Tailwind through the Tankwa

The R355 is the back road between Springbok and Ceres, famous for huge views and tyre-chewing gravel. But why drive, thought Henko Roukema, when you can ride a bike?

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I’m an adventurous person. I enjoy rock climbing, ice swimming and riding my bike. I’m a navigation officer for a Canadian shipping company so I spend months at sea, but I also get long periods of leave when I’m on land. I use my leave to do as many exciting things as I can.

That’s how I found myself in Springbok in the Northern Cape last year, having just done a cycle tour of southern Namibia and the Richtersveld. The thought of sitting in a cramped car for a day’s drive back to Cape Town wasn’t appealing, so I looked at my map. The R355 caught my eye – I’d heard that it goes through an open, arid landscape full of nothingness, where sharp stones will almost certainly rip your tyres to shreds. From Springbok to Ceres, it’s about 600 km of gravel. This was the road I’d ride to get home…

DAY 1 Namaqualand becomes Bushmanland

At the start of a big adventure, the hardest part is swinging your leg over the saddle and getting started. Once you’ve done that, there’s no turning back: You have to see it through to the end. The excitement of doing something new soon erases any doubts.

The terrain on the first day consisted of endless uphills – just steep enough to tire out my legs. A pesky headwind wasn’t helping either, but my bike and I made it to the top of the escarpment.

Look at a map of the Northern Cape and you’ll see there’s no clear transition from one region to the next. My journey began in Namaqualand and soon I’d enter Bushmanland. I approached a goatherd next to the road and asked, “Where does Bushmanland begin?”

He smiled. “You’ll know when you get there. When the people you meet lose that look in their eye and start to smile, you’re in Bushmanland!”