We left Eland’s Bay early this morning and cycled out of town and on to the railway service road heading to Lambert’s Bay. We were in for a nasty surprise once we hit the road. While preparing for the trip we cycled some gravel roads… but nothing prepared us for what awaited us on this piece of road. The bikes with their heavy loads took a battering on the coarse, rocky road. We struggled to Lambert’s Bay and once we got there we decided that we could not bear continuing on the same road all the way to Doringbaai, which was still about 40km on. We decided to camp in Lambert’s Bay and take our rest day there from where we would head inland towards the town of Vaalvlei, but fate intervened. When asking for directions to the campsite we chatted to some local guys who were interested in what we were doing. When we told them of our intention to travel from Lambert’s Bay to Vaalvlei they warned us that it was an extremely bad gravel road that we would have to take and assured us that the service road between Lambert’s Bay and Doringbaai was a beautiful road. They were right, but only about the first 15km!
After a good lunch and a bit of a rest we hit the gravel road towards Doringbaai just before 1pm in the heat of the day. The first bit of the road was great, but after about 15km it was the morning’s road all over again. Our bikes rattled and shook like mad and I almost had a bad fall in the sand. We also had some problems with punctures which considerably delayed our progress. We met a jolly fishing expedition on the road and they told us about the beautiful campsite at Strandfontein, about 7km on from Doringbaai. We pushed hard to reach Doringbaai in order to still get an open shop, in which we luckily succeeded. We replenished our supplies and pushed on to Strandfontein through thick mist that was now rolling in from the ocean.
The campsite at Strandfontein is an example of how a campsite should be run. Everything is clean and tidy, with paved roads, lovely grass and beautiful trees providing shade. It was refreshing to find such a great campsite after the disappointment at Eland’s Bay.
We had a great snoek over the coals and went to bed content – knowing that tomorrow we would have our first rest day to recover a bit from our first five days in the saddle.
