CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Cliff road, ocean air and one of the cleanest short rides on earth. 113 km round from Constantia - plan on about 2 h 24 of riding. The stops in between: Chapman’s Peak Drive, Noordhoek beach and Cape Point. It keeps close to the shore for long stretches.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 7 km this is Chapmans Peak Drive, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Hout Bay is a fishing harbour tucked under steep mountains on the Atlantic side of the Cape Peninsula, and it is the right place to eat before or after Chapman's Peak. The Afrikaans name means Wood Bay, because early Dutch settlers cut timber from the forests in the valley behind it, and the harbour has been a fishing base ever since. Today the working boats share the quay with restaurants and market stalls, and on a clear afternoon you can order fish and chips on the water while seals bob around the jetty hoping for scraps.
Read the complete Hout Bay write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Food at 0 km, roughly 0 minutes into the riding. Next is Chapman’s Peak Drive.
Chapman's Peak Drive is about nine kilometres of road cut into the cliffs between Hout Bay and Noordhoek, and it is among the most famous coastal roads in the world. It was built in the early twentieth century, with convict labour, blasting a shelf into the sheer face of the mountain, and it has been hanging above the Atlantic ever since. The road is carved into sandstone and granite, with the sea hundreds of metres below on one side and the rock wall rising on the other.
Read the complete Chapman’s Peak Drive write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chapman’s Peak Drive comes up about 7 km into the recorded legs. Next is Noordhoek beach.
Noordhoek Beach is a long, wide, almost empty sweep of white sand on the western side of the Cape Peninsula, about eight kilometres from end to end. The mountains of the peninsula, steep and blue, rise at the northern end, and the lighthouse at Kommetjie marks the south. Behind the dunes, the valley holds a handful of farms, stables and a village with a cluster of cafes. It feels a long way from the city, though it is not.
Read the complete Noordhoek beach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 12 km into the recorded legs you reach Noordhoek beach. Next is Cape Point.
Cape Point is where the Cape Peninsula runs out of land: a ridge of sandstone cliffs falling about two hundred metres into the Atlantic, with a lighthouse on top and a wind that can blow your visor shut. People often say it is where two oceans meet and that it is the southern tip of Africa. Neither is quite right. The tip of the continent is Cape Agulhas, a long way east, and the meeting of warm and cold currents is a broad, shifting zone rather than a line, but none of that matters when you stand on the viewing platform and watch the swell come in from Antarctica.
Read the complete Cape Point write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cape Point, late in the day. Next is Back to Hout Bay.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hout Bay write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Hout Bay. That is the ride.
This Noordhoek beach → Cape Point stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.