Hogsback and the Amatola

Indigenous Afromontane Forest On The Amatola Escarpment, Which Is A Rare And Shrinking Habitat In South Africa, With Waterfalls Through The Kloofs, The Six Day Amatola Trail Widely Called The Toughest Hike In The Country, And A Mist Belt Village Of Cottages And Craft Studios That Tells Visitors Tolkien Took His Landscapes From Here A Story With Nothing Behind It · Hogsback, Eastern Cape

Hogsback sits at about thirteen hundred metres on the Amatola escarpment, wrapped in indigenous Afromontane forest, and it is in cloud for a great deal of the year. That forest is the point: it is a rare and shrinking habitat in South Africa, full of yellowwoods, tree ferns and samango monkeys, with waterfalls down the kloofs and the six-day Amatola Trail running through it - widely called the hardest hike in the country and booked well ahead. The village itself is cottages, craft studios, a hotel with a fire and a great deal of mist. It also tells every visitor that JRR Tolkien took his landscapes from these mountains, which makes a good story and has nothing whatever behind it; he left South Africa aged three from Bloemfontein, six hundred kilometres away. The row says so rather than repeating it. It is malaria-free, genuinely cold, and almost nobody from outside the province comes here.

In the Amatola mountains 150 km north-west of East London, above the Tyume valley, Hogsback, Eastern Cape, South Africa

A forest village rather than a gated site. The indigenous forest and the waterfall walks are reached on trails from the village and from forestry access points, with small fees where anybody collects them, and daylight is the only sensible window. THE SIX-DAY AMATOLA TRAIL IS BOOKED WELL AHEAD through the forestry authority, is genuinely hard, and carries overnight huts rather than camping. The craft studios, the hotel and the village restaurants keep their own hours and several close on Mondays and Tuesdays; the village is busiest at weekends and in South African school holidays. MIST CLOSES VISIBILITY ON THE ROAD IN AND ON THE TRAILS OFTEN, in any season. Hogsback is reached on about twenty kilometres of winding tar off the R63 from Alice, a hundred and fifty kilometres from East London. It is MALARIA-FREE and cold.

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