About The Cederberg Trail
A family-built hiking trail through the private Klipopmekaar wilderness, high in the Northern Cederberg
Bookings open Nov 2026
First hikers July 2027
90%+ of the wilderness is conserved
20+ years finding the route
Quick links
Trail background
The Cederberg Trail and Klipopmekaar Organic Rooibos Farm share the same vast 6,000-hectare pristine Northern Cederberg wilderness. Both are family-owned and family-managed, supported by a passionate team of hardworking management and staff.
The history of the farm, together with the family’s entrepreneurial spirit and long-standing passions for the Cederberg, nature conservation, organic rooibos, art and design, and hiking, have all shaped the trail. These threads come together in a private wilderness hiking experience that begins and ends on a working organic rooibos farm.
Between 2005 and 2011, the Bowsher family bought various neighbouring farms which today form the vast Klipopmekaar Wilderness and organic Rooibos Farm.
The Cederberg Trail was conceived and co-founded by husband-and-wife team, Richard and Karin Bowsher, both passionate hikers long before their love of walking and the outdoors inspired them to develop the trail.
The route itself was found and figured out over more than twenty years of hiking the Klipopmekaar wilderness with their friends, family and children: reading the valleys, the water, the rock, and the quiet places that only reveal themselves on foot.
In 2026 a team of hard-working mountaineers and trail builders completed the final trail path. From mid-2027, members of the public will be able to hike this private wilderness for the first time.
The Bowsher family’s goal is to build and share what is hoped to become one of South Africa’s most enjoyed hiking trails … for both current and future generations to experience … and for the trail to also hopefully inspire a love of the Cederberg, walking in the mountains, and the conservation of nature in general.
Over 90% of the Klipopmekaar wilderness is dedicated to private nature conservation and The Cederberg Trail. The other 10% is the thriving organic-certified Klipopmekaar Rooibos farm … and hikers will also enjoy a window into rooibos farming as they start and end the trail.
A passion for hiking is shared
Richard
Richard’s love of these mountains started when a SACS Junior School visit took him hiking in the central Cederberg in the early 1980s. Richard kept hiking further into the range throughout the 1980s with his 3rd Claremont Boy Scouts group of friends.
In the early 1990s he guided hiking groups down the Fish River Canyon. He has walked, and been inspired by, many of South Africa’s superb trails — including the Boland, Swellendam, Lemietberg, Otter, Outeniqua, Tsitsikamma, Whale, Blyde River Canyon, Pondo, Leopard, Fynbos, and Stone Folk trails among others.
Further afield he has trekked in the Kingdom of Bhutan Himalayas and Samaburuland in northern Kenya. He has spent several months hiking remote USA backcountry trails in the Glacier-Waterton, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Tetons, Arches and Grand Canyon national parks. He has also hiked in Hawaii, the Canadian Arctic, and Indonesia. In 2007 he organised a 120 km traverse of the Cederberg mountain range, and shortly afterwards hiked the 250 km Drakensberg Grand Traverse.
Karin
Karin brings similar passion and mileage to the team. She has walked the full 800 km Camino de Santiago, climbed Kilimanjaro, hiked the 54-mile Caledonian Challenge in the Scottish West Highlands, and walked many of South Africa’s most-loved trails, including the Tsitsikamma, Whale, Pondo, Leopard, Fynbos, and Stone Folk trails among others.
The route itself was not drawn first on a map and then imposed on the mountains. It was found.
Over more than twenty years of hiking the Klipopmekaar wilderness they worked out which valleys held the best waterfalls and potholes, where the geological wonderland opened up, and which mountain ridges gave the vistas worth the climb. The route that emerged takes in those places. It’s shaped for hiking and it’s a grand loop, so hikers keep meeting new experiences rather than retracing similar areas.
In 2024 Richard and Karin decided to build it. They teamed up with environmental consultants, town planners, architects, builders and trail builders, and have spent two to three years designing and constructing the route — aligning a commercial hiking trail with the ecology, the water, the rock and the quiet of a working wilderness rooibos farm.
In November 2026 the incredible 50 km trail was completed and bookings opened to the public, with the first trails starting from July 2027 onwards.
The trail opens for public bookings in November 2026. The first bookings are from July 2027 onwards. Every hiker receives a packet (or bag) of Klipopmekaar certified organic rooibos as a take-home gift.
Klipopmekaar Organic Rooibos Farm
The Cederberg Trail starts and ends at the heart of Klipopmekaar Organic Rooibos Farm. Hikers walk past rooibos fields at the beginning and end of the trail and get a glimpse into organic rooibos farming.
