Cape Crusader

Eleven nights across the Cape, guided, on the hardest of the South African routes in the range, and the one most riders work up to.

Chapman’s Peak Drive comes first out of Cape Town, with the Table Mountain cable car available for anyone arriving early, then the Cederberg, a sandstone wilderness with rock art several thousand years old in it, and the Tankwa Karoo beyond. Hermanus follows on the coast, rated the best land-based whale watching anywhere, with a penguin colony at Betty’s Bay.

The Hell is the reason this tour exists: a valley in the Swartberg mountains, reached by an optional gravel descent, which was cut off from the rest of the country until a road went in during the 1960s and where the night is spent in a cave. The Baviaanskloof follows, a long stretch of rough track through a wilderness area, then a safari lodge with giraffe and ostrich, and Addo Elephant National Park at the end, where the big five are all present.

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. Twelve days at this grade assumes real gravel experience: the Baviaanskloof and the descent into The Hell are both genuinely rough and neither is a place to be caught in the wet. No wildlife sighting can be promised, and the whale season at Hermanus runs between June and November. What the route delivers that the easier Cape tours do not is the Swartberg and the Baviaanskloof, which are the two best off-road sections in the country.