Day 2 didn’t disappoint. After a decent nights sleep and a hearty breakfast we set off knowing there were some decent climbing to do today.
Sadly my GoPro decided to have a melt down so all I had was 15 seconds of film until after the two main events however it can't detract from what was a beautiful morning ride.
After a gentle and flat warm up along the main road we turned off and started to gently climb into the hills. About 20km later we plunged down into river gorge on an old closed road. Nature has recovered some of it so you had to be careful to avoid cracks in the road and low branches as well as the odd group of Baboons sauntering about.
The decent was really technical with difficult bends and variable slopes and light so you had to concentrate. At one point I was escorted by a Baboon family for a few hundred yards but they soon got bored and peeled off.
At the bottom the first real climb of the day started and it turned into fairly hard one with slopes up to 10% over a distance of about 5km. It was very similar to the Alps in terms of the hairpin bends etc but I managed to spin up it fairly comfortably and we regrouped at the top.
After a quick water break we moved off again and about 5km we descended the second river gorge through a set of road works. Towards the bottom I underestimated my speed, I cant get used toKM’s, and very nearly got collected by the "Road Closed" gate as it emerged from around a blind bend, only avoiding it after a 30m rear wheel skid and a sideways slip stopping about 3 inches from the wire gate. The attendant was quite impressed I had survived actually so I made it look like I’d done it on purpose and carried on down the rest of the hill hoping my rear tyre wouldn't pop!
What goes down has to go up so we were very soon climbing the other side of the gorge for about 4km which was bit tougher than the first but I managed to get up it without too many problems.
At the top we stopped for Coffee and I managed to sort out an SD card for my GoPro and we carried on.
After a few more miles we turned into a head wind that was to dog us for the rest of the ride.
The remaining days efforts was a slog to be honest, though some lovely countryside and seaside towns but a slog never the less due to the 20mph headwind.
Lunch was eventually reached at about 2pm after 20Km of steady climbing into the headwind and then we managed to get rolling again for about 20km into the coastal town of Knysna where we all called a halt to proceedings and headed to a bar for a beer before getting onto the support bus and driving to our hotel.
Dinner tonight has been a nice Italian meal
Stas today 71mile 1400m climbing.,
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