October 18, 2024
Day 13-16: J-Bay to Wilderness
We finally left Jeffries Bay in the morning, feeling like this was day 1 again, rather than almost 2 weeks in. Cath had conveniently been sick for almost exactly a whole weather system – we had a tail wind again, despite the prevailing wind coming from the west.
We took the R102 out of town. The N2 is a much bigger road and is basically parallel with the R102 and thankfully takes the lion’s share of the traffic.
About 20 km from Humansdorp we turned right onto the R62. Another “R” (regional?) road. This road took us gently up the Langkloof, a valley between two reasonable mountain ranges (Kouga to the north, Tsitsikamma to the south). We picked the northern road over the southern, coastal, road because it set us up to ride a pass further up the valley.
It’s spring, but we had a string of hot, sunny, days. Apparently unseasonably hot. There is almost no shade on the R62. A few times over almost two days grinding up the valley we had to pull well off the road to find some shade.
Although, there are plenty of trees around. Starting with lots of blue gums. Which are weeds here. It’s a shame that such beautiful trees are weeds – but you can see that they take over whole areas and suppress anything growing underneath them. Cath has spotted Protea growing wild. And other types of Protea. Proteas. And Wattle, and Leucadendron and lots of other pretty flowers that look familiar but not quite. Further up the valley (roughly past Joubertina) there are apple orchards as far up the valley sides as the irrigation will allow.
We spent one night camping at a terrible campsite in Joubertina (expensive at 350 Rand for 2 people, and noisy with a refrigerated truck pulling in and clattering away all night). We were blown there by the tailwind, otherwise we should have stopped before the town. A second surprise at Joubertina – all the shops shut in the short period we went to put up the tent. Even the take-away shops had shut by 18:30. Pity, we missed out on a cooked dinner. We’d been feeding well in Jeffries, so probably for the best.
We turned south at Avontuur, into the mountain range. We think this is the boundary of the Outeniqua and Tsitsikamma mountain ranges. Out of the valley, the road is dirt – but a good recently graded dirt road. A short climb to Prince Alfred’s pass (1032m apparently) and then a much more dramatic fall through a very narrow valley (a gorge perhaps) to a couple of houses at De Vlugt. Second night camping here, although the campsite value for money was not getting better – patch of grass, plenty of mozzies, cold shower, crazy loud music until 23:00 for 300 rand (150 pp). They did cook us up a burger though, so I’m not sure if we should forgive them for driving the speakers well into distortion.
We did meet Otto (mountain biker on a multi-day gravel bike ride to the start of a race) in the campground. He gave us a few very useful route ideas. We took one the next day. Further down the valley was a national park – where they did let the trees grow close to the road, and it made such a difference to be cycling in shade. Much more pleasant!
Heading south from De Vlugt was a couple of additional passes. Again, another hot and dry day. It has rained a little overnight, it was either that or the lack of being freshly graded, but the dust was much less of a problem. We bumped into a few small snakes on the road. Surely dead – like almost every snake you see from a bike. Except – did that one move? Oh! And another. We called it the valley of snakes. Probably a bit of an exaggeration – there were only two. A bit of an internet search and the couple we saw don’t look anything like the exciting varieties they have (black mamba, cape cobra, boomslang). We’ll keep looking.
We’d had a couple of 6 hour days, so it would have been good to get to Knysna quickly, but Otto suggested we take the Kom Se Pad road – a back way through the national park. This was a great suggestion. Maybe a little bit more climbing (but only a little) and a lovely forest road. Very few cars. Good trees. Several monkeys and baboons. Some very colourful birds.
This dropped us back on the coast. We hit up a backpackers hostel and devoured some hamburgers. Pretty hungry for only two days since the last big place!
Next day we started far too slowly. Had to clean the dust from the bike chains from the Prince Alfred’s pass road. And so bumped into Peter from Poland who has been cycling since September around Namibia and now South Africa. He had to head south because it was too hot in Namibia. Doesn’t bode well for us heading into the furnace in a few weeks.
From Knysna we suffered terrible indecision and started heading out on the biggest (and hopefully the most direct) road toward George, the N2. With all the trucks and a nice wide shoulder. Only a few kilometres later we decided to take the smaller road after all – the seven passes road. The one that several people made it sound like was some sort of epic journey. It was a bit of extra climbing. The road climbed up to and then followed the ridge as far we took it, past dairy farms and holiday houses. We may have missed the best bit (up Phantom pass), but we weren’t going to go back to find out. Never go back!
We dropped back to the coast, and then took the N2 for a bit to get to Wilderness. Cath had found a backpackers outside of town where we might hole up for a day. This was several kilometres and 160m above the town - just far enough to not want to ride back for more food, but high enough for a nice view over the bay. The weather report suggests it’ll be getting wet overnight and tomorrow. Yes, a little bit of rain has scared us off. It’ll only be a little bit – even though the forecast says 10-20mm.
Today's ride: 342 km (212 miles)
Total: 471 km (292 miles)
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