Route 62 · part 2

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Oudtshoorn

   Oudtshoorn owes its elegant sandstone buildings to the feathers of a very large and bad-tempered bird. In the years before the First World War, ostrich feathers were fashionable in Europe and America, and farmers in the Little Karoo made fortunes supplying them. Merchants built grand houses known as feather palaces, with fine stonework and ornate interiors, and some of them still stand. The boom collapsed around 1914, when fashion changed and the war disrupted trade, but ostrich farming continues, now for meat, leather and tourism.

   Read the complete Oudtshoorn write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Oudtshoorn is where the day begins. Next is Kareedouw.

2. 2. Kareedouw

   Kareedouw is a farm town in the folds of the Eastern Cape, and its quiet is the first thing a rider notices after the long road. It lies on Route 62, the scenic alternative to the N2 coastal highway, in a valley between the Tsitsikamma and Kouga mountains, about forty kilometres inland from the coast near Humansdorp. The surrounding land is a patchwork of orchards, with apples and pears grown in the long valley called the Langkloof, and in spring the white and pink blossom turns the slopes into a soft cloud. In late summer and autumn the fruit is picked, and trucks carry it down to the packhouses.

   Read the complete Kareedouw write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Kareedouw comes up about 224 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gqeberha.

3. 3. Gqeberha

   Gqeberha is the name that Port Elizabeth took in 2021, an isiXhosa word usually linked to the Gqeberha River, the stream that runs into Algoa Bay. The change still divides opinion, and you will hear both names on the street, but the city that carries them is the same big, breezy, workmanlike place on the Eastern Cape coast. It forms the heart of the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan area, with a car industry that has employed generations, a port, and a waterfront of long pale beaches that seem to go on forever.

   Read the complete Gqeberha write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 361 km.