We spent two days riding from Vaalwater up to Marken then back down south. We set up camp in Vaalwater on day 1 which would then lead to Marken and onto a second camp site close to Klipwerf dam for the second overnight stop. Some lessons learnt : a 5 degree sleeping bag is not what you want for winter and 9 liters of fuel capacity is not good enough for a trip.
Day 1 camp site
Saturday started with some dirt leading north east, made for cruising making sure the bikes were a ok
Dirtwarp pulled over to adjust his chain, not enough travel in the sucker. Five minutes later and we were back on the road
Up towards and skirting the Palala river we came across these trees looking like they were growing out of the rock. Can someone identify them ? Seems they have no leaves in winter and has a almost white apearance. Many of them can be seen around the rock faces growing on the mountain sides
Made a good place to stop and have a short rest bite
Think this was the Melkhout river ? Anyway upstream there was a nice dam with some people trying their luck at fishing, we ran along dide the river and then headed north towards a loop spotted on Google Earth
Someone went to great lengths to support this little pass heading up the mountain side
Then turning off the main dirt route we took this side track which turned into a two track and then eventually into some single track
Look closely and you will spot those trees I mentioned earlier on the mountain side, the valley had a stream running down the length of it. Looking at the rocks up above it seems there may be springs that will feed it in summer time
Middle of nowhere, just the sound of nature all around - pretty neat !
It was around 12 and time for lunch, Sardines sandwich - perfect trail food
From here on things became tight as we had to navigate by GPS which being created by GE was not always 100% on track. Some cases we went 100 - 200m left or right navigating the single track. The bushveld may be cold by night but the valley was cooking and with some surprise I found my bike was starting to spit some coolant ! Damn never happened with any bike before and I had a fan that was clearly not working. Fault finding at home later found the thermostat to be the culprit.
Then we came across a playground of note, a river bed that just had to be ridden. It went for miles and if we had enough time and fuel we could have ridden it all the way down to rejoin the main dirt road. Next time !
Finding these spots - priceless !
On fumes we made it to Marken to fill up and get some much needed beer for the camp to follow. The owner was a nice guy and even gave us some meat to braai - yes you know what kind
atch:
Another chilly night lay ahead but at least we had lots of firewood and a hot shower on site