Rooibos is endemic to the region, and wild rooibos can be found growing in many valleys along the trail.
In 2007, Richard started a new career farming rooibos. The purchased farm fields had been farmed before, but there was no infrastructure, nobody lived on the farms, and neither water nor power was supplied to the farms.
The opportunity was to build a modern production and export business that stood apart through quality, authenticity, sustainability, transparency and direct global supply to premium tea brands.
In 2008 Klipopmekaar became one of the first independently certified organic rooibos farms. Klipopmekaar rooibos is certified organic by ECOCERT for supply to the European Union (EU), North America (NOP/USDA) and Japan (JAS) markets. Klipopmekaar is also Union of Ethical Biotrade (UEBT) and Rainforest Alliance certified.
Today Klipopmekaar is one of the largest and finest certified-organic rooibos farms in the rooibos industry. With a long-term commitment to excellent quality, single-estate origin and ethical production … the farm produces, processes and exports hundreds of tons of excellent quality organic rooibos direct to premium tea brands worldwide.
Klipopmekaar is a leader in regenerative agriculture. A core focus has been to minimise disturbance of living soil, build organic matter, and replenish what the harvest takes out: no-till farming, multi-seed cover crops, compost tea applications and solar-powered drip irrigation are areas in which the farm leads its industry.
In April 2024, Klipopmekaar became the first and only carbon net-negative rooibos producer and supplier in the industry. More than ten years of organic, no-till and regenerative farming has stored thousands of tons of soil carbon a year, against annual greenhouse-gas emissions in the low hundreds of tons from farm to client. The soils hold about ten times more CO2e than the rooibos produce emits from production all the way to client ports world-wide. So rooibos from the farm arrives as carbon net-zero.
The family’s approach to the land, the people who work it, and the business is meant to be sustainable, intergenerational and long term.
Click here for more information about Klipopmekaar Organic Rooibos Farm
The “home” of BOS Ice Tea
In 2009, Richard co-founded and launched BOS Ice Tea with brand-creator Grant Rushmere. Richard served as Chairman of the BOS Board of Directors until 2017. All BOS’s organic rooibos is sourced directly from Klipopmekaar and the farm is the “spiritual home” of the brand with the world-wide team gathering annually at the farm to connect with its rooibos and Cederberg wilderness heritage.
BOS was the first rooibos ice tea brand in the world. Its first products reached shelves in Cape Town in mid-2010 and since then it’s become a much-loved and iconic South African brand for people who enjoy healthier ice teas. The brand has travelled well beyond its country of origin to other markets world-wide.
In 2010 Richard established a relationship with not-for-profit organisation Greenpop and committed BOS Brands to planting and maintaining one tree for every 2,000 units sold. Through its long-standing partnership with Greenpop, BOS Brands has proudly funded the planting of over 40,000 indigenous trees across under-greened communities and reforestation sites in South Africa.
AfrikaBurn and creative joy at Klipopmekaar
Richard co-founded AfrikaBurn in 2006. He was one of the core group that brought the South African burn into being and was a key member involved in the not-for-profit organisation’s leadership until 2017. The annual AfrikaBurn event held in the Tankwa Karoo has grown from 750 to roughly 15,000 passionate participants today.
Over the years the Klipopmekaar farm and workshop became a home base for artists: Richard, Karin and their friends created and built many art installations, mutant vehicles, and theme camps for AfrikaBurn there … amongst the workshop tools, the rooibos tea and the mountains.
Click here to learn more about AfrikaBurn
The Magic Box
An invitation, not a rule
The spirit of AfrikaBurn is woven into aspects of The Cederberg Trail. One expression of participation, creativity and gifting is the “Magic Box” — Hikers are invited to bring their ‘Magic Box’ — not a real box, but rather a creation or sharing of theirs to give to their friends when the moment feels right: a song, a poem, a page from a book, a joke, a trick, a story, a toast, a bit of theatre, a silence they know how to hold.
It can be funny or serious, polished or sideways. Two minutes on a rock at lunch. After dark around the campfire. At a waterfall. Wherever the day opens a gap. Nobody has to do this. That’s the point. But when someone in the group does, the trail stops being only scenery and also becomes an experience you co-create for the joy of others.
Gather your friends and family. Pick your dates. Go hiking.
Self-guided and self-catered, or guided and catered. Either way, the path is marked, the bags move for you, and the wilderness is yours for four days.
