The route from Rocky Bay to Port St Johns is a speed-bump experience.
We travelled on Saturday 29 July 2023 from Rocky Bay to our overnight stop, Cremorne at Port St Johns via Port Edward and Flagstaff.
If you must sleep over because you don’t want to do the alternative 8-hour route directly from Rocky Bay to Yellow Sands (or vice versa), the Kokstad-route, you have to sleep over at Port St Johns. There are no campsites on the N2.
Cremorne is not the only sleep-over camp but Gary and Tina who camped at Rocky Bay and who often travel from KZN to Yellow Sands suggested it to us.
The facilities need some attention. When we arrived, one ablution block was under water. The other was usable, although old, but clean.
Not all campers will want to stay here but we slept well and used all the facilities.
Cremorne Reception
The route between Port Edward and Flagstaff (115 km) has more than 20 speed bumps, most of them concentrated in what I guess must be at most 20km. It does not sound too bad at 1 speedbump per km, but that is not how it works out.
Some “traffic calming” spots have two speed bumps both sides of the crossing – that is 4 speed bumps within a few metres.
There are speed-bump warning signs, but you would do better looking out for school signs, as that is mostly where the speed bumps are.
The problem with all this traffic calming measures are not the speed bumps themselves, but the quality.
The bumps are sometimes exceptionally steep, probably much steeper than the 43° which I believe is the prescribed angle of the approach of a speed bump, and much higher than necessary.
The anchor of the yellow blade on the drawbar of the Scout scraped on every bump we did not cross at an angle. The lowest point between the car and caravan is about 200mm.
The taxis did not do much better as can be seen from the dashcam video we took.
The route of 297 km took us a little more than the 4:30 suggested by Google Maps and the average speed is about 69kph. That is about the same speed on the alternative (Kokstad) route where we did 72kph on average.
If your rig is high enough such as with off-road caravans, the route should suit you fine.
We decided that we would not use this route again, but that we would rather start early and drive through on the 9-hour Kokstad route like we did when we travelled to Rocky Bay in April.
8 Minute video at double speed
It took us about 15 minutes to drive through the town
Port St Johns to Yellow Sands
The next day, a Sunday, we travelled from Cremorna at Port St Johns.
The Caltex filling station in town as closed. We were told at the resort that it was the result of a family feud. So we had to fill up at the only other filling station, a Shell station across from Cremorna on the other side of the river.
The petrol attendant was a pleasure to encounter, although his compressor wasn’t doing as well as he was, and we could not get better pressure on a tyre than 2.5 bar.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed our overnight stay despite the collapse of infrastructure we encountered everywhere.
The trip went well until we encountered an extremely strong cross-wind on the hills of the Eastern Cape in the previous Transkei.
Due to the hilly terrain, there are many hills covered in grass but with little trees, and a wind of between 70 and 100km per hour wasn’t going to let us pass through without upsetting our trip.
Just after Mthatha I looked in the side mirror and saw the side window of the Scout waving at me. It is not the favourite sight a caravan owner wants to see!
With a 70km plus wind blowing from the right and the caravan window on the left of the Scout, it created the perfect suction for the window clips to be pulled loose without breaking any of them.
Eventually we would stop 4 times to try and restore the window’s (and my) dignity.
At our second forced stop, I couldn’t get my door open, only to realise that the wind was blowing stronger than I was pushing.
And at another stop the same happened but when I forced the door open against the force of the wind, I nearly lost the door as a truck came past from behind and the door pulled with the same force in the opposite direction.
That trucker doesn’t realise that he nearly went home with a Suzuki door that day!
The third time the window was forced open by the wind suction I walked from the side of the Scout around to the nose cone when the wind not only pushed me back, but blew my glasses to one lens on an eye, and one lens on a cheek.
By this time, we had the window anchored to the other side of the caravan with ropes and elastic cords. It looked like the electricity connections in a squatter camp.
It was only at the fourth stop that I checked the window thoroughly and saw that the window had about a 2mm movement in the gutter where it is anchored at the top. After moving one of the small sliding brackets that holds the window tight against the window frame, the window had no play, even in the strong wind, and we had no more forced stops.
It seems that the 2 mm movement of the window frame created just enough space between the rubber beading inside the frame and the frame itself, so that wind could enter and pull the window open.
That’s how you learn what to look out for, I suppose! We were quite relieved that we suffered no damage, but in step with our philosophy we adopted before the trip, we considered it part of the adventure. Although adventure is always much better if it doesn’t cost you money!
By moving it tight against the aluminium window frame, it solved our problem of the window being sucked open by strong cross winds.
Rocky Bay to Yellow Sands via Port St Johns is not our favourite route to travel, but we are still satisfied that we did it!
Now for August at Yellow Sands for the follow-up visit to the dentist and then on to Medolino in Port Alfred