Jack is about two-foot-six, weighs 75kg, has short grey hair and while not precisely the owner of the cafe is very much its front-of-house face. He bounds between tables, gait like a lazy horse, barely able to see from under the droop of his brow. He poses with customers for photos. He’s the most famous Great Dane in Franschhoek – so famous that the Big Dog Cafe is named after him.
In turn, the Big Dog Cafe is a famous spot with local cyclists: safe racking for bikes, a cool canteen-hacienda vibe for patrons and an excellent meeting point for rolling out of town and up the Franschhoek Pass.
Across the table from me sits Kyle, our support car driver, and Jamie, an English ex-pat who married a South African and who somehow manages to find time to run a flagship bike store (Specialized), a cafe (Coffeeworks) and a bike tour business (Cape Vélo).
If it’s cycling you want in South Africa’s Western Cape, Jamie’s your guy, and today he’s cooked up an A-to-B ride of mixed surfaces that has the promise of being pretty punishing despite being ‘only’ 90 or so kilometres long.
As a general rule a kilometre off-road takes me 50% longer than a kilometre on it, so I’d posit it’s 50% harder on my body too. Better make that two pastel de natas please Jack.
Storied past
The Western Cape is South Africa’s largest wine region, with its viniculture dating back to Cape Town’s earliest days. Dutch navigator Jan van Riebeeck laid claim to this territory in 1652 and is said to have produced the first wines here in 1659.
Towns like Franschhoek abound, the Dutch having welcomed their French neighbours to this new colony on account of their winemaking skills. ‘Franschhoek’ is Dutch for ‘French corner’.
Custard tarts despatched, we grab our bikes and pedal down the main drag, Huguenot Road, named after the French Protestants who fled here when Louis XIV decided he really didn’t want them in France after all.
The king revoked the Edict of Nantes, issued by Henry IV in 1598, and replaced it with the Edict of Fontainebleau, issued in 1685 and stipulating France was to be solely Catholic, and Huguenot churches should hence be burnt.
It’s a sad truth that violence begets violence and suppression begets suppression, and that it is easier to learn about the history of a place like the Western Cape from the time of its European colonialists onwards.
Not far from here is a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela, fist in the air, commemorating his ‘Long Walk to Freedom’. It is positioned outside Drakenstein Prison (formerly Victor Verster Prison), Mandela’s last place of incarceration before being released on 11th February 1990.
As beautiful as South Africa is, such dichotomies are etched deep into its landscape and are rightly impossible to ignore.
Such things have also given Franschhoek its somewhat incongruous architecture. The mountains on our horizon are tall and ancient, yet the buildings to our right and left look like two-dimensional facades recently lifted from a Wild West movie.
Nothing is over a few storeys, and the frontages are porticoed, balconied and adorned with semi-circular windows. The town is also compact, and Jamie and I soon find ourselves at its limits, on the cusp of the Franschhoek Pass’s slopes.
The road turns zebra monochrome as light casts jagged stripes of shadow through the spindly boles of eucalyptus trees. The soil is the sandy-red of exotic places. A troop of baboons lives up to its collective noun by striding officially out of the scrub across our path.
Jamie warned me about these, exciting to encounter but to be treated with the utmost caution, especially if they’re carrying young on their backs as several in the group are.
Luckily these guys appear used to strangely dressed humans on bikes and pay us little attention, to the point where several plonk themselves in the road and stare wistfully into the distance like wise pensioners with broad noses. We pick our way cautiously around them and soon are back out of the trees and onto a more bald mountain.
Looking down, the sprawl of conurbations has been reduced to coloured boxes and the occasional silver flash as the sun hits a distant car window at just the right angle. Up the mountain I can see a lorry languidly making a last turn before it disappears around the hairpin that Jamie says precedes the top. From here I can’t tell – the road and the lorry could literally be dropping off a cliff behind, such is the view obscured by rising rock.
I start when I catch a thick, long shape with a trowel-like end lying on the verge. It’s a puff adder. We begin to make a wide arc before Jamie realises the snake has been run over.
Indeed there’s a spatter of blood by its diamond-shaped head. Strange place to have been hit, but Jamie explains that they slide up into car engine bays looking for warmth, then drop out on lay-bys only to get run over as the vehicle makes its exit. And although rare, like a baboon attack, it’s not unheard of for a snake to slither all the way into the footwell.
Coming down the mountain
We meet up with support driver Kyle at the crest of the pass and agree to see him at the bottom, taking our leave first given that we are the potentially faster vehicles.
Descending Franschhoek Pass is mesmeric in both speed and swoopiness. It appears totally different to the ascent, the colour of the road a much lighter grey, the colour of the mountains greener and sometimes purple, their scrub lower and more spiny.
