Picture of the week

A little belated, but worth revisiting: March 2012, and Eddy Merckx visits Cape Town to have another go at the local red wine he seems very keen on and also to ride his fourth Argus Cycle Tour. Peugeot invited me and a few other media types to supper with Eddy, who happens to be a friend of the company's South African boss, francis Harnie. We were blessed with good weather, good food (appropriately, Den Anker's Belgian cuisine at the Waterfront) and good company. Naturally, I couldn't pass up the opportunity of taking Steady Eddy to meet his Maker...

On the road again: Farmhouse fare

Er... let's just call it a long break and leave it at that.

Went out over Constantia Nek to Hout Bay to meet Rob Walker, aspirant PBP and LEL rider and a gang of other hopefuls thinking about putting together a social team for this year's Double Century. Sadly, between the weather forecast and a few late withdrawals, they decided to try again another day. Well, they should have ignored the weather forecast for a start. They missed a PDG ride.
Peninsula South at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find hiking trails in California and beyond

In the hope of bumping into the Yellow Jersey Boys I trundled up Suikerbossie, but there was no sign of them. So... it was just me on my own. All right, not entirely on my own: I had the Southeaster for company. Which is why the final 50 km of the ride were significantly faster than the first 60 km. Er... it's possible that the mid-ride breakfast helped ... hence my focus on the Cape Farmhouse Restaurant.

Cape Farmhouse Restaurant: looking east from the intersection at the foot of Red Hill; curio sellers on the right.

There are a few things in its favour:

• It's well located at the bottom of one of my favourite climbs (Red Hill)
• At 9.30 in the morning, it's open for business (you'll wait until noon for  Scarborough's Camel Rock restaurant down the road to open up).
• There is plenty of outside seating under shade - in fact most of it seems to be outside.

It offers a pretty decent breakfast special of scrambled eggs on toast, bacon (my vegetarian alternative was a big brown mushroom), grilled tomato and coffee for R38. The service was friendly and fast, the food was ample and tasty and my Americano kick-started the second half of my ride. Recommended.

Welcome sight on a pretty lonely stretch of road...