We woke up to a cold -4.5c in Calvinia. There was a lot of ice on car. We packed up quickly and got going at 8h15. We fortunately were already on the road that leads out of town towards Williston. I immediately noticed a strange wheel noise on right front and could not decide if it was road surface noise or something more serious. So we stopped to check pressures. All seemed OK. We continued to Williston, but I was most concerned. We now took the Fraserburg turnoff just before Williston, knowing that there would be 40km of gravel. There was good tar to start with, but the noise did not go away. We stopped at the Zakrivier guest farm turnoff for coffee and I jacked up both front wheels and spun them. No noise. The wheels did rock top to bottom a bit much, but both fronts were exactly he same. The coffee and milk tart was great despite the concerns. We decided to carry on despite the gravel. At least one can’t hear wheel noise. The gravel road was a bit corrugated in places, but generally quite good. The tar started again 15 km from Fraserburg. We stopped for groceries at the USave grocery store and were surprised to find them stocking quite a few sophisticated products. We needed to draw money from the ABSA ATM and their sanitizing regime was quite impressive. A Coloured church group was selling food and roosterkoek as a fundraiser and we bought some from them. They wanted to give them to us, but we gave them R 10, our only smallish note. We enjoyed wandering about in the quiet streets and took many photos. There is a lot of restoration happening and the iconic Peperbus (old market building) was in good condition. We stopped in the beautiful Theekloof pass for lunch. The roosterbrood was excellent. Here one drops down from the Nuweveld Escarpment and the views are magnificent. This time we resisted turning off to Merweville and continued to Leeu Gamka on the N1. The wheel noise seemed to be slightly better. At Leeu Gamka we stopped at the station to look around and take pictures. It was an interesting little place. We wandered around the old station and found an old British fort built to guard the railway bridge over the Gamka River. We had a good look at it before getting onto N1, but soon pulled off at mini Shell Ultra City to try to get take away coffee but no luck. They only had a filter machine that would take too long. 5 km further on we turned onto the gravel road to Prince Albert. This started off quite rough, but we soon got to a “grader ahead” sign and then it was better than tar, if a little dusty. The Swartberg mountains drew steadily closer, but a rather slow car in front of us did slow us down. We got to Prince Albert about 15h45 and stopped for coffee at the Swartberg hotel, where Marianne had in the past stayed so often with her tourists.. Marianne took some photos and then we headed for Bushman Valley campsite, which we found on our IOverlander app. A fire engine overtook us. We wondered if it was going to a fire or accident. Probably the latter. At the campsite there was no one in attendance, but an elderly man who was with the Nissan camper we had seen in Fraserburg said that there had been someone there when he arrived. The campsite had a magnificent setting in a side kloof and a lot of indigenous vegetation had been planted in the past. It all looked very pleasant, and a girl driving out told us about the hiking trail they had just done. We decided to follow their example and set off on the yellow route with a limit of 45 minutes out. It was a lovely walk. Once again, we found a lot of flowers. We did not have time to do the full circuit, but did get to the top of a presentable koppie where we were greeted by a mountain wheatear (bird). Twenty minutes later we were back at the campsite. I levelled the Cruiser and got the roof up while Marianne went to sort out things with the night shift. His name was Piet and he had a lot of Bushman blood in him. Supper was quick and we had the company of a very "brave" long tailed mouse. He clearly was used to visitors dropping morsels for him. Then it was into the car to write up the days as the temperature dropped – and we both wrote up the same day instead of different days!

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