The Wild Coast does not ease you in gently. Within the first hour of riding you have already crossed a river by pontoon, climbed a track so green and steep it felt more like Ireland than Africa, and stopped twice — not because you needed to, but because the view demanded it. The Indian Ocean sits out there to the east, enormous and deeply blue, and the hills roll down to meet it in great green folds, and every time you crest something new the coastline rearranges itself into a different version of breathtaking.

This stretch of the Eastern Cape — running roughly between the Kei River mouth in the south and the hills above Coffee Bay in the north — is one of the least-ridden touring routes in southern Africa, which is partly what makes it special. The roads are a mix of gravel jeep tracks, cattle paths and coastal double-tracks that wind between Xhosa homesteads and cliff edges with an informality that no route planner would sanction and that turns out to be completely wonderful. Our guide Thabo knew every fork and every shortcut, and more usefully, knew exactly which stretch of beach to aim for when the morning’s legs were spent and the cooler box was calling.

The cooler box was already open on the sand, and there were sandwiches, and cold drinks, and absolutely nowhere else any of us needed to be.

Lunch on day two settled the question of whether this was the finest way to spend a Wednesday in South Africa. We dropped off a headland onto a beach that had no name on any map we’d seen, white sand backed by milkwood forest, the surf low and rolling. The support vehicle was already parked in the shade. The cooler box was already open on the sand, and there were sandwiches, and cold drinks, and absolutely nowhere else any of us needed to be. Camilla sat with her feet in the Indian Ocean eating a cheese roll. It is difficult to improve on this as an itinerary.

The hotels along this section of coast are a particular kind of South African institution — the old-fashioned coastal hotel that has been there since your parents’ generation, with wide verandas and rooms that open onto gardens and a dining room that serves fresh linefish every night without fail. You arrive off the bike pleasantly salty and wind-scoured, and nobody minds, and by the time a cold Castle arrives on the veranda the day has arranged itself into a very satisfying shape.

The riding varies day to day — some mornings are longer, with sustained climbs through forest and then long descents to river mouths where the track disappears into the sand entirely. Other days are shorter, more coastal, with the ocean in view for most of the morning and a tail wind that makes you feel briefly heroic. The pace is always a choice, never a demand. That, in the end, is what the Wild Coast does to you — it slows you down to its own tempo, and by the third day you have stopped resisting and started noticing things. The aloes. The cattle on the clifftops. The way the light changes over the water at four in the afternoon. All of it, every last bit, worth the ride.