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Departure: EL YOLO OnE Guest Farm
Destination: De Hoek
Date & Time
2019-12-20 07h10
2019-12-20 14h49
Odometer (Philip)
Start: 109,218 km
End: 109,429 km
Passes Travelled (3): Kareedouw Berg [Gravel]; Swartberg R328 [Gravel]; Elands (Gamkaskloof) [Gravel]
We left EL YOLO OnE at 07h10 and headed to Prince Albert for breakfast.
We descended the Kareedouw Mountain pass, into a beautiful valley with Olive groves, vineyards and onion fields.
We refueled in Prince Albert and stopped at the Lazy Lizard for a delicious breakfast.
Although the distance for the day appears short, the recommended ride to Gamkaskloof (The Hell) is 2hrs from the Swartberg Pass turnoff to the bottom and another 2 hrs return trip. (See SoloAfrica Video)
The ride up the Swartberg Pass is great fun and beautiful. The tight curves provide good practice for the even tighter curves of the Elands Pass into Gamkaskloof.
We encountered a number of vehicles along the route including 5 cyclists with their support vehicles. We stopped at the top of Elands pass to view the Gamkaskloof valley. Approximately three months ago a fire swept through the valley and burnt all the vegetation and luckily only 1 of the many homes situated in the valley. One other home was damaged and required extensive repairs. The Camping site was destroyed along with the ablutions.
Luckily the restaurant was open so we took a leisurely break before heading back up the Elands pass. The owner indicated that two motorcycle groups had donated money to them to help rebuild the damage .
Refer to a previous trip to see the valley with vegetation.
The 2 hours estimated time to get to the bottom of Gamkaskloof ended up being 60 minutes. The motorbikes could handle the poor quality roads better than a motor vehicle and therefore made good time.
After the trip to "The Hell" we continued to De Hoek Mountain Resort on the Southern side of the Swartberg mountains. The view from the top looking south is magnificent.
It was a short ride to De Hoek Mountain Resort so we arrived at the camp earlier than expected. After checking in, we proceeded to the camp site and erected the tents. After inquiring about the possibility of a restaurant, we discovered that the resort had a poorly stocked cafe and only opened at 16h00.
We also discovered that there was no cell phone reception and we could not make the same mistake as the previous day so we had to find a location to call the spouses to let them know we had arrived safely.
We decided to go to Kobus Se Gat that was about 8km away and see what we could get for dinner and call our spouses.
As the restaurant at Kobus se Gat was about to close, they offered to provide a braai pack, salads, roosterbrood and fire wood. We decided that was a great idea. We added some beers and a bottle of red wine to the list, loaded the bikes and headed back to the camp site. It was a lot of food but we decided we could eat the left overs the following day.
It may come as a shock to some, but yes, we did manage to braai the meat and enjoy a good meal (i.e. the meat was not burnt).
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