Alice<\/a> formed some of her fondest family memories while cycling the city\u2019s coastal roads with her brother, Lucas, who is also a pro racer, and her father, Jonny, who raced motorbikes.<\/p>\nFrom its sophisticated restaurants and wine bars nestled between skyscrapers to coffees by the beach in little surf caf\u00e9s, rides to Noordhoek over Chapman\u2019s Peak or out to the winelands around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, Cape Town buzzes with its own laid-back energy, with Table Mountain\u2019s steady presence basking in the beauty of it all. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a city like no other,\u201d Alice said. \u201cAnd it is the city that I know best out of anywhere in the world. I’m from a small village in the U.K. where we don’t even have a shop, but I know my way around Cape Town super well. I know which turnoffs to take to get around the city. I know that there’s a shortcut under the motorway and you can go hop over the roundabout and go through the underground parking to come up somewhere else. It\u2019s somewhere that just makes sense to me. Connecting the beaches to the city and the mountains as well \u2014 it’s just got everything you need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alice grew up in Derbyshire, England, but spent the holidays in South Africa, where her dad was raised and where her aunts, uncles, and grandparents still live. Every year, when the cycling season winds down in Europe, Alice looks forward to Cape Town \u2013 the generous warmth of the wind and the city\u2019s people, the tang of salt in the air, the blue sea and ochre earth. It is the city Alice knows and loves best.<\/p>\n
“It’s chaos, it’s crazy, but it’s super fun, and it’s vibrant.”<\/p>\n
– Alice Towers<\/p>\n
December is the height of the Southern Hemisphere\u2019s summer and the time of year when Cape Town is at its busiest. Alice loves escaping cold, dreary England to spend time with her family in vivid, sunny South Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vibe in Cape Town in December \u2013 it’s chaos, it’s crazy, but it’s super fun, and it’s vibrant,\u201d Alice said. \u201c\u2029I’ve had Christmas here my whole life, so the first festive period with the build up to Christmas is something that I really love. It’s really special to me. You have to just embrace the chaos and not see it as something that’s pushing against you, but work with it. It\u2019s quite freeing when you’re chopping through traffic, weaving through cars, in a safe way. You’ve got to embrace it and become part of it. \u2029But when you have a perfect blue sky day around the coast roads, it just wipes out every con there is about Cape Town. It is one of my favorite places to ride a bike because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alice took us on a ride from her family home in Blaauwberg along the waterfront through Sea Point to the quieter coastal roads that rise out and over Suikerbossie, before plummeting into Hout Bay. We then ascenced the famous road up and over Chapman\u2019s Peak to Noordhoek for a coffee in the farm village.<\/p>\n
Alice’s route<\/p>\n
\u201cI chose this route because I literally do it almost every single day I am here,\u201d Alice said. \u201cIt’s got one of the most iconic roads in South Africa, which is Chapman’s Peak Drive. People come from all over the world come to drive along that road to see the views. I’ve done it so many times now. I could probably close my eyes and make my way down there. \u2029You can descend both sides, and when you’re not stuck behind a tour bus, it’s really nice. There’s the sweeping corners, and the surface of the road’s really nice. Nothing’s too tight, so it flows really nicely and you\u2019ve got gorgeous views to the left or to the right, depending on which way you’re going down. It is definitely one of the most iconic road descents in cycling.<\/p>\n
Join Alice, beyond your universe, in Cape Town, South Africa. <\/p>\n
Watch the videoAlice Towers<\/p>\n
Alice joins EF Education-Oatly this year with five seasons of pro racing already to her name. She enjoys seeing the progress in her racing and training day after day, year after year as she works toward her goals. This year, Alice wants to start gaining experience as a leader in select races and to see what kind of a racer she becomes. She loves a hard day of attritional racing, even more so if it is in the Ardennes. <\/p>\n
Life as a bike racer has taught Alice that race programs and tactics can change in an instant, so she\u2019s learned to be flexible in order to adapt to the situation.<\/p>\n
Because fueling is so important as an athlete, Alice likes to have fun preparing her meals and loves to get creative in the kitchen. She enjoys preparing tasty meals and ride food, but her current project is mastering the traditional Sunday roast dinner.<\/p>\n
Full profileAnimated Chevrons<\/a><\/p>\nSign up for our newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Culture Explore the beautiful South African metropolis with EF Education-Oatly\u2019s Cape Town aficionado January 6, 2026 Alice Towers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-396989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}