned out to be harder than driving it. A route is easy to describe and difficult to describe usefully, because the useful part is always specific: that the westbound Helshoogte pull is where a tired automatic hunts, that the R44 gains twenty minutes in harvest, that the Cederberg gravel ruins low-profile tyres and not much else. We revisit the guides when a road changes, and we say so on the page when a surface has deteriorated.
We are not a company and we do not pretend to be one. There is no advertising on the site, no sponsored route, and nothing here is written because somebody paid for a mention. The planning work we charge for is listed on the costs page at indicative rand prices, and the route guides themselves are free to read because that is the point of having them.
The reason the writing is pitched at drivers over forty-five is that most of us are. We care about seat support at hour four, about whether a boot swallows two soft bags with the shelf in, about service intervals and whether a part can be had in Paarl this week. Novelty has stopped being interesting. Arriving unbothered has not.
We drive it before we write it
No route goes on the site from a map. If the surface has changed since we were last on it, we go again or we mark the guide as unchecked.
Specific beats impressive
A gradient, a distance, a gear, a rand figure. If a sentence would be true of any mountain road anywhere, it does not belong in a route guide.
Saying no is part of the job
Postponing a pass in bad weather or shortening a day for a tired driver is advice, not failure. We give it often and without softening it.
What this site is not
- Not a guiding service: we plan routes and brief drivers, we do not sit in your car or drive it.
- Not a dealership or an agent for anybody selling cars, hire or accommodation.
- Not a review site that scores things out of ten; we describe how a car behaves on a pass and leave the arithmetic alone.
- Not a live traffic or weather service, so check conditions yourself on the morning you travel.