Sea to Safari (Guided)

Seven nights from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, guided, with a riding guide on the road throughout and a support vehicle behind.

This is the guided version of the same route Ride Expeditions sell self-guided for a few hundred pounds less, and the difference is a guide out front: useful on the gravel sections, and the reason some riders pick it.

Chapman’s Peak Drive comes first out of Cape Town, cut into the cliff above the Atlantic, then the Cederberg, a sandstone wilderness with rock art several thousand years old in it, and the Tankwa Karoo. Hermanus follows, rated the best land-based whale watching anywhere, where southern right whales come into the bay to calve between June and November, with a penguin colony at Betty’s Bay. The Garden Route runs east over the Montagu Pass, then Addo Elephant National Park, where the big five are all present and giraffe and ostrich turn up at the lodge.

Bike hire is included, on a KTM 790 Adventure with a BMW R1250 or R1300 GS available as an upgrade, and a discount applies for anyone bringing their own. Eight days covers a great deal of the Western Cape and a safari at the end of it, which is an unusual combination for a bike tour. No wildlife sighting can be promised, and the whale season is what fixes the dates. Addo is malaria free, which is worth knowing when comparing it with parks further north. Eight days is also enough to cross from the Atlantic side to the Indian Ocean side of the Cape, which is a bigger change in landscape than the distance suggests.