- Joined
- Jul 19, 2014
- Messages
- 721
- Reaction score
- 165
- Location
- Table View, Cape Town
- Bike
- Honda CRF-250 Rally
Prequel
I dropped off the forum for a long time. Life got busy. It doesn’t mean my navigation partner (Lance) and I weren’t riding; I just wasn’t writing. Work and riding time got in the way of that. Yet here I am again, mainly for the following reasons:
(1) We’ve completed a trip that’s been on my bucket list for many, many years.
(2) Our riding was put on hold after Lance had two surgeries: one to fix up an old wrist injury and the other to fix a hernia he’s been trying to ignore for the past year.
(3) It’s always good to have a picture record of a trip. I have my diary, but it’s text only. Information is noted down short-hand; not really capturing the moment.
I have my buddy Kim to thank for this trip. While the idea was in the memory banks for longer than I care to remember, it was one of those things that you’ll “do next year”, with “next year” never happening.
Kim is a “now” type of person. She lit a fire under our collective butts in order to make use of the public holidays peppered throughout April. Only 4 days’ leave was required for a 10-day holiday. Why waste that opportunity?
Lance, as usual, was assigned the role of route plotter and ride leader, for better or worse. He has an uncanny sense of direction and the ability to find the most weird and wonderful routes, usually by eyeballing satellite view on Google Earth.
The route would include the Ben 10 Eco Challenge Passes, a list of passes in the Eastern Cape you’re meant to ride / drive over 7 days. We couldn’t be bothered about the challenge. That is a recent initiative to get tourism in the area. I’d been interested in some of them, in particular the Bastervoedpad Pass, ever since my parents drove it with their 4x4 more than a decade ago. The Ben 10 passes are the following (in order of maximum altitude):
01. TTT (Tiffindell-Tenahead Traverse) (2720m)
02. Naudes Nek Pass (2590m)
03. Volunteershoek Pass (2581m)
04. Carlisleshoekspruit Pass (2563m)
05. Bastervoetpad Pass (2240m)
06. Joubert’s Pass (2234m)
07. Bottelnek Pass (2204m) (replaced Ben MacDhui Pass (3001m) since the closure of Tiffindel)
08. Lundin’s / Lundean's Nek Pass (2170m)
09. Otto du Plessis Pass (2115m)
10. Barkly Pass (2018m) (a tar pass, oddly enough)
Our list of trip victims and their metal steeds:
• Zanie (me) on a Honda CRF250L Rally
• Lance on a KTM790 Adventure S
• Kim on a Honda CRF250L
• Peter on a Yamaha XTZ660 Tenere
• Remo on a Honda XR650L
Three days before the departure date, everything was in order. Aside from Remo’s bike… He had done some amazing work on the shroud, but that’s not really helpful if the bike doesn’t start! Now the clock was ticking.
Two days before departure date: No amount of DIY got Remo’s bike going. One day before departure date: Remo hired a trailer to take his bike to the nearest mechanic. By that evening we received the final verdict: it lives! It turned out to be an electrical gremlin; likely the GPS wiring killed the CDI. Luckily a spare CDI was available from a donor bike in the workshop (with the customer’s kind permission).
Day 1 (15 April 2022): Cape Town to Colesberg
Key statistics:
Distance: 790 km
Time: 12h30
Speed: 63 km/h (total) or 94 km/h (moving)
Day 1 was, in essence, a sacrifice to the time gods. And the tyre gods. We did consider trailering, but Remo didn’t have one, so would need to hire. Then there was the problem of where to stash the vehicles. The easiest and cheapest solution was to grit our collective teeth and slab it.
At this point, go back and take a careful look at our bike line-up again. There are no “couches” in that list. Seats range from plank (little bikes) to rafter (big bikes). Two of us were on 250s. The 650 became drunk on fuel at highway speeds. End result: Strict reinforcement of the speed limit, plus frequent fuel stops.
The weather gods didn’t like us either. We left home at 6am in 9˚C in the rain. Those conditions remained static for the next two hours, after which the rain was replaced by sun and a cold headwind. I kept my rain gear on for warmth.
Remo, me and Peter showing off this season’s choice of wet weather gear:
The N1 was exceptionally quiet for Easter Friday. The only objects to dodge were trucks and locusts. The latter may sound funny, but try having a sizeable insect hit you at 120 km/h. It bloody hurts! Poor Kim had the worst of it, with no screen to hide behind on her 250L.
The most interesting sighting of the day was a truck lying on its side next to the road. It had been carrying alcoholic beverages. Had. Past tense. There were plenty of hands on scene to assist in distributing the beverages to more appropriate locations. Other trucks and some cops were nearby for moral support, but they did not dare do anything. Word travelled fast, because we spotted reinforcements up to five km away, running with purpose towards the scene.
