TOWN
PANORAMA ROUTE
The Panorama Route starts at Long Tom Pass, between Mashishing (Lydenburg) and Sabie, and winds its way north for more than 160 km to Echo Caves near Ohrigstad. It goes through the towns of Sabie and Graskop, follows the Blyde River Canyon and includes many attractions like Lisbon Falls and Berlin Falls, Pinnacle Rock, God’s Window, Bourke’s Luck Potholes, the Lowveld viewpoint and the Three Rondavels viewpoint.
Happy voices mingle with clinking beer bottles and music on the stoep at Sabie Brewing Company. In the street outside, a motorcycle revs behind a fully loaded logging truck. Yup, this is forestry country and from the brewery you can see how the northern Drakensberg wraps around the town – every hill is covered in green plantations or indigenous forests.
Earlier this morning I visited the Forestry Museum and read that plantations are only established in areas where the annual rainfall is higher than 800 mm – so mostly on the upper reaches of catchment areas where there are also lots of rivers. Lots of rivers at high- altitudes mean trout, and
