“I bet that’s Cav,” says a voice behind me. Mark Renshaw’s, I think. I figure he’s joking; Mark Cavendish hates hill, no? With a big effort, I get up near the front and, sure enough, it’s the Manxman, the sprinter, who is driving the pace and shelling first all the staff and then a fair few of his team-mates who don’t feel like going that deep today, and all for mischief’s sake.

“It’s good to see that top-level professionals still love being on their bikes, playing about, and trying to rip each other’s legs off”

On the other hand, I’m in ‘death before dropped’ mode. I’m on the wheel of British champion Steve Cummings and that’s too special a thing to give up. By the top, I’m absolutely on my limit but still with them and grinning. I can see the guys ahead are working hard, though I suspect that they could do this over and over. It’s good to see that top-level professionals still love being on their bikes, playing about, and trying to rip each other’s legs off.

The dial is turned up another notch the day after when I join Lachlan Morton, Scott Thwaites and directeur sportif Roger Hammond on a ride. It starts casually enough but 40 minutes in, as we reach the foot of Chapman’s Peak, with Thwaites and myself on the front, the Yorkshireman accelerates purposefully and without warning. I’d been careful not to half-wheel him so this isn’t a slap down, I think he simply wants to test his legs, and maybe mine, too.

I like to think I’m in good shape, possibly the best form of my riding career, and I resolve to stay alongside him for as long as I can but he keeps ratcheting up the power, just like a ramp test. In the last couple of kilometres I have to relent and get on his wheel, heart rate at aerobic max, but I survive to the end of the 11-minute climb. I’m surprised. He is, too, having hit 200bpm and held 450-500W for the last third. I may have clung on, but he was doing far more work. What’s more, after we have regrouped and rolled back down, Thwaites loops back for another go. That’s the real difference, the capacity of pros to repeat big efforts and to produce that power after 200km. A one-off blast up a hill from fresh flatters the amateur.

So far, each of these rides has followed an identical route down the M6 coast road, over the Suikerbossie ridge and down into the town of Hout Bay, and then up the deceptively hard drag to Chapman’s Peak, overlooking the bay itself. To head in any other direction from the city centre would mean miles of urban sprawl and the traffic is too unpleasant for that. Thankfully, what Cape Town lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality – this is a stunning road, with fun, writhing descents, and climbs that can be made to hurt or cruised as you please. And the views are incredible. There’s no chance of getting bored in a week.

“What Cape Town lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality – this is a stunning road, with fun, writhing descents, and climbs that can be made to hurt or cruised as you please”

Even so, on the Wednesday, while the riders are all having their medicals, I take the chance to get in a longer ride, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope. It’s an intensely South African experience. Approaching Noordhoek, into uncharted territory after the week’s earlier rides, I briefly ride and chat with a local rider in Dimension Data kit who tells me he’d raced for the development team for a year. A few minutes later I meet another rider, who turns out to be Mark Cheyne, the composer of the Qhubeka charity’s song, Qubaquba, who is at the camp as a special guest. As we pedal, he tells me how the song came about.

“I’m a music producer, writing jingles and songs for corporations, and a fan of the team,” he says. “I had this idea for a Qhubeka song. A friend of mine had (Qhubeka founder) Anthony Fitzhenry’s number and when I called him on a Monday he said he had chills because it was on his job list for that day to look into a song. When I played him a demo, he teared up. The song is in Zulu and Qubaquba means ‘pedal pedal’, an encouragement, just like ‘Allez!’ in French.”

When our routes diverge, it’s just me and my bike. Appropriately, I’m riding a Swift Ultravox TI, loaned to me by friend and Swift founder Mark Blewett. The South African former pro rode 10,600km from Cairo to Cape Town in 2015, taking just 38 days and smashing the previous record.