We missed the dirt roads today. I decided to emulate dirt road conditions, with an embarrassing horizontal moment at a fuel station. I’ll chalk it up to a very tall bike and a sneakily-sloped forecourt.
Can you feel the waves of shame?
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We had an awesome roosterkoek and coffee late lunch at the Whistling Bridge Café, 15 km from Three Sisters.
Sun plus cold meant a strange combination of sun hat plus rain suit. Otherwise known as Paddington Bear.
At a fuel station at the Three Sisters, we were made aware of a rather inconvenient plot twist: Kim’s brand new tyre had gone on early retirement. There’s the saying of “eating away miles on the road”. In this case it was “miles on the road eating away…at Kim’s tyre.”
And yes, that is a dirt bike tyre. It isn’t meant for tar. Yet Kim had done plenty other long trips using this exact tyre, including a 2000km Baviaanskloof trip that included substantive stretches of tar. You can get away with it on a small, light bike. But obviously 500km+ of solid highway in one day was beyond any conceivable design limit. It didn’t help that the workshop had pumped it to 3 bar! This was something we only discovered now. Those poor central knobs stood no chance.
Anyway, it was a case of “paying school fees”. You live, you learn. Now what? It was 3pm and we had a good 240km to go to Colesberg. There were also no tyres to be found locally. I sent out an S.O.S. to the Wild Dog forum. I’ve had great luck with the wonderful people there. Meanwhile we limped onwards; keeping to a glacial pace of 80 km/h. Speaking of glacial, the temperature rapidly moved in that direction as the sun dipped lower.
We reached our Colesberg accommodation, Little Farms Karoo Rooms, at 6:30pm, in the dark, with an icy wind blowing.
We were in no mood to get back on our bikes to look for food. Imagine the absolute joy when the accommodation owner said that the nearby Horse and Mill bar / restaurant could deliver both food and wine. This is the face of happiness (note all the puffer jackets):
Throughout the evening and into the next morning, I had a number of responses from Wild Dogs looking to help out. Both Hein (can’t remember his forum name) and Tampan (can’t remember his real name!) were super helpful. Tampan even made the mind-boggling offer of flying to Bloemfontein to fetch a tyre with a small plane he uses for business. That is too much to ask of someone! Hein managed to snuffle out local contacts, but the only available tyres were dirt bike tyres or a second-hand tyre, which is great for an emergency to get you somewhere, but not so good if you’re planning to ride another 2800km. In the end, Kim and Peter decided to limp to Bloemfontein early in the morning to get a new dual-sport tyre. Regardless, I cannot thank the helpful Dogs enough! They are legend.
I dropped off the forum for a long time. Life got busy. It doesn’t mean my navigation partner (Lance) and I weren’t riding; I just wasn’t writing. Work and riding time got in the way of that. Yet here I am again, mainly for the following reasons:
(1) We’ve completed a trip that’s been on my bucket list for many, many years.
(2) Our riding was put on hold after Lance had two surgeries: one to fix up an old wrist injury and the other to fix a hernia he’s been trying to ignore for the past year.
(3) It’s always good to have a picture record of a trip. I have my diary, but it’s text only. Information is noted down short-hand; not really capturing the moment.
I have my buddy Kim to thank for this trip. While the idea was in the memory banks for longer than I care to remember, it was one of those things that you’ll “do next year”, with “next year” never happening.
Kim is a “now” type of person. She lit a fire under our collective butts in order to make use of the public holidays peppered throughout April. Only 4 days’ leave was required for a 10-day holiday. Why waste that opportunity?
Lance, as usual, was assigned the role of route plotter and ride leader, for better or worse. He has an uncanny sense of direction and the ability to find the most weird and wonderful routes, usually by eyeballing satellite view on Google Earth.
The route would include the Ben 10 Eco Challenge Passes, a list of passes in the Eastern Cape you’re meant to ride / drive over 7 days. We couldn’t be bothered about the challenge. That is a recent initiative to get tourism in the area. I’d been interested in some of them, in particular the Bastervoedpad Pass, ever since my parents drove it with their 4x4 more than a decade ago. The Ben 10 passes are the following (in order of maximum altitude):
01. TTT (Tiffindell-Tenahead Traverse) (2720m)
02. Naudes Nek Pass (2590m)
03. Volunteershoek Pass (2581m)
04. Carlisleshoekspruit Pass (2563m)
05. Bastervoetpad Pass (2240m)
06. Joubert’s Pass (2234m)
07. Bottelnek Pass (2204m) (replaced Ben MacDhui Pass (3001m) since the closure of Tiffindel)
08. Lundin’s / Lundean's Nek Pass (2170m)
09. Otto du Plessis Pass (2115m)
10. Barkly Pass (2018m) (a tar pass, oddly enough)
Our list of trip victims and their metal steeds:
• Zanie (me) on a Honda CRF250L Rally
• Lance on a KTM790 Adventure S
• Kim on a Honda CRF250L
• Peter on a Yamaha XTZ660 Tenere
• Remo on a Honda XR650L
Three days before the departure date, everything was in order. Aside from Remo’s bike… He had done some amazing work on the shroud, but that’s not really helpful if the bike doesn’t start! Now the clock was ticking.
