Author: Shannon Butcher

The last day of riding in South Africa. How did we get here so quick? It seemed that we’d only just started, but at the same time we’d covered a whole heap of things in the two weeks we’d been on the road.

This was a different day of riding in two ways: first of all, it was cloudy with showers forecast. For the first time on the tour I closed the air-vents in my jacket, and as if by a miracle I wasn’t instantly covered in sweat.

Today was another long slog of 400+km. But the reward at the end was big too: Cape Agulhas, Africa’s southernmost point.

This was a long day in the saddle. We left the Mount Camdeboo Nature Reserve nice and early to make the most of the cool temperature because the forecast for the day was 39°C.

This was not a long day in the saddle, but it was a significant one: Today our progress to the East came to an end, and we started make our ziggedy zaggedy way back to Cape Town.

Day six was the first one where we didn’t even touch the bikes. Instead we headed off to a safari in the Addo Elephant National Park.

After two nights in Oudtshoorn, we were on the move again. And today’s ride was a long one – 455km of country lanes to Addo, near Port Elizabeth.

This was always going to be a day of fun. We started with a visit to an ostrich farm, and then took on a circular route on the bikes covering both tarmac and dirt mountain passes, and ending up exactly where we had started from, Oudtshoorn.

I thought that the second day of riding had been hot, with temperatures climbing to 34°C. But as I was staring at my bike’s dash in disbelief, I was faced with a reading of 39°C.

The second day started with us negotiating our way out of Cape Town, following the coast north to a nice viewpoint in Bloubergstrand just outside the city where you got a nice view of Table Mountain – and today there was no cloud restricting the view.