Gourmet cycling
Text: James Clarke. Pictures: James Clarke and Marion Whitehead. Article from the September 2012 issue of Ride Magazine.
There are other ways to enjoy the rugged beauty of the Swartberg on a bike than carving up the corners of the passes.
It was billed as a Gourmet Karoo Cycle Tour and I will confess that it was the word gourmet that was the main attraction for me. At the age of 78, I find myself somewhat overweight, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m saving up to buy a battery-assisted e-bicycle. For better or for worse, I went along with a group of nine, all more than 60-years old and, in my view, all unhealthily fit. We set out from Johannesburg’s northern suburbs with our bikes racked on a trailer behind a 12-seater luxury bus. It was not quite dawn when we began the 1 000-kilometre journey south to that formidable wall of mountains called the Swartberg.
Peak perspective
The Swartberg separates the Great Karoo semi-desert to the north from the green and productive Little Karoo to the south. I have cycled a lot in the last decade, nearly all of it on the Continent and, if I have learned anything it is that, for sensible people, long-distance cycling is enjoyable only when the route is flat. To my mind, mountains are more spectacular when viewed from the valley roads below. And when I say I went mountainbiking, I do not mean I juddered down narrow stony tracks shedding tooth fillings. It is still mountainbiking if you cycle on well-made roads in the mountains.
On this tour I spent five days in Prince Albert probing its toothy peaks on my state-of-the-ark bicycle.
I was relieved to find we were not expected to cycle up the 25-kilometre Swartberg Pass although our route master, Liz Szabo, has done it without a break. Liz and Chris Murray are joint proprietors of Escape Cycle Tours. They arrange all sorts of tours, including our gourmet event. We drove onwards and up and just short of the summit we came to the subsidiary pass off to the right that descends into hell. More correctly it zigzags down a narrow gravel road with hairpin bends and precipices into Die Hel (also known as Gamkaskloof), 58 kilometres away. I was told cyclists race every year from Prince Albert to cycle up the Swartberg, down to Die Hel and then back (some 180 kilometres). Some are back in time for dinner, but even the two-day option seems rather extreme to me.
At the vlei we found a long table set with starched napery and laden with a most lavish gourmet breakfast
Gobbling up the scenery
We cycled along the pass to Die Hel for the first safe 15 kilometres, stopping at a bright green vlei that was aflame with red hot pokers. The vlei was on a shelf above the point where the pass gets serious, dropping away, sometimes with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Here we found a long table set with starched napery and laden with a most lavish gourmet breakfast. There were real chefs in a field kitchen, and all of it was hauled up from Prince Albert before we had set off.
We drove down to Die Hel and its pretty wooded gully where two families live. The completion of the pass in the 1960s encouraged most of its inhabitants to escape and never return. This is understandable because when you get there, there is no there, there (as Dorothy Parker might have put it), although the journey is spectacular.
Picking fresh figs
On one of our five days in the area we cycled to a farm in the Groot Karoo to witness the “harvesting of the pigs”. That’s what I heard. I thought it was going a bit far, even for a gourmet week. After a fairly tough (for me at any rate) 25 kilometres of sharp inclines through a dry landscape, we reached a green and fertile valley and Weltevrede Farm. I was relieved to find it was a fig farm and we were there to witness the harvesting of the figs.
While my companions conquered the hills to the farm – and one was particularly steep – I confess, with whatever shame is necessary, that I was towed up by Chris Murray, using two inner tubes joined into a rope.
Once or twice during our daily excursions I took to the bus and sat with the sandwiches, shouting encouragement through the window to my labouring companions.
For sheer grandeur, it is the main Swartberg Pass that most impresses. I drove up it years ago but only now, not having to drive, did I become aware of its sometimes echoing narrowness and the vivid colours of the cliffs; red, orange, beige and yellow. Their tortured strata are sometimes vertical and sometimes folded horizontally like a blanket laid onto a shelf. One wonders at the sheer genius of Thomas Bain who engineered most of the pass. He built 13 passes in South Africa, the Swartberg being his last before his death in 1893.
I am really a downhill sort of person and was in my element one day when we cycled the 80 kilometres or so east from Prince Albert to De Rust. Apart from a three-kilometre climb, which comes after the first 20 kilometres, it is downhill all the way. At the top of the climb where my companions had patiently waited for me it was suggested that I set off first on the downhill section. “We’ll give you a few hours to get ahead,” somebody said unkindly.
I clocked well above 60 km/h as I freewheeled the entire 49,9 kilometres from the summit through the breathtaking Meiringspoort to De Rust, and I now wonder if this is not the world’s longest downhill on tar. I recall cycling in Spain and being proudly told about the longest downhill road in Europe in the Sierra Nevada National Park. It was a mere 12,5 kilometres long.
Flexing other muscles
We used Prince Albert as our base camp, spending each night in charming 200-year-old cottages belonging to our host, Jeremy Freemantle. A few years ago, Jeremy abandoned his corporate career in Cape Town to establish African Relish, which is a recreational cooking school next to his guesthouse and restaurant. The school is a specially designed barn-sized structure filled with fresh air and sunlight and a wondrously equipped kitchen where, on three afternoons, he taught us about gourmet cooking. Some of his dishes have been heavily influenced by traditional South African fare, often pioneer recipes dating to the voortrekkers. It was fun with food, and Jeremy even demonstrated how to choose and maintain a good set of knives and pots and pans. (www.africanrelish.com)
We used Prince Albert as our base camp, spending each night in charming 200-year old cottages
Prince Albert’s sunny and peaceful main street has, fortunately, remained undiscovered by the chain stores whose bland architecture has tended to make every South African town centre look like the next. This town has retained its dorpie character and its 19th-century scale; the church steeple remains the focal point.
One evening was spent on a village ramble with Ailsa Tudhope, historian and raconteur, and on another night we accompanied an astronomer, retired Professor Hans Daehne and his wife Dr Tilanie Daehne (www.astrotours.co.za) into the semi-desert, with its crystal-clear skies, to study the stars and peer through his telescope at the planets.
We cycled a lot around town (it was marvellously flat) and I thought of Uncle Remus’s words: “I journeyed fur, I journeyed fas; I glad I found dis place at las.”
Travel advisory
Escape Cycle Tours offers affordable, assisted road and mountainbike tours tailored to the fitness and interests of the participants. Here are some of the favourites:
- Unique Cape Cycletour
- Cycle in the ancient Mapungubwe area
- Lesotho 5 day 4 night on mountainbikes
- Winelands tour
- Surfing and cycling
- Nine-day Namaqualand/West Coast Daisy Tour (this one is booked out years in advance, put your name down now).
Visit www.escapecycletours.com for details of these tours and many more. A meet and greet service is available at all South African Airports.
Contact:
liz@escapecycletours.com.
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