A Hiking Novice Takes on the Alexandria Trail

Alexandria Trail 2-day Hike

The following is my account of the Alexandria Trail, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. A two-day, one-night hike covering about 35 kilometers. 20km on day one, 15km on day two. We did the trail over 11 and 12 January 2020. This was only my second camping experience. Though, thanks to some great friendships, I have been fortunate enough to go on many day-hikes in and around Grahamstown.

For this trip, I wrote my (rather frank) experiences by hand, and after getting home on the 12th, typed up my notes. On 20 February, I reviewed what I had written.  And finally, on 30 May, I re-read them again, corrected typos and poor grammar, and added or removed some things, depending on what I could (not) recall. I also finally added photos. So, there may be a tiny bit of artistic licence where the memory is hazy. Or I just wasn’t sure what the heck I had written/had been thinking. Also, during this final review, I had a 4 year old interrupting my flow every few minutes! So I might have missed a few grammatical errors, and switched between first and third person here and there.

Massive thanks to RG for the many adventures we went on, and for suggesting and organizing this trip!

Day 1 Route Profile