Two days before departure date: No amount of DIY got Remo’s bike going. One day before departure date: Remo hired a trailer to take his bike to the nearest mechanic. By that evening we received the final verdict: it lives! It turned out to be an electrical gremlin; likely the GPS wiring killed the CDI. Luckily a spare CDI was available from a donor bike in the workshop (with the customer’s kind permission).
Day 1 (15 April 2022): Cape Town to Colesberg
Key statistics:
Distance: 790 km
Time: 12h30
Speed: 63 km/h (total) or 94 km/h (moving)
Day 1 was, in essence, a sacrifice to the time gods. And the tyre gods. We did consider trailering, but Remo didn’t have one, so would need to hire. Then there was the problem of where to stash the vehicles. The easiest and cheapest solution was to grit our collective teeth and slab it.
At this point, go back and take a careful look at our bike line-up again. There are no “couches” in that list. Seats range from plank (little bikes) to rafter (big bikes). Two of us were on 250s. The 650 became drunk on fuel at highway speeds. End result: Strict reinforcement of the speed limit, plus frequent fuel stops.
The weather gods didn’t like us either. We left home at 6am in 9˚C in the rain. Those conditions remained static for the next two hours, after which the rain was replaced by sun and a cold headwind. I kept my rain gear on for warmth.
Remo, me and Peter showing off this season’s choice of wet weather gear:
The N1 was exceptionally quiet for Easter Friday. The only objects to dodge were trucks and locusts. The latter may sound funny, but try having a sizeable insect hit you at 120 km/h. It bloody hurts! Poor Kim had the worst of it, with no screen to hide behind on her 250L.
The most interesting sighting of the day was a truck lying on its side next to the road. It had been carrying alcoholic beverages. Had. Past tense. There were plenty of hands on scene to assist in distributing the beverages to more appropriate locations. Other trucks and some cops were nearby for moral support, but they did not dare do anything. Word travelled fast, because we spotted reinforcements up to five km away, running with purpose towards the scene.
We missed the dirt roads today. I decided to emulate dirt road conditions, with an embarrassing horizontal moment at a fuel station. I’ll chalk it up to a very tall bike and a sneakily-sloped forecourt.
Can you feel the waves of shame?
We had an awesome roosterkoek and coffee late lunch at the Whistling Bridge Café, 15 km from Three Sisters.
Sun plus cold meant a strange combination of sun hat plus rain suit. Otherwise known as Paddington Bear.
At a fuel station at the Three Sisters, we were made aware of a rather inconvenient plot twist: Kim’s brand new tyre had gone on early retirement. There’s the saying of “eating away miles on the road”. In this case it was “miles on the road eating away…at Kim’s tyre.”
And yes, that is a dirt bike tyre. It isn’t meant for tar. Yet Kim had done plenty other long trips using this exact tyre, including a 2000km Baviaanskloof trip that included substantive stretches of tar. You can get away with it on a small, light bike. But obviously 500km+ of solid highway in one day was beyond any conceivable design limit. It didn’t help that the workshop had pumped it to 3 bar! This was something we only discovered now. Those poor central knobs stood no chance.
Anyway, it was a case of “paying school fees”. You live, you learn. Now what? It was 3pm and we had a good 240km to go to Colesberg. There were also no tyres to be found locally. I sent out an S.O.S. to the Wild Dog forum. I’ve had great luck with the wonderful people there. Meanwhile we limped onwards; keeping to a glacial pace of 80 km/h. Speaking of glacial, the temperature rapidly moved in that direction as the sun dipped lower.
We reached our Colesberg accommodation, Little Farms Karoo Rooms, at 6:30pm, in the dark, with an icy wind blowing.
We were in no mood to get back on our bikes to look for food. Imagine the absolute joy when the accommodation owner said that the nearby Horse and Mill bar / restaurant could deliver both food and wine. This is the face of happiness (note all the puffer jackets):
Throughout the evening and into the next morning, I had a number of responses from Wild Dogs looking to help out. Both Hein (can’t remember his forum name) and Tampan (can’t remember his real name!) were super helpful. Tampan even made the mind-boggling offer of flying to Bloemfontein to fetch a tyre with a small plane he uses for business. That is too much to ask of someone! Hein managed to snuffle out local contacts, but the only available tyres were dirt bike tyres or a second-hand tyre, which is great for an emergency to get you somewhere, but not so good if you’re planning to ride another 2800km. In the end, Kim and Peter decided to limp to Bloemfontein early in the morning to get a new dual-sport tyre. Regardless, I cannot thank the helpful Dogs enough! They are legend.
