Galle Fort is one of those places where a wall tells you everything. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to build here, in 1588, but the Dutch, who took the town in 1640, turned it into the formidable stone fortress you see today, with bastions facing the Indian Ocean and a street grid laid out in the European manner. The ramparts run for nearly three kilometres around a small peninsula, and you can walk the whole circuit in an hour or two, looking down on the surf on one side and the red-tiled roofs on the other. A lighthouse, a Dutch Reformed church with grave slabs on its floor, and a clock tower give the town its landmarks.
The Fort was listed as a World Heritage site in 1988, and it is still lived in, with families, shops, small hotels and cafes in old Dutch merchants' houses. Walls and trees survived the tsunami of December 2004, which flooded the area, and the community has rebuilt a lively town. Galle is also a cricket city, with its famous ground just outside the walls, where the ocean breeze blows over the boundary rope.
For a rider, the interest lies in what is around. The coast road south and east of Galle runs along palm-fringed beaches, past fishing villages with stilt fishermen, and the Southern Expressway makes a fast run to Colombo. Your ride, however, heads inland and up to Horton Plains, a highland plateau more than two thousand metres above the sea, with cloud forest, grassland and a sheer cliff at World's End. The journey takes you from steaming lowland up through tea country, with the road tightening into bends and the air cooling noticeably as you climb. Buses and lorries in Sri Lanka drive fast and overtake in unexpected places, and traffic keeps to the left, so stay alert, and allow a long day.
Galle has fuel stations and plenty of places to eat, from simple rice and curry to fresh seafood, with wood-apple juice, hoppers and spiced cashews as accompaniments. The main seasons are December to April on this coast, with dry weather and calm seas, while the south-west monsoon, from May to September, brings heavy rain and rough surf. Early mornings are the coolest, and the walls make a good place to watch the sun come up.