(sanparks.co.za/parks/karoo),

The Great Karoo, tells the story of two railwaymen who were on duty at Travalia one rainswept night when one of them saw a woman on the platform.

“This restless spirit is said to belong to an unknown woman whose dead body was thrown from a passing train at Travalia Station during the South African War,” Nell writes. She was buried just metres from the track in a grave topped with stones and a cross.

BACK ON THE N1 You are now back on the fast road. Go gently — the section between Beaufort West and Laingsburg has a nasty reputation.

Beaufort West itself used to be one of my favourite rest stops, usually at Donkin House, a low-key rooming house, or at the classic Oasis Hotel, which has seen better days. Since I discovered the Karoo National Park

however, if I have time in hand this is where I stop. Just 10km south of town, the unprepossessing park entrance belies the treasures on the other side of the hill, where you might, if you are lucky, see bat-eared foxes foraging near the chalets, as you sit on the stoep and stare at the Nuweveld Mountains, in whose shadow the rest camp is built.

The park has plenty of diversions. There is a 400m-long Karoo Fossil Trail leading right out of the camp’s front door, and a 4x4 trail over Pienaar’s Pass onto the mountain plateau, where the solitude is priceless and the quiet deafening.

Afterwards, it’s great to sit in the main dining room for breakfast, enjoying the ’70s décor over a breakfast of eggs and wors while Radio Sonder Grense plays softly in the background.

Heading south, the Nuweveld Mountains recede as the long, spiny hump of the Langeberg begins to rise up in the south. Now you drive across a deceptively dry plain, getting lower and lower until, at Dwyka, you cross a river at the Karoo’s lowest point above sea level. The road and the railway hold hands almost all the way to Cape Town and the river crossings are marked with blockhouses built by the British to protect the rail bridges from Boer commandos.

On past Leeu Gamka with its “Hotel” still spelled out on the red tin roof of the old hotel, past Prince Albert Road — where Prince Albertbound passengers would alight from the Trans Karoo — and into the Koup with its scrubby bush and windpumps and sheep gathered in the shade of concrete farm dams. When there were more trains, I used to pace them along this section. We would pump our fists out the window, trying to get the drivers to hoot. Some did — to raucous cheers — but the rest were too cool for school.

Soon you will see “Laingsburg” spelled out in white stones on a hillside. Go carefully through the town, and not just because the police have cameras.

If it’s late in the day, another treat awaits 30km down the road at Matjiesfontein. For years, the family rest stop was The Lord Milner (matjiesfontein.com), the wonderful Victorian folly of a hotel that is the centrepiece to this railway village. As a kid I remember dramatically early starts from Johannesburg just so we could spend the night at “Matjies”. Heck, my old man once even flew us down in a borrowed Cessna in which we were tossed about the Karoo summer sky — “like dice in a box”, my brother said afterwards — leaving some of us separated from our lunch.

Matjiesfontein, with its towering gum trees, its old fuel pumps, the piano in the bar and the trains hooting at night, was always the last great prize on the road to Cape Town. Perhaps I’ll see you there in the bar, where we can wash the dust from our throats and congratulate each other on another road well travelled.

See the Great Road trip slideshow and other road trip stories on sundaytimes.co.za