Gravel Farm Road

The Diamond Fields Gravel Loop extends the Kimberley riding experience from the city’s heritage streets into the broader Karoo landscape that surrounds it — flat, accessible gravel road cycling through terrain that carries an extraordinary density of historical significance for a landscape that appears, on the surface, to be simply empty plains.

The Route

The 60km loop heads south and west from Kimberley on low-traffic gravel farm roads, passing the Magersfontein Battlefield — where on the night of 10-11 December 1899, General Methuen’s British column marching to relieve the Siege of Kimberley was ambushed by Koos de la Rey’s Boer commandos in one of the costliest British defeats of the Anglo-Boer War. The battlefield is a sobering and atmospheric stop on a gravel ride through this landscape. From Magersfontein, the loop continues toward the Modder River and back north, passing the remarkable Kamfers Dam on the return — a shallow pan just north of Kimberley that is home to one of the largest inland flamingo breeding colonies in Africa, with tens of thousands of lesser and greater flamingoes resident throughout the year.

Getting There

Start from Kimberley CBD — GPS: -28.7281, 24.7499. Download a Wikiloc or Komoot GPX track for the route before departing. Kimberley Tourism: +27 53 830 4117.

Calvinia is one of the Northern Cape’s most charming small towns — a Victorian-era Karoo settlement in the Hantam (a Khoi word meaning ‘place of the red hartebeest’) surrounded by flat semi-desert plains and the distant Bokkeveld escarpment. In August and September, the Hantam Karoo around Calvinia flowers — not as spectacularly as the coastal Namaqualand, but with its own beautiful palette of orange daisies, yellow katstertjies and pale succulents across the plains.

The Riding

Two informal gravel routes are mapped from Calvinia: the 20km Outride for casual riders and morning explorations, and the 50km Hantam Loop for those wanting a fuller day in the plateau landscape. Both routes use low-traffic gravel farm roads across the Hantam Karoo — flat to gently rolling, always expansive, occasionally dramatic near the Bokkeveld escarpment where the plateau drops away to the Olifants River valley far below. The riding is quiet, unhurried and meditative — the Hantam is not busy, not rushed, and not performing for anyone.

Calvinia is 60km south of Nieuwoudtville — one of the Northern Cape’s great wildflower destinations (see separate Nieuwoudtville Waterfall Loop listing) — making the two towns a natural pairing for a multi-day Hantam cycling weekend.

Getting There

Calvinia is on the R27 and N14, 460km from Cape Town. GPS: -31.4681, 19.7720. Calvinia Tourism: +27 27 341 8100.

Colesberg occupies a strategically important position at the junction of the N1 Cape Town–Johannesburg highway with the N9 and N10 — it is the Northern Cape’s most-transited town, and for travellers making the Cape to Joburg journey who want to break the journey with a ride, it offers an accessible entry point to the Northern Cape landscape. The 30km Doornkloof Loop on gravel farm roads is flat, accessible and provides a genuine taste of the Central Karoo transition zone — Karoo grassland, low shrubs, quartz-gravel plains and the big open skies of the interior Northern Cape without the extreme remoteness of the deep Kalahari. The Doornkloof Nature Reserve just outside town contains small Karoo game — springbok, gemsbok, blesbok — accessible on foot or by bike on reserve roads.

Getting There

Colesberg is on the N1, 690km from Cape Town. GPS: -30.7167, 25.0833. Tourism: +27 51 753 0678.

Victoria West is a quiet Northern Cape Karoo town on the N12 highway, positioned in the Central Karoo’s fossil-rich interior between Beaufort West and Richmond. The surrounding Karoo plains — open, flat and extraordinarily spacious — provide accessible gravel riding through a landscape that feels genuinely timeless: the same Permian-era dolerite koppies (Rocky outcrops formed by ancient volcanic intrusions) visible to the Karoo fossil hunters who first mapped this region 150 years ago are still there, unchanged, on the horizon. The Central Karoo contains one of the world’s richest Permian fossil records, and the gravel farm roads around Victoria West thread through this geological heritage landscape on terrain that is accessible to any cyclist.

Getting There

Victoria West is on the N12, 590km from Cape Town. GPS: -31.4000, 23.1333. Tourism: +27 53 621 0085.

De Aar is the Northern Cape’s major railway junction — the point where the main line from Cape Town north to Johannesburg intersects with the east-west Kimberley line, making it historically one of the most strategically important rail points in South Africa. Today, the town is also gaining visibility as the site of major solar and wind energy installations, the large-scale renewable energy projects visible from the surrounding Karoo plains providing a striking combination of ancient landscape and 21st-century infrastructure.

The 30km Karoo Plains Loop is flat, accessible and provides a genuine Karoo cycling experience through sheep farms and dolerite koppie terrain. The dolerite intrusions — dark volcanic rock that pushed up through the horizontal Karoo sedimentary layers millions of years ago and now stands proud as koppies across the plains — give the landscape its characteristic broken flatness and provide visual interest throughout. A peaceful, unhurried cycling base for travellers breaking the long Cape Town to Johannesburg journey.

Getting There

De Aar is at the N10/N12 junction, 770km from Cape Town. GPS: -30.6500, 24.0167. Tourism: +27 53 631 0024.

Carnarvon is one of the most unexpectedly fascinating destinations in the Northern Cape — a quiet Upper Karoo farming town that has become central to South Africa’s most significant science investment: the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio telescope network currently under construction on the surrounding Karoo plains. The precursor telescope, MeerKAT — 64 radio dishes spread across the Karoo plain outside Carnarvon — is already one of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes, producing extraordinary astronomical discoveries including the most detailed images of the Galactic Centre ever made.

Cycling to MeerKAT

The gravel road from Carnarvon toward the MeerKAT array runs through the Karoo plains past sheep farms on flat, low-traffic terrain that provides an unusual cycling destination: the MeerKAT dishes are visible from the public access road, their white forms rising from the Karoo plain against the enormous sky. Cycling slowly through this landscape — one of the flattest and most radio-quiet environments in South Africa — toward a structure that is simultaneously hunting for pulsars, black holes and the earliest hydrogen in the universe, provides a perspective on the Northern Cape that no other cycling route in South Africa offers. The MeerKAT Radio Quiet Zone requires all electronic devices off in the designated area — follow all signage.

Getting There

Carnarvon is on the R63, 700km from Cape Town. GPS: -30.9667, 22.1333. Tourism: +27 53 382 0084.