South Africa is mostly gravel. Once you leave the national roads the district roads that link Karoo towns, cross the Overberg wheat country and climb the Cederberg and the Swartberg are dirt, graded and quiet, with a farm gate every few kilometres and a mountain pass at the end of most of them. That is the riding on this page: long days on rolling gravel with a padstal for lunch and a small-town guesthouse or a farm cottage at the finish.

The best of it is in the Western Cape and along the Karoo edge. The Swartland and Overberg roll through wheat and canola with the mountains always in view. The Little Karoo, from Montagu through Barrydale to Prince Albert, strings Cape Dutch villages along one gravel corridor with the Swartberg Pass as its high point. The Great Karoo around Graaff-Reinet and Nieu-Bethesda is emptier and flatter, with the Sneeuberg for climbing. The Cederberg is the hardest and the most rewarding, all rock and river crossings.

Autumn, March to May, and spring, September and October, are the months to ride: cool mornings, settled weather and the Karoo not yet at its summer heat. Winter is dry and crisp inland but wet in the Cape. Pair a gravel loop with wine tasting in the Winelands, stargazing in the Karoo, or a Cape Dutch or Victorian village stay, and most hosts here will lock a bike, hose one down and point you at the quieter roads.