General Places to stay before the race

[SlowManiac]

Hi,

 

I'm from SA originally, now living in Australia. I did the race last year and had a blast! Coming back next year for some more.

 

I am trying to get some ideas of where to stay for the week before the race. These are my criteria:

 

Rural - farmstay, nature reserve, that kind of thing.

Not too remote - we are travelling with kids, and various family members so want to be near shops/restaurants to make life easy. So a farmstay near a small town is basically what we need.

Needs to be some nice riding within 1hrs drive and preferably some on the doorstep. Riding needs to be safe - my riding partner is female and I get a bit worried reading about all the security issues (I left SA 15 years ago and things have changed a lot!)

Within 2 hrs of Cape Town

Riding needs to be sort of easy to figure out by yourself, maps or GPX files, whatever.

 

 

My ideas so far are the Hermanus area (with Hemel and Aarde and Oak Valley near by). Also the Tulbagh area (not very familiar with this area) but it's close enough to Welvanpas which was in the race this year and I loved!

 

Would love to hear any ideas of other places I might have missed, some good places to stay etc.