Plett for Introverts: Somewhere to Walk Where You Will Not Meet Anyone
In the first article I mentioned there is a beach here where you can walk for an hour and see nobody. I got asked about it more than anything else in that piece, so here it is properly.
It is Keurboomstrand. Not the main entrance, where everyone parks and the lifeguards are and the sand is flat and busy. The far end. And you cannot drive to the far end, which is the entire reason it stays empty.
The good news and the bad news
The good news is that it is about fifteen minutes from Plett Central and there is no gate, no fee, no booking, and no season when it fills up.
The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that you have to work slightly for it. There is a path. It is not signposted. It goes through dune bush that closes over your head in places, and it ends at a rope you climb down to reach the sand.
The rope is the whole point
There is no ladder. There are no steps. There is a rope with handholds knotted into it, anchored at the top, running down the dune face.
You take hold of it, lean your weight back, and walk yourself down. Feet in the sand, hands moving one hold at a time. The dune does most of the work. The rope is there so you do not go down faster than you meant to.
It takes about twenty seconds and it is over before you have finished deciding how you feel about it.
And then you are standing on a stretch of Keurboomstrand where, most days of the year, there is not another human being in either direction.
What makes it work
The dunes cut the noise. You stop hearing the road about two minutes into the path. By the time you reach the rope the only sound is surf and wind.
It self-selects. The path and the rope do the filtering. Families with prams do not come. Groups do not come. What you get instead is the occasional other person who also wanted this, who will nod at you and keep walking, which is the correct amount of social interaction for a beach.
It goes on. Once you are down you can walk east for a very long time. There is no point where you hit a boundary and have to turn back because you have run out of beach.
The practical bit
- Drive out toward Keurbooms and turn onto Keurboomsrivier Road.
- Park near the top of that road, by Keurbooms Lodge. There is space on the verge. Nothing is marked.
- Take the path heading north away from the road, into the bush.
- Keep going. It narrows and it feels wrong for a minute. It is not wrong.
- The rope is at the end. Down it, and you are on the sand.
Roughly ten minutes on foot from car to sand. Shoes, not slops, for the path. Take water, because there is nothing out there, which is the point. Keep both hands free for the rope, so a small backpack rather than anything you carry.
Being honest about it
If the tide is high the beach below the rope is narrower and you will be walking closer to the water. Check before you go.
And it is not a swimming beach. There are no lifeguards, and the water off Keurboomstrand does what it wants. Go for the walk, not the swim.
Where to recover afterwards
You will come back sandy, wind-blown and considerably calmer than you left. Our apartments at Castleton are ten minutes away, which is the right distance: far enough that the beach feels like somewhere you went, close enough that you are in a hot shower before the salt dries.
Next in this series: where to eat in Plett when you do not want to be seated at a table next to strangers.
