Riding the Garden Route te

South Africa’s Garden Route is high on many people’s bucket list rides. Exciting and exotic in equal measures, it offers an intoxicating mix of iconic roads, abundant wildlife and stunning scenery

When I booked myself on the Motorrad Tours South African Garden Route tour, I had my mind buzzing with thoughts of lions, elephants and miles of exciting roads to ride. And not much else.

To find out more, I googled it. The first page that came up was the UK Government’s travel advice. It started well: ‘Over 430,000 British tourists visit South Africa each year. Most visits are trouble-free.’’

That last bit made me twitch a bit. What did they mean by ‘most’? Was it most as in ‘Most people in the UK get dressed before leaving the house’? Or, ‘Most people in the UK voted to leave the EU’? Both statements are true, but I’m sure you’d agree there’s a big difference in what kind of odds you get.

Oh well… I reminded myself that no South African I have ever met has been a baddie. Some seem overly keen on strange dried meats and rugby, but otherwise ok. And my friend Lynn is South African, and she is one of the sweetest people ever to walk this earth, so on balance, they must be ok as a nation. Decided, it was all going to be ok!

Arriving in South Africa

Landing in Cape Town soon put an end to any doubts I had about the country. Even with all the history of oppression and violence, and the dramatic chasm between the kind of lives led byy the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, there didn’t seem to be any sign of trouble.

The rest of the tour group was already in town when I arrived. Five riders, three pillions, our tour leader Nigel, and a local fixer with a support vehicle. They didn’t seem like trouble either.

Before getting anywhere near the motorcycles, we started the official programme with a city tour. What we saw was surprisingly charming. The harbour is a thriving maze of shops and restaurants, street performers and revellers. Table Mountain is a natural wonder, offering fantastic views over the city (provided you don’t get there on a cloudy day like we did). And the townships are full of life with determination, entrepreneurial spirit and an unshakable belief that life can be improved. It’s easy to fall for the place.

But for us, Cape Town was also the gateway to the Garden Route, and after a day looking round we were itching to get on the road.

Picking up bikes for a tour is always exciting. We collected ours from a depot just outside the city centre, inspected them, stuffed our bags in the panniers and off we went. It’s as simple in South Africa as it is anywhere else. In a matter of moments we were lined up on the bikes that would be our transport for the next 2000 miles.

As this was a Motorrad Tour operation you can appreciate that all the bikes were BMWs. And you may also have also guessed that they were all GSs – six big 1250s and one 750. Mine was an R1250 Rally TE, with all the bells and whistles (including electronic suspension), aluminium panniers and a top box.

Easing into it

To get everyone settled into riding bikes they weren’t accustomed to riding on unfamiliar roads, with quirky road rules and unexpected distractions from local wildlife, our first day of riding was a gentle loop from Cape Town to the Cape of Good Hope and back.

The first few miles of riding were cautious as we were all getting used to the bikes, bedding in their new tyres and calibrating our brains to South African traffic – at least they ride on the left so that was one less thing to adjust to.

As we wound our way towards the coast the initial feeling was that of nerves. It was great to be on the bikes, but I think that everyone felt a little timid. After a quick stop at Constantia vineyard (the first vineyard I have been to with signs warning you not to feed the baboons!), we reached the coast at Kalk Bay and followed the shoreline down towards the Cape of Good Hope.

After a stop at a penguin colony in Simon’s Town the road opened up a bit, but the traffic was fairly dense, so the going was fairly steady – not a bad thing as we were still finding our feet in the new surroundings.

At the southern tip of the peninsula, the Cape Point National Park offered a climb up to the old lighthouse and a chance to get one’s photo taken behind the Cape of Good Hope sign, but for me the most exciting thing was that you could see baboons and ostriches wandering around the park. It’s a strange feeling having to scan the roadsides for baboons that might run in front of you. Strange, but not altogether unpleasant!

Heading back up to Cape Town we passed through Chapman’s Peak Drive – a gently winding coastal route with a sheer drop into the ocean on one side and a rock face on the other. A lovely bit of road on a motorcycle, but busy with slow-moving cars.

The first day of riding gave us a chance to get used to the bikes, local traffic, riding together, and generally re-acquaint ourselves with riding in decent weather when back home it was all stormy, cold and wet. If I’m honest the day would probably have been equally enjoyable in a car, given that we had little opportunity to escape the procession of slow-moving traffic. The next day we would head away from the madding crowd, so that was hopefully about to change.