The Garden Route

Day – 10


It starts with two more evictions from the Big Brother house as we have to part with Adam and Rich in the early hours of the morning. There was some feeble excuse about a family wedding demanding their presence back in the UK but I’m not sure about that! Only joking, it was sad to see them both go as they are good travelling companions.

We lose the car as well, so from now we are down to the mini-bus for the 7 of us. We pack up, say our good byes and hit the road. The route takes us around False Bay and we begin to climb high into the mountains; we make our first stop as the scenery gets ever more interesting and we all want to capture this. A couple of hours later and we head for Hermanus, the whale watching capital of the world, and we are assure there is a 95% chance of seeing whales from the shoreline. It’s a beautiful place, and I have to reflect how many times I’ve said that so far on this trip, too numerous to keep doing it I’m sure. The sun shines brightly, the bay waters are perfectly still as we watch a few sea lions frolicking in the surf by our feet. There are no clouds in the sky, nor unfortunately any whales in the bay and after a considerable time we need to get on the road. It’s a long way from one stop to the next and we need to cover another 386 miles before we stop again. So far we have covered over 3000km on this trip and we are not even half way.



We make several stops as areas of real natural beauty keep coming our way. The Garden Route is aptly named and we stop again at Dolphin Point so we can all snap away. We close on our destination just as the sun is setting but we stop just once more. This time we alight at Bloukrans Bridge which is the largest single concrete span bridge in the world and accommodates the highest Bungee Jump in the world too at 261m high. We all go to sign up, but disappointingly I can’t do it because of my knee injury, they won’t allow it! Surprisingly everybody else has some kind of latent injury that stops them doing it too, but we do manage to book Dave Barlow in and we set the time for 3pm the day after. Our accommodation is reached in the early evening whilst everything is pitch black apart from the brightly starred sky, just how good are the night sky’s in the southern hemisphere!

At The Woods is a delightful place set amongst the trees at Storms River in the Tsitsikamma National Park. We shower and change and head to the local hotel where we have a reserved table waiting for us. There is a large group of England Fans staying in the hotel and their evening meal is taking place in the gardens. We say hello and are then led into an amazing private room where there is a blazing fire, a television, sofas, and a well laid out table. We place the orders and sit round the fire drinking beer and red wine reflecting on what terrific surroundings we find ourselves in yet again. Our waiter and waitress are wonderful people, Mona and Sam, and we soon have them laughing away with us as we relish the evening meal and the delightful food. We all agree this one great meal and my choice of sizzling snails in a butter sauce followed by Springbok loin is fantastic. Everybody dines well. The red wine goes down really well too, and after about 4 or 5 bottles I fall asleep on the sofa, after all I did all the driving and I’m feeling tired. Eventually we go to our beds, well fed and all looking forward to a good night’s sleep.



Day 11

We wake early, grab a shower and head for breakfast, our hosts are wonderfully nice people and the breakfast is great. The view from the dining room takes some beating. We all get together and head down the village where we are booked onto the Canopy Tour. Mark B decides to bottle it and heads back to bed, the wuss, that leaves six of us. We get ready, take a journey into the forest and start the canopy tour. It’s easy for Deano because he does a lot of abseiling during the curse of his work and he volunteers to go first. I go second. I get hooked up, launch myself off the platform and slide about 30meters over the forest floor. I make the same mistake every one of our party makes, I grab the cable to slow down and the result is a severe jerk and a possible dislocation of my dicky shoulder. I let go in time. Ade makes the same mistake and hurts his whilst Dave Bev is nearly in tears, the big jessy. What you’re supposed to do is apply pressure downwards, the friction then slows you down and we all have a quick chat to make sure we get it right. From then on we have a great time; some of the traverses from platform to platform are 30 metres high and 90 metres long. It’s an exhilarating experience and puts a smile on all our faces, apart from Ade who continues to be underwhelmed by the whole experience. A bit of lunch and we head out towards Bloukrans Bridge for the bungee jump, we continue to wind Dave Barlow up and ask him what bits we can claim from his estate, but we do promise him a good send off!