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Namaqualand Flowers near Clanwilliam
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We've lived in Cape Town for years and in the past have made a few half-hearted attempts to see the famous spring flowers up the West Coast.
We only ever went as far as Langebaan and that’s just the START of the Flower Route!
Langebaan and the Postberg section of the West Coast National Park are great if you only have time for a day trip. But if you want to go see whole hog, you'll need to venture a bit further.
This year we got the family as far as b>Clanwilliam (3 hours' drive from Cape Town). We have Springbok in our sights for next year – that’s more like 5 hours plus!
The N7 is a good national road and in places it winds over spectacular passes, so it’s pretty scenic too.
And that's before you even count the floral spectacle that will meet your eyes!
Am I sounding a bit over enthusiastic? That's because incredibly beautiful scenes are still etched on my retinas!
Here's a little forestaste for you...
Where is the Flower Route?
When we’ve headed out on flower ‘missions’ before I’ve always felt a bit aimless. I wondered if there were particular places that were very spectacular that we didn’t know about! Now that I have far more concrete ideas of where to go, that need not be YOUR fate.
You can actually see amazing spring flowers in parts of Cape Town! For example the slopes of Signal Hill above de Waterkant are peppered with white daisies in August and September.
But the real flower show, the one that makes the newspapers every August and gets the botanists' juices flowing, is farther north.
Postberg is the closest ‘hotspot’. It is a small section of the West Coast National Park close to Langebaan and is only open during the flower season.
It is less than an hour’s drive from Cape Town, either via the R27 west coast road from Bloubergstrand or on the N7 which runs a little inland.
On from there you get Clanwilliam and the surrounding area which includes Vanrhynsdorp and Nieuwoudtville.
This was our destination this year and we spent a weekend soaking up sights we had imagined but which way surpassed our expectations
The Namaqualand flowers are unique because of their diversity, their short flowering period and the sheer abundance of them in such an arid landscape. For the botanically-minded they are fascinating for more scientific reasons, but that’s a story of its own!
My advice to you is to visit tourist information as soon as you reach your chosen destination. They will be able to point you in the direction of the best flower displays. In our case it was the Biedouw Valley,, some 65km beyond Clanwilliam, down hairpin passes on gravel roads.
Was it worth it? Yes, it was!
This was the view from part way down the last mountain. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks – orange rocks? Lichen? No – flowers!!
Then we got closer – and oh my word.
Flowers.
All in different shapes and sizes and lots of different colours.
You can step between them (take care not to trample them please!) and study them at leisure. And take as many photos as you can fit on a film or memory stick!
Namaqualand Flowers Photo Gallery
Our first view of the Biedouw Valley
More and yet more Namaqualand flowers!
Delicate blooms up close
Big sky country -- majestic mountains
We loved this trip! The kids had a ball and it was like being on a different planet.
We left Cape Town enveloped in the rain and drove out into clear skies and brilliant sunshine for 2 days. When we returned, the same storm was still lashing the Peninsula!
Take my advice. Plan to visit the spring flowers next August or September.
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