Lords of the gravel: The fellowship of the grondpad

[RoughRiders_Jakes]

Then by Sterkspruit our nightmares became real. It had been raining heavy the previous week, and we had all been worried that a Jetskji might have been the better option for this trip. Up until this point the gravel had been kind to us…that is until we found this dam blocking us.

 

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Next to the dam was a small river, flowing away into the distance, it was about half a metre deep and just over a bike length wide, with mud on the other side. The only difference between this mud and the mud in front of us was that no tank has tried going through it, so we chose the virgin mud. After a moerse gespook we got all the bikes through except for Crazy frog Johan, who fell just in time to pose for a picture. What a nice guy. (actually the bike landed on him and he could not move, but that gave me enough time to go get the camera, walk back the half kilometre, and take a nice pic)

 

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We decided to push on after filling up, skipping Wepner, and stayed on the gravel roads were speeds of 160km/h could be reached if you were crazy (KTM ferkers)

 

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The moment we reached Lunden's nek, the gravel changed, becoming more stony and loose, but the views driving next to the river with Lesotho on the other side was spectacular.

 

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Crazy Frog decided to take another dive, this time injuring his knee and pride, but he made it with the rest of us to the shabeen.

 

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All ten manne starting from the left:
• Me, white biker trash on a GSA mobile bar
• Pierre the Yamaha drover
• GGG Gom Gat Gerrit on a 990
• Gerhard kamakazi on a 990
• Crazy Frog Johan on 1100 GS
• Calvin on 1190
• Pita vegetarian cheese connoisseur on a 1190
• Bleshoender, aka Bastuur on a 990
• Bossie on a broken GS
• Eric aka Bin Laden with a full beard on a 1190

 

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That woeste Lunden's Nek from a distance

 

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We finally arrived just before the sunset that night at Rosstrevor guest farm, with dirty bikes, looking as if we had been in a mud war

 

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There were beer and boere wors (for the people not tough enough to live in South Africa…sausage) waiting, and then our