Eish. Yet another little gentle ride I planned that ended up way more adventurous than I imagined.
The plan was just for MadDog and I to take a gentle ride out to Ngilanyoni, take a few pics and video, and then an easy ride down the North side of the Mkomazi down to Umkomaas.
But I can’t stick to the proven roads I’ve been on can I? Nope. I decided to include a few detours and shortcuts into the plan, and in those lay the adventure.
Our wanderings.
The first detour took us over the mountain (eGogweni – “Granny’s Place” - on the map A-B) Parts of the track are not in MapSource, but it looked okay in Google Earth. What Google Earth did not show was the very steep ride up to the top of the mountain, and then an equally steep descent on the other side. I discovered that my downhill on gravel demons are still not dead, and yesterday was quite a tough battle. At one point the Demons won, and I dropped the bike – thankfully on the low side this time and no bones broke – but it was a reminder to me that I still lack a huge amount of confidence on the gravelly descents. But one positive from yesterday was that MadDog suggested that I try and walk the bike down one slope with the engine off and using the front brake and clutch as brakes. Luckily I have reasonably long and robust legs and the method worked fine on the next and a few other descents. It’s not pretty, and it’s slow going, but it works!.
You can see the road we came down in this pic – it’s a lot steeper than it looks – trust me.
From the up to Ngilanyoni (“Bird’s gizzard”) and onto the spur for some pics :-
A video of the ride onto the mountain (from S30 04.443 E30 34.297 to S30 03.897 E30 35.096 )
A few pics of MadDog and bike on the spur.
The fun wasn’t over. On the way back I decided to try a short cut – C-D – and it was a lot more gnarly than it looked in Google Earth.
From there we planned to go back along the road on the North side of the Mkomazi, but when we got to point “E”, and saw this horrible side-sloped ascent ahead of us we chickened out, backtracked and took the taxi roads home.
A great, although for me quite scary ride, and a big thanks to MadDog for coming along and especially for climbing back up half of “Granny’s mountain” to help me lift my bike on a steep slope.
A slightly bruised foot, and extremely stiff legs tell me how much fun it was !!
The plan was just for MadDog and I to take a gentle ride out to Ngilanyoni, take a few pics and video, and then an easy ride down the North side of the Mkomazi down to Umkomaas.
But I can’t stick to the proven roads I’ve been on can I? Nope. I decided to include a few detours and shortcuts into the plan, and in those lay the adventure.
Our wanderings.
The first detour took us over the mountain (eGogweni – “Granny’s Place” - on the map A-B) Parts of the track are not in MapSource, but it looked okay in Google Earth. What Google Earth did not show was the very steep ride up to the top of the mountain, and then an equally steep descent on the other side. I discovered that my downhill on gravel demons are still not dead, and yesterday was quite a tough battle. At one point the Demons won, and I dropped the bike – thankfully on the low side this time and no bones broke – but it was a reminder to me that I still lack a huge amount of confidence on the gravelly descents. But one positive from yesterday was that MadDog suggested that I try and walk the bike down one slope with the engine off and using the front brake and clutch as brakes. Luckily I have reasonably long and robust legs and the method worked fine on the next and a few other descents. It’s not pretty, and it’s slow going, but it works!.
You can see the road we came down in this pic – it’s a lot steeper than it looks – trust me.
From the up to Ngilanyoni (“Bird’s gizzard”) and onto the spur for some pics :-
A video of the ride onto the mountain (from S30 04.443 E30 34.297 to S30 03.897 E30 35.096 )
A few pics of MadDog and bike on the spur.
The fun wasn’t over. On the way back I decided to try a short cut – C-D – and it was a lot more gnarly than it looked in Google Earth.
From there we planned to go back along the road on the North side of the Mkomazi, but when we got to point “E”, and saw this horrible side-sloped ascent ahead of us we chickened out, backtracked and took the taxi roads home.
A great, although for me quite scary ride, and a big thanks to MadDog for coming along and especially for climbing back up half of “Granny’s mountain” to help me lift my bike on a steep slope.
A slightly bruised foot, and extremely stiff legs tell me how much fun it was !!
I thought I was going to have to drop my bike to prevent myself from hitting you 
