Let us be honest with you before you book: it will probably rain.
Hogsback sits high in the Amathole Mountains, and mist is not an occasional visitor here. It is a resident. It rolls across the lawn in the early morning, sits in the trees until ten, and comes back at dusk. Some weekends it never really leaves.
We could leave that out of this page. Most places would. But the people who love camping at Maylodge are the ones who knew what they were coming for, and the ones who have a miserable weekend are the ones who packed for the Karoo.
So here is the real description of camping with us.
You live outside
That is the whole thing, really.
At most campsites you sleep outside and do everything else indoors or in your car. Here you actually live outside for a few days. You cook outside. You eat at a log table under the trees. You make a fire because you want the fire, not just because supper needs cooking. The day is shaped by light and weather instead of by a screen.
And then you wake up in the garden.
Not in a parking bay with numbered lines, and not on a field. Maylodge is an old Hogsback garden, which means oaks with trunks you cannot get your arms around, azaleas that go off like fireworks in September, wild garlic through the grass, and lawn running down between the trees. You unzip the tent at six and that is what is there, usually with mist still lying in it.
That is the trade. You put up with wet boots, and you get a morning that people drive a long way to photograph.
What makes the wet part survivable
This is where we are different from the other camping options in the village, and it is worth being specific.
Misty Campsite has its own bathroom. Not a shared ablution block with a queue at seven in the morning. Yours, with hot water, for the length of your stay.
And we will say something immodest about that bathroom, because it is the thing we would tell a friend first.
It has a clear polycarbonate roof. So you run a hot bath, put the heater on, turn the light off, and lie in the warm with the mist and the branches and the weather going on directly above you, close enough to touch. In winter you can watch it rain on the roof from a hot bath in a warm room. It is, without exaggeration, one of the great experiences of camping anywhere, and it is the single thing guests mention most when they come back.
There is a freestanding bath, a wall of small timber-framed windows looking out into the trees, and a hot outdoor shower on the deck just outside the door for the days the weather is kind.
A campsite is not usually where you go for the bathroom. This one might be.
It has its own kitchen, under cover, with a gas hob, a fridge, a proper sink and a kettle. When the rain comes down sideways at supper time, you are not crouching under a car boot trying to light a gas burner.
And it has electricity at the site. Charge the phones, run a light, keep the fridge going, dry wet things out overnight.
Most importantly: bring an electric blanket. We are serious about this one. Hogsback nights are cold most of the year, and an electric blanket in a tent is one of the great small luxuries of life. You climb into a warm bed with the mist outside and the fire dying down, and the whole cold-and-wet question simply stops mattering. Guests who try it once never camp here without one again.
Pitch wherever you like
Here is the part that surprises people. The campsite is not a row of marked bays. It is a large piece of ground, and it is yours.
You can pitch right next to the kitchen and bathroom, which is what most families with small children do, and what everyone does when the weather looks bad. Thirty seconds from tent to hot shower.
Or you can walk out into the grounds and set up wherever you like — under a particular tree, at the edge of the trees, out where you cannot see another soul. Some people move halfway through the week once they have worked out where the morning sun lands.
It is your space for the stay, not a numbered slot with neighbours a metre away on either side. For a family or a group of friends, that is the difference between a campsite and somewhere that feels like your own patch of mountain for a few days.
Those three things are the difference between a wet weekend you laugh about and a wet weekend you cut short. A tent is a fine place to sleep in the rain. It is a terrible place to spend a whole afternoon. So we built the campsite around the assumption that the weather will turn, because it will.
You are in the village, not an hour out of it
The campsite is in Hogsback itself. That matters more than it sounds.
If the mist closes in and nobody feels like cooking, you walk to supper. The pubs, the restaurants and the chocolate shop are a stroll away, not a drive down a dirt road in the dark. If you forget something, the shops are right there.
But the thing our campers end up talking about is the morning walk for coffee.
You crawl out of a warm bed into a cold, misty garden. You pull on a jacket and walk into the village while everything is still dripping. You have a coffee and a proper breakfast that you did not have to cook or wash up after. Then you walk back through the trees to your own patch of ground, and the day has not even started yet.
Do that three mornings in a row and you will understand why people keep coming back. It is not a holiday activity. It is a way of living for a few days, and it is very hard to give up.
It also means the walks start at your tent. The waterfalls, the Labyrinth, the Eco-Shrine, the arboretum, the big trees. You are not driving to the trailhead, you are already at it.
And when you have had enough of the weather, there is a fire indoors
This is the part that makes a wet week work, and it is the reason we can be so relaxed about telling you it rains.
Happy Hogs is our pub, barely 300 metres from the campsite, and it is a sister business to Maylodge — so our campers are welcome there as our own. It has a lounge with a fireplace and a proper reading corner, and nobody will move you along.
On the days the rain sets in and nobody fancies a hike, that is exactly where our own family ends up: books, board games, and a great deal of hot chocolate in front of the fire. You can lose an entire grey afternoon there very happily.
So the choice on a bad-weather day is not between a damp tent and driving home. It is between a warm room with a fire in it and a hot bath under a clear roof, and you can be back in your tent the moment the mist lifts.
For the 4×4 and rooftop-tent crowd
If you are here for the passes, this is a better base than a hotel lawn.
Michell’s Pass, Wolf River Pass, the Wolfridge Cutline and Dontsa Pass are all within reach of a day trip from here. The site takes rooftop tents and off-road trailers, there is room to turn and level, and at the end of the day you have your own bathroom, your own kitchen, your own power and your own fire instead of sharing a communal space with a tour group.
Small group, private site, in the village. Come back muddy and nobody minds.
What to bring (take this seriously)
- An electric blanket. The single best thing you can pack. There is power at every site — use it.
- A proper rain jacket. Not a windbreaker. It rains sideways here.
- A second pair of shoes. Whatever you arrive in will get wet on day one.
- Warm layers, whatever the month. Hogsback is cold at night in summer and properly cold in winter. It snows some winters.
- A groundsheet and a tent you trust. If your tent leaks a little at home, it will leak a lot here.
- A book. There will be an afternoon when the rain wins, and that is not a bad thing.
- A head torch. There is no light pollution, which is wonderful, and very dark.
What you do not need to bring: firewood, water, a bathroom plan or a wet-weather contingency. We keep a good stock of wood on site, the tap water is excellent, and the rest we have covered.
And you will not be left to work it out on your own. Taryn is on site and genuinely helpful — wood, a hand with something, or honest advice on which walk is worth doing in the weather you have been given. Ask her. That is what she is there for.
When to come
We have now camped here in every season ourselves, and they are genuinely four different holidays. There is no bad time, only different ones.
September to November is the garden at its best. Azaleas, rhododendrons, wild garlic, everything flowering at once. Warm days, cold nights, rain most weeks.
December to February is green, lush and busy. Book early for the school holidays.
March to May is the quietest and, for our money, the loveliest. Autumn colour, fewer people, and the best chance of a few clear days in a row.
June to August is cold, misty and atmospheric. Fewer campers, more fires. Christmas in July fills the village, so book well ahead for that weekend.
Rates and booking
Camping is from R250 per person per night, which includes your own bathroom, your own kitchen, hot water and electricity.
The best rate is always direct. You can book through the site, or message us on WhatsApp and talk to an actual person about what you need, which we prefer anyway.
Bring the rain jacket. You will be fine.
Book Misty Campsite — Check Availability
Real-time availability and secure online payment via Nightsbridge. More about the site on the Misty Campsite page.