A cool mountain pool on Bain's Kloof Pass.

Who to contact

Wellington Tourism Office

Tel: +27 (0) 21 873 4604

Email: info@wellington.co.za

How to get here

Wellington is an easy 90 minutes' drive from Cape Town. Turn off the N1 towards Paarl, then take the R44 over the Bain's Kloof Pass.

Best time to visit

The land is green in winter, and beautiful in spring and autumn. Mid-summer can be very hot.

Where to stay

Wellington boasts a number of luxury guesthouses and budget B&Bs.

Around the area

There are delightful walks in local nature reserves, but horse riding through the wine estates is something quite special.

DID YOU KNOW?

Andrew Geddes Bain was the father of Thomas Bain, who built the famous Swartberg Pass. 

 

Before 1840, the Western Cape town of Wellington went by a couple of other names, depending on whether you were Dutch or French Huguenot. The French called it Val du Charron and the Dutch called it Wagenmakersvallei - both meaning Cartwright's Valley. But Sir George Napier, governor of the Cape, felt that his personal naval hero needed a lovely little village named in his honour.

Wellington Town's real connection with the rest of South Africa came, however, 13 years later when the legendary Andrew Geddes Bain connected it to Ceres and the Tulbagh Valley after he completed Bain's Kloof Pass. It was his first road.

Today, as you drive up into Bain's Kloof mountain pass to Wellington, you pass wine cellars of note. Near the top, you're in the Witte River area, which mountain hikers love because it leads to a place called Paradise Valley, which blooms madly in season and offers up all manner of clear rock pools for swimming in.

Bain's Kloof Pass is lovely, and made more attractive by the legends that surround its construction. Bain completed the nearby Michell's Pass in the mid-1840s and moved his crew up to the new site, where the Witte River cut into the Limiet Mountains. He basically had a village built to accommodate the ‘highwaymen, more accustomed to blasting and blazing' than the civilised life down below.

His workers were mainly convicts, doing their time in these mountains, and they were accommodated in special barracks. To this Bain added a hospital, kitchens, stables, blacksmiths' and carpenters' quarters, a church, a school and a recreational area. There was a constant consignment of 400-odd men who worked on the 18-kilometre-long Bain's Kloof Pass. They completed it in 4 years.