The 10 o’clock drive

Why this drive has a shape at all

Two days, three stops, one booking

The stops run south to north, which is the order you meet them driving up from Cape Town on the N7. We give no kilometres and no drive times here, for the reason set out on Plan a trip: nobody from this project has driven it, and a copied distance is exactly the kind of figure that gets repeated across tourism sites until nobody remembers where it came from.

1. Day one

   Carmién Tea, on top of the pass

   Piekenierskloof Pass, N7 · walk in · open seven days

   Your first stop is the one you would drive past without meaning to. Carmién publishes a tea shop and tasting room at the De Tol Farm Deli, on top of the Piekenierskloof Pass, directly on the N7 above Citrusdal. It is the southern gate of the region and it needs no booking.

   Put it here rather than on the way home for one reason: it is the only stop on this drive where you can taste rooibos without an appointment, so it is the one to do while you still have the day in hand.

   Open Monday to Saturday 08:00–17:00, Sunday 08:00–15:00. Telephone +27 67 410 3315. What a tasting costs is not published.

2. Day one

   Carry on to Clanwilliam, and sleep there

   The hub · off the N7, on the R364

   Clanwilliam is the seat of the Cederberg municipality and, by most accounts, the rooibos capital — it is where Dr Pieter Le Fras Nortier began the cultivation experiments in 1930 that made the crop farmable at all. It is also simply where you have to be in order to make ten o’clock the next morning.

   We do not yet list accommodation, and we are not going to invent any: the towns page is honest about what we have and have not confirmed. Book somewhere in or near Clanwilliam through whatever you normally use, and treat the night as the non-negotiable part of the plan rather than an optional extra.

   Why not push on the same morning? Because the region is a few hours north of Cape Town and the tour will not wait. This is the single most common way a rooibos trip fails.

3. Day two

   Skimmelberg, 10:00

   Near Clanwilliam · book ahead · about two hours

   The reason for the whole trip. An organic rooibos and buchu farm: both plants as they grow wild in the veld and as they are farmed, the rooibos seedling beds, the buchu nursery and the wormery — ending with a tea tasting at the office.

   It is, as far as we can establish, the only place in the region where a member of the public can walk a working rooibos farm on a published schedule at a published price. That is a remarkable thing to be able to say about a crop with protected-origin status, and it is why this page exists.

   R 220 per person for the tour with the tasting, or R 75 for the tasting alone. Book on tours@skimmelberg.co.za or 027 482 1771. They do not publish a meeting point, so ask for one when you book.

4. Day two

   Then choose your way home

   Back down the N7, or east over the Pakhuis Pass

   You are finished by about midday with an afternoon in hand. The straightforward option is south down the N7 the way you came. The better one, if the vehicle and the light allow it, is east out of Clanwilliam over the Pakhuis Pass towards Wupperthal — a Moravian mission station founded in 1830, reached by gravel road, where rooibos is the most important cash crop.

   Two honest cautions. That road is gravel, and we have not driven it, so we cannot tell you what vehicle it wants. And Wupperthal lost most of its buildings to a wildfire on 31 December 2018 — go as a visitor to a working village, not to a viewpoint.

   The co-operative there does not publish visitor information. Wupperthal Original Rooibos lists only an office address in Bellville. The village is the visitable thing, not the company.

The escarpment extension, and why we cannot finish it

There is a third stop, and it is the most interesting thing in this whole region. North and east of Clanwilliam the land climbs onto the Bokkeveld escarpment around Nieuwoudtville, and the Suid–Bokkeveld up there is a distinct rooibos growing area with a different character entirely — small-scale, grower-owned, organic and fair trade.

The Heiveld Co-operative points visitors to the Rietjieshuis Eco Lodge, where guests sleep in traditional restio houses and can join workshops in restio building, baking bread the traditional way, and the use of medicinal plants. As an addition to this drive it would be the best night of the trip and it would turn two days into three.

If you go up anyway — and in spring, for the flowers, plenty of people do — Nieuwoudtville is worth the climb on its own terms. It is called the bulb capital of the world, and in the 2025 World Air Quality Report it was measured as having the cleanest air of the 9,446 cities and towns surveyed. We attribute that to the report rather than assert it ourselves.

If you can only come at the weekend

Then you cannot do this drive as written, and no other guide to this region will tell you so. Rooibos is a farming industry before it is a tourism one, and the visitor offer follows the working week. Here is what is actually open, taken from what the three operators publish.

So a weekend trip is a real trip — just not a farm-tour one. Come for the shop on the pass and give the days to the Cederberg itself: the wilderness area, the named walks, the San rock art at Sevilla, the bouldering at Rocklands. Those are governed by CapeNature permits rather than office hours, and they do not care what day it is.

When in the year to drive it

What we cannot tell you yet

This page is built from published sources and honest geography. Nobody from this project has driven this route. Five things are missing, and they are the same five that are missing from every page on this site until someone goes.

• Kilometres and drive times. Not sourced, so not stated — the same position Plan a trip takes. The order of the stops is certain; the timings between them are yours to check.
• What vehicle the Pakhuis Pass road wants. It is gravel. Beyond that we do not know, and we are not going to guess on your behalf.
• Where to sleep in Clanwilliam. We list no accommodation anywhere on this site yet. The night is essential to the plan and you will have to arrange it elsewhere — which is a gap we would like to close.
• Where to eat, anywhere on this route. Same answer.
• Whether the nine silent operators would take you. Nine rooibos operations in this region publish nothing for visitors. Some of them may well say yes to a phone call. They are listed by name, and we have not made those calls.