We were on the road by seven o'clock and made our way relatively easily through the suprisingly heavy morning traffic around Hermanus town. Hermanus has grown dramatically - a fellow we were talking to in Bot River a few days earlier described it as having become too big for its boots. It's certainly too big for its roads.

After about 10 kilometers of cool and easy riding, the wind suddenly picked up and the next twenty kilometers to Stanford was a hard slog. There is no shoulder east of Hermanus and at times we were simply terrified by the fast and aggressive traffic. Of course there are always exceptions and I must say that the ost likely culprits, the heavy truck drivers, were in actual fact incredibly courteous and considerate. I certainly wouldn't recommend this road to other cycle tourists.

Our feelings were confirmed when we were met by two mountain bikers training quite seriously (out on a 100km ride) and they were riding on the gravel verge on the opposite side of the road to avoid the traffic. We met up with them for breakfast in Stanford and they said they were too scared to ride on the road on the section from Hermanus that we had just completed and that we were crazy to do it. One of them had been knocked off his bike twice and was out of cycling for six months after a major shoulder injury.

After breakfast we tackled the climb over the hills to Gansbaai where we decided to call it a day because the wind wasn't going to get any easier. We also needed to get some urgent work done so we've booked into a simple self-catering guesthouse, Mc Clarke's Hideaway, for the night.

Four days without punctures !