2003 hardcover with 224 pages in very good condition. R60 postage in SA. Includes
Du Toit’s Kloof Pass
Swartberg Pass
Chapman’s Peak Drive
Sir Lowry’s Pass
Bain’s Kloof
Outeniqua Pass
Groot River and Bloukrans Passes in the Tsitsikamma area
Illustrated throughout with full-colour and sepia photographs and accompanied by helpful maps, The Romance of Cape Mountain Passes is a book for those with a love of the open road, an interest in history and a delight in the triumphs of engineering, human ingenuity and imagination.
About the author
A retired civil engineer and himself a distinguished padmaker, Graham Ross was born in Cape Town and worked for the Cape Provincial Roads Department and later for Ninham Shand. He is the author of a number of professional papers, articles and publications and is a member of several professional organizations.
There are more than 490 mountain passes in the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape, many of them more than a century old and the product of considerable engineering feats. They provide ways through and over the natural barriers in the area, giving access to regions and communities, and offering the infrastructure that makes for a thriving economic and social life. They also pass through spectacular natural scenery and are in themselves objects of great beauty and ingenuity. Combining careful research with a readable style and nice sense of humour, this title tells some wonderful stories and makes one long to head for the mountains. But this is not old history warmed up: the author brings a lifetime's experience as an engineer and padmaker to bear on his subject, and has the knack of conveying, in easily understandable terms, the extent of the engineering problems and achievements which each pass involved. At the same time he not only is concerned with the original construction, often in the nineteenth century, but pursues their histories up to the present, describing the second and third waves of pass-building that occurred in the twentieth century, first in the 1940s and 50s and latterly in the 1970s and 80s.
