Thursday 26 January 2012

Day 449 South Africa 26/01/2012, Gansbaai – Hermanus Backpackers, Hermanus. 29.11miles/46.00km, 2hr55minutes, Av 9.9mph.

A good night's sleep saw us up and ready to face the day. Beautiful sunshine greeted us as we left the town and started a longish climb towards Hermanus. Despite a strongish headwind, we reached the top without too much difficulty and started the ride down to Stanford, approximately the halfway point.

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Leaving Stanford we turned west and enjoyed what was now a tailwind as we rode through some beautiful scenery. There were a few more hills than we had expected, but largely we made good progress towards Hermanus.

The nature of the route that we were riding meant that we could see across the bay to where we had come from. It was strange seeing our day's starting point look so close, having cycled considerably further.

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Arriving in Hermanus we began the long ride through the town in search of the backpackers. Having almost cycled out the other end of the town, we resorted to phoning them for directions. Fortunately we hadn't gone too far past and were soon being shown a lovely room in their nearby cottage. So far the staff at the backpackers have been terrific, by far the most helpful we have seen for a while. The facilities at the cottage are lovely and we made rapid use of the pool to cool us down after the cycling.

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Heading into town for some lunch we ended up at the old harbour. The tapas bar had been recommended to us by the hostel staff so we decided to give it a go. The food was very good and the beer was very cold.

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Thanks to some friendly customers we ended up staying and as a consequence drinking a lot more beer than we had planned. The walk back to the hostel was a bit of a blur, as has been the rest of the evening. Clearly it is time for bed!

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