Adventure in South Africa

Nine nights and around 990 miles in a loop from Cape Town on a Royal Enfield, taking in the inland alternative to the Garden Route, two serious passes and the Cape of Good Hope.

Cape Town opens it with Table Mountain, the waterfront and a boat to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison and where the guides are often former inmates. Hermanus follows on the False Bay coast road, with the penguin colony at Betty’s Bay on the way.

Cape Agulhas comes next, the southernmost point of Africa and the official dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, then Barrydale below the Langeberg. The Tradouw Pass carries the route into the Klein Karoo and onto Route 62, the inland road that runs parallel to the coast through wine country and sees far less traffic. Oudtshoorn gets two days for the Cango Caves, the Meiringspoort gorge and the optional Swartberg Pass, a gravel road built by convict labour in the 1880s that climbs to 1,600 metres and is a national monument in its own right.

Matjiesfontein follows, a preserved Victorian railway hamlet, then Montagu with a jeep safari and a braai, and Franschhoek for the hot springs, the Huguenot wine valley and its pass. The return runs through Simon’s Town, a former Royal Navy base, to the Cape of Good Hope and back along Chapman’s Peak Drive, which is cut into the cliff above the sea and is among the finest coastal roads anywhere. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person.