Full testimonials, with names, dates and the trip taken.

In-depth knowledge of wine and the Western Cape, a warm welcome from the start, and will make you feel at home while you explore the many vineyards South Africa has to offer. Truly top glass.

Extremely knowledgeable, friendly and reliable. Don't see how you could do better!

I will be honest: I spent four months worrying about this trip and about ninety minutes actually worrying once we were there. Angie was inside the terminal before we had cleared passport control, the car seats were already fitted, and she knew both our children's names and ages before she met them. By day three my husband had stopped checking the news and by day six I had stopped counting bags. The thing I did not expect was how much thought had gone into the pacing. There was a day in the middle with nothing on it at all, which I would never have planned myself and which saved the rest of the week. The penguins were on day two rather than day six, which in hindsight was obviously right. And the zip line thing above Elgin is the only part of any holiday my eleven-year-old has ever described as the best day of his life.

We had been quite specific that we did not want a honeymoon that felt organised at, and this was the first company that seemed to actually hear it. Nine days, three places, and about half the schedule anyone else had proposed. What we paid for, it turns out, was the absence of decisions. Every restaurant was booked at the right hour. The estate in Franschhoek did not put us at a counter with a tour bus. The hotel in Hermanus moved us to a room facing the water without our asking, which I later found out was because Sam had asked. Nobody scattered rose petals anywhere, which we had specifically requested and which apparently is harder to achieve than you would think.

Nine of us, aged from four to seventy-eight, which is not a party most operators want. Cape Compass did not blink at it. They asked more questions about my mother's mobility than about our budget, and every viewpoint on the peninsula day turned out to be one she could actually reach. The vehicle was large enough that nobody had to sit in the back and shout. The guide learned by the second day who needed lunch at noon and who wanted to keep walking, and split us up accordingly without making it awkward. I have organised family holidays before and I have never had one where I did not, at some point, want to go home.

We were nervous about Cape Town and we said so in the enquiry form. Rather than telling us we were being silly, they answered it properly: where we would be, why those areas, what the guide does and does not do, and what happens if something goes wrong. That reply was the reason we booked. The whales at Hermanus were the highlight for our teenagers, which none of us predicted. We had it in the itinerary as a stopover and ended up wishing we had given it two nights.

I have done a fair amount of travelling for work and I am difficult about logistics. Ten days, no internal flights at all, and not a single moment where I did not know what was happening next or who was responsible for it. The advice I valued most was the advice against things. I wanted to bolt a safari onto the end and was told, politely and with reasons, that in the days I had it would turn one good trip into two rushed ones. They were right. It is not what most companies do when you offer to spend more money with them.

A very well-run week and I would use them again. My only reservation is that our Winelands night was on an estate a fair way out of Stellenbosch, and having said we liked walking to dinner we then could not. That was a mismatch between what we asked for and what was booked, and to be fair it was fixed for the second night within an hour of my mentioning it. Everything else was faultless. The cliff path at Hermanus at seven in the morning, with the whales below us and nobody else there, was worth the entire trip.

Two adults, three children under ten, and eight days that never once required us to be anywhere at half past five in the morning. The one early start, for the penguins, they explained the reason for the night before and everybody went along with it happily. The children still talk about the penguins. The adults still talk about the day in the middle with nothing planned.

We went in the Cape winter, which everyone told us was the wrong time, and it was the best possible advice we ignored. The city was quiet and clear between the fronts, the wine estates had fires lit and nobody in them, and there were whales in Walker Bay in July with about six other people on the cliff path. Cape Compass were straight with us about the trade-offs rather than selling us a season. That is the whole reason we trusted the rest of it.