Bain's Passes

Houw Hoek Pass

AndrewAttributed

Reconstructed an existing road. The original was built under Sir Lowry Cole; Bain's work was a rebuild, not a new pass.

N2Route
7.2 kmLength
340 mSummit
N2 dual carriageway. The old gravel Houwhoek Pass road survives nearby, following the Jakkals River.Surface

See it on the mapLog your drive

Before you go

Dual-carriageway N2 highway pass; heavy traffic and high speeds require caution.

Road conditions change with weather, floods, fires and roadworks. Check the latest conditions with the road authority or local tourism office before you leave, and carry offline maps.

About this pass

The Houw Hoek is the Overberg counterpart to Sir Lowry's Pass: Sir Lowry's climbs onto the plateau, Houw Hoek drops to the coastal plain. The first road went straight up and straight down between the Houw Hoek Inn and the Bot River, because ox-wagons pulled better on straight grades than on sharp bends. It was notoriously dangerous, with runaway wagons and travellers giving thanks on getting through. Charles Michell built a more refined road in 1831 for Governor Sir Lowry Cole, makeshift partly because he and Cole had been criticised by the Colonial Office for overspending on Sir Lowry's Pass. Bain improved Michell's road in 1846.

A fire on the summit exposed traces of four different routes, which historians still piece together. Around the Anglo-Boer War a route was added through the Poespas River valley ("Poespas" roughly means higgledy-piggledy), and British soldiers cut a rough gravel "Railway Pass" above the railway in the lower Poespas valley; it is narrow, rocky and unmarked, and starts at a small Koffie Kraal sign, for experienced drivers only. In the 1930s the Boer War road was abandoned for a new summit road to modern standards, widened in the 1970s into today's four-lane N2. The Houw Hoek Hotel near the summit (formerly the Houw Hoek Inn) has a ground floor dating from 1779 and is described as one of the oldest licensed hotels in the country. The origin of the name is uncertain and it has been spelled Hou, Houw and Hout. SAHO also lists the pass among those on which convict labour may have been used, but gives only its location. Ross's chronology: first used by Olof Bergh with two wagons in 1682, and by Schrijver in 1689. Michell's road was opened on 13 April 1831 with festivity (cannon-fire and a horse-drawn vehicle galloping to the summit to show the ox-wagon era was ending). Michell had estimated £610 6s 4d for the five kilometres and reported the finished road, completed by 11 February 1832, as having "become one of the best bits of Road in the Colony from having ranked among the worst". By 1846 it needed repair; Bain, who was building Michell's Pass 75 miles away, took charge, and the Central Road Board reported in February 1847 that "the new pass of the Houw Hoek was opened to the public in January last, to the great joy of every person who had experienced the severe trials of the old". It cost £4,211 (Mossop 1927). The Burman account counts five routes in all: the original over the mountain, Michell's Cole's Pass, Bain's, the post-Boer War "railway pass", the late 1930s National Road, and a sixth in 1976 as a dual carriageway.

History

Built by
Reconstructed an existing road. The original was built under Sir Lowry Cole; Bain's work was a rebuild, not a new pass.
Built
Original road c.1830s under Cole. Bain's reconstruction 1846, costing £4,211 (geocaching.com history note).
Location
N2 between Grabouw and Botrivier, Western Cape
Later work
Rebuilt.Andrew Bain, 1846Bypassed.A dual-carriageway N2 pass was later built beside the old pass; the old gravel road is disused. Date not found.
Notes
Sources differ on the builder of the first wagon road: Southafrica.co.za credits Michell (1831) with the refined road and Bain with improving it in 1846; other cards' sources call Bain's 1846 work a reconstruction. The £4,211 cost comes from a single low-authority source. Wikipedia's page has no history beyond location and the hotel; the 1779 date is from the hotel's Wikipedia page only. Ross dates Bain's reconstruction 1846–47 (opened January 1847), with one entry giving 1848. The £4,211 figure now has a cited source (Mossop 1927). An older, longer route called Klein Houw Hoek ran down the valley north of the mountain.

Find it

Pin
-34.21375, 19.16725
Open in
OpenStreetMap · Google Maps · OpenTopoMap

Sources

More Bain passes, roads and bridges

Passes

Roads

Bridges