We’re descending into Theewaters Nature Reserve, the lack of structures and manmade objects inspiring a sense of beauty and severity – beauty at the unspoilt country, severity at the magnitude and starkness.
Despite sunglasses, tears are streaming out of the corners of my eyes and drying just before they reach my temples. I daren’t look down at my speed – it’s often better not to know.
Jamie clearly isn’t paying much heed either, and although the tread on my tyres is more rumbly than usual I’m glad of their extra width as I attempt to carve arcs of a similar speed in Jamie’s wake.
The gradient finally peters out and we turn our pedals for the first time in minutes, hauling ourselves towards a glittering expanse of water, created by – and known as – the Theewaterskloofdam. ‘Kloof’, explains Jamie, effectively describes a valley, only perhaps one more glen-like, flatter and narrower.
Its companion suffix is ‘berg’, used much like it is in Europe, only tending to describe much higher things than you might find in Flanders. We pedal hard along the water’s edge, and such is our vantage point that we are able to take the T-junction at the bottom without braking. Very quickly we wish we hadn’t.
A sharp crack followed by the sound of dragging rubber and Jamie has rolled to a stop. The corner turned onto a bridge, and given the heat here bridges tend to feature a metal zipper-like set of teeth that allows the tarmac to expand and contract without pulling itself to pieces.
Unfortunately some of the zip’s teeth sit more like police stinger traps to a bike wheel, and Jamie has obliterated tyre and rim. His day is over, so he and Kyle disappear in a cloud of dust to our next rendezvous, Botrivier.
Gone but not forgotten
I’m no stranger to riding solo; I do rather enjoy the escape that comes when the stresses I carry into a ride are replaced by purely functional thoughts about what it feels like to be riding.
However I do miss Jamie, partly for his chipper demeanour and partly because he is really very good at picking the best lines for me to follow, something I need more than ever on a surface that’s gone from gravel-hardpack to gravel-washboard.
My bike skips over the corrugated surface like a cricket ball descending stairs, meanwhile my forearms buzz as if wired to a generator.
I find the edges of the road much more palatable until I encounter a – this time very much alive – snake, side-winding through the field next to me. I return to the washboards, not fancying my bare legs in a head-to-head.
As the road wears on, the washboards become fewer and further between, probably as the surroundings grow more remote. It’s acre upon acre of farmland, but this far into what feels like an interior, there are few signs of human influence.
There are times when the horizon is spectacularly symmetrical and flat. Riding on the crown of the road, my left-right vision is a mirror of red dirt, brown verge, tawny veld and golden beyond.
Ahead the sky pushes down onto the road in a blue horizontal line, while the road itself disappears into a dark red spot. I pedal in this trance for some time, the landscape so featureless I’m not entirely sure I’m moving at all. The sun is above the yardarm and my sweat carves shiny rivers through the dust stuck to my skin. I feel wonderfully tiny in this vast space.
We rejoin at the town of Botrivier, Jamie and Kyle in the bakkie, the Afrikaans name for a pick-up truck, its engine still idling to keep the aircon going. They’re parked in a quadrangle on the edge of town, and seeing I’m cooking good and proper offer me a seat in the cab while one of them dives into the minimart opposite.
This is dangerous territory but I can’t help myself – I’m soon lying with my feet across the chilled back seat and pushing a Galaxy ice cream into my face like I’ve been told I have 30 seconds to live.
The pleasure and respite this provides is ultimately hollow. I’ve gotten way too comfortable and emerging from the cool of the bakkie’s cab I feel like a tennis ball in a static storm, full of internal pressure, skin buzzing and radiating almost luminescent in front of my failing-to-adjust eyes.
But like the well-trained Pavlov’s dogs we cyclists are, the clicking of my cleats causes something to fire in my brain and legs, and I’m soon rolling again, this time along wide, smooth yet ultimately unedifying tarmac. Roads. Pff.
Happily it’s not for long, a brace of right turns and I’m back on gravel and it’s glorious. Here the road feels much more akin to a fire road, in that it cuts through trees and scrub in the way the previous gravel section bisected plains, and so in a sense now feels even more wild.
Along with scraggly pines, the eucalyptus trees are back, their bark peeling like silvery sunburn beneath the green-blue flutter of leaves. Any wind is blocked out by the trees, and as a consequence the hot air drapes across my body like I’m riding through blankets.
A distant cloud and engine splutter proves to be an ancient tractor, a vehicle even slower than I. We nod to each other as I pass, the even more ancient driver’s eyes smiling milkily from under a battered hat.
All of a sudden it seems like rush hour on this middle-of-nowhere road as a school bus comes hurtling towards me, kids leaning out the windows, arms waving. I wave back and I get the cheer I need.
Paradise lost
Without warning the gravel road morphs into tarmac as if this tarmac has been buried beneath the dirt all along. A few kilometres tick by, I turn onto a modern-looking road, I look at my bike computer and surmise this is the end of the gravel and quite soon the end of the ride.
In a sense I’m relieved as road-going is much easier, but overall I lament the passing of the dirt – the back-of-beyond aloneness has gone, replaced by cultivated flowers on verges and the occasional flyby-hum of a regular car. There is even grass planted for grass’s sake, ruining the softer colour palette of before.
It is incongruous with what I’ve left behind, especially when I pull into my last stop, the Peregrine Farm Stall on the edge of Grabouw town. Its car park is chocker, its parasolled tables heave with drinkers and diners, its attached supermarket proves another deliciously cold box of artificial air.
Like Franschhoek before it, the shop and its inhabitants, myself included, sit at odds with the countryside surrounding it, shoehorned in against the landscape’s natural will. But then that’s what it’s like when you find a place so beautiful and abundant as South Africa. Everyone wants a slice.
The rider’s ride
Specialized Diverge Comp, £3,060
Times change and this Diverge has since been superseded by a newer model, which is racier – tighter rear end, shorter trail – and it has a down tube big enough to house your sandwiches, thanks to its in-built cubbyhole ‘SWAT box’. But this old model is still a venerable steed, and features the same Future Shock 2.0 damping system underneath the stem, offering 20mm of travel.
And it works. The front end smoothes out much of the chatter of hard-pack gravel, although you’ll still feel big hits and this certainly isn’t a suspension unit designed to let you stop cushioning off-road riding with your arms and legs.
But that’s a good thing because, together with a compliant carbon layup and the CG-R seatpost (designed in that Z-shape to increase flex), the Diverge is noticeably more comfortable than a Specialized Tarmac, for example, but is still absorbing to ride and still retains an aggressive dropbar edge.
Meals for wheels
The best places, dishes and drinks to replenish hard-spent calories in the Western Cape
Franschhoek is the self-styled ‘culinary capital’ of the Western Cape, and places such as the Big Dog Cafe won’t disappoint, with local fare and house-roasted coffee. That said, Stellenbosch has one of the best steak restaurants you could ever hope for, the Fat Butcher, where dinner and wine for four with nothing denied is under £150.
There are plenty of wineries to tour, and don’t be put off by the word ‘tour’ – locals treat these places more like wine pubs. So pitch up and grab a glass of Pinotage, South Africa’s signature grape, a hybrid of Pinot Noir and Cinsaut cultivated here in 1925 to better survive the arid conditions (OK, wineries will give you the educational spiel if you want).
But if you go anywhere, go to a farm shop, essentially a cafe-cum-service station serving up local produce. Pies abound, running the gamut of savoury to sweet and vegan to meat, and they are simply incredible. Buy a pie.
How we did it
Travel
We flew direct with British Airways from Heathrow to Cape Town, although it worked out cheaper to return to Gatwick. Prices in November are around £650 return with 23kg baggage.
Once in Cape Town we were driven around by Kyle from Cape Vélo Cycling Tours, for while buses, some trains and taxis are available, South Africa is a vast country so your best bet is a guide and support car.
Accommodation
We stayed at the Mont Angelis Retreat, self-contained cottages set deep in Stellenbosch wine country that really live up to their ‘luxury accommodation’ billing. Stellenbosch town is 15 minutes away by taxi. Prices start from around £730 for a seven-night stay for two. See montangelis.co.za.
Vineyards
No visit to the Western Cape is complete without taking in a few vineyards, and the Remhoogte wine estate at the feet of Simonsberg Mountain is among the best for the ‘turn up and have a few relaxed drinks’ vibe.
If arresting views and the full-blown tour experience is what you’re after, try the Waterford Estate on the edge of the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve.
Thanks
The biggest of thank yous to Jamie Osman, who runs Cape Vélo Cycle Tours and Coffeeworks in Stellenbosch. Coffeeworks does the best coffee in town (trust us, we tried them all) while Cape Vélo organises all manner of gravel and road rides, from local loops around Stellenbosch’s many trails and national parks to paths less ridden such as the Swartberg Pass.
Thanks also to Kyle Basson for driving the support car and doling out local wisdom way beyond his years, and to Lucy Osman for letting us borrow her husband for the week.
• This article originally appeared in issue 114 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
Tags: Best Bike RidesGravel
