To the Breede River Lodge

Sunday the wind settled down a bit and after some routine shopping that had to be done we were able to go out for a bit of a local cruise. We headed through to Velddrif along the R27 and went to visit Des at his little shop on the banks of the Berg River, it was incredibly hot so a couple of cold Castles went down singing hymns! It is also a very picturesque spot and we had a pleasant time chatting with our friends.

From there we went over to the "Admiral's Pub" for lunch, Janet had a prawn platter and I had an excellent seafood platter, really good value at R120 with lovely fresh chunks of hake, calamari strips, crumbed prawn tails, mussels, crab sticks chips and savoury rice!
Thursday 16th December is a public holiday; Heritage Day and we have managed to get the Friday off as well so now we are going off on a ride. I have mentioned before that I love the build up to a ride, I thoroughly enjoy sitting down with a map and planning a trip.

At first I wasn't sure where to go, I had the South and East coast in mind but this close to Christmas (Can you believe that it's Christmas next weekend?!!) I thought that everything would be booked out, I wanted to go through Hermanus and say "Hello" to old friends John and Tina, but doubted that we would get accommodation.

I prefer not to book accommodation on a trip, we have usually just gone for a ride and looked for a place to stay when we got tired, making a booking creates an unwanted timetable but then a friend sent me an advert from the Breede River Lodge in Witsand and I followed it up; R600 for a double room per night including breakfast sounded good and it's a new place for us so I booked two nights, Thursday and Friday.

It is about 220kms to Hermanus where we will have a brunch break with our friends, then it is about another 245kms to Witsand - perfect, I just hope the wind gives us a break because it can really blow hard in that area.

We will then have the whole day on Friday to explore the area and there is a lovely 473km loop through three passes; Garcia's Pass on the R323, the Huisrivier Pass on the R62 and then Robinson's Pass on the R328 so I'm thinking we may do that. Our other option of course is just to have a lazy day walking on the beach, we'll see how we feel - I'm really looking forward to this now! I'll tell you all about it when we get back.