ianhogg
Race Dog
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2010
- Messages
- 1,510
- Reaction score
- 31
- Location
- 34 Stanbury Street, Proserpine, QLD
- Bike
- Kawasaki Versys
Adam Kok's Road. The next Xtreme adventure ride
When I got back into off-road bikes in 2009 I was told authoritatively by Glen MacDonald that the last big adventure ride in Lesotho is Adam Kok's road. It still is. There was an attempt made last year that finished up in an unplanned sleep out in the mountains. It is the ride that all you owners of Hi-tech KTM's have been pimping your bikes for and sneaking down after supper to polish the stickers. The bit we are interested in is from Mt Morosi to Matatiele but for the purposes of this ride I have mapped it from road to road, which is the top of Ongeluksnek Pass to the road at Tosing, the site of the Griquas last camp before climbing into the Mkochomela range. One of the problems is that no one really knows where they went. Kok and about 2000 followers; about 20 000 head of stock; something like 300 wagons and numerous donkey carts set off, early in 1861 to cross the mighty, uncharted and the most incredibly precipitous mountains. Amazing to think you can do all this and no one noticed! A Capt. Dobson was commissioned by the war office to map Basutoland and in 1909 4 maps were issued, one of which had the route Adam Kok had taken. I couldn't find that but the UCT library had a 1910 Mt Fletcher map with Capt. Dobson's work on it. A pretty good story of the whole thing is here by Peter Millin:
https://petermillin.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/adam-koks-epic-trek-across-drakenberb-1/
I especially enjoyed the bit about Adam Kok's prayer. It made me think that actually Jannie Smuts was a bit like a white man's Barrack Obama, a statesman of vision, founder of the League of Nations and the United Nations, a man whose signature is on both first and second world war peace treaties, a man who was mooted as a replacement for Winston Churchill should circumstances require. However, in 1948 the white people of South Africa chose our own bunch of Donald Trumps instead and the rest, as they say, is history.
This is not such ancient history. My wife was sent off as a child from Port Shepstone on the bus to Kokstad to spend her summer on Adam Kok's farm which at the time was farmed by the Rosewells.
Anyway, I've attached the route in KLM and GDB format so you can see what you think. The pins are identifiable points from Dobson's map and the route is the nearest passable way through.
When I got back into off-road bikes in 2009 I was told authoritatively by Glen MacDonald that the last big adventure ride in Lesotho is Adam Kok's road. It still is. There was an attempt made last year that finished up in an unplanned sleep out in the mountains. It is the ride that all you owners of Hi-tech KTM's have been pimping your bikes for and sneaking down after supper to polish the stickers. The bit we are interested in is from Mt Morosi to Matatiele but for the purposes of this ride I have mapped it from road to road, which is the top of Ongeluksnek Pass to the road at Tosing, the site of the Griquas last camp before climbing into the Mkochomela range. One of the problems is that no one really knows where they went. Kok and about 2000 followers; about 20 000 head of stock; something like 300 wagons and numerous donkey carts set off, early in 1861 to cross the mighty, uncharted and the most incredibly precipitous mountains. Amazing to think you can do all this and no one noticed! A Capt. Dobson was commissioned by the war office to map Basutoland and in 1909 4 maps were issued, one of which had the route Adam Kok had taken. I couldn't find that but the UCT library had a 1910 Mt Fletcher map with Capt. Dobson's work on it. A pretty good story of the whole thing is here by Peter Millin:
https://petermillin.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/adam-koks-epic-trek-across-drakenberb-1/
I especially enjoyed the bit about Adam Kok's prayer. It made me think that actually Jannie Smuts was a bit like a white man's Barrack Obama, a statesman of vision, founder of the League of Nations and the United Nations, a man whose signature is on both first and second world war peace treaties, a man who was mooted as a replacement for Winston Churchill should circumstances require. However, in 1948 the white people of South Africa chose our own bunch of Donald Trumps instead and the rest, as they say, is history.
This is not such ancient history. My wife was sent off as a child from Port Shepstone on the bus to Kokstad to spend her summer on Adam Kok's farm which at the time was farmed by the Rosewells.
Anyway, I've attached the route in KLM and GDB format so you can see what you think. The pins are identifiable points from Dobson's map and the route is the nearest passable way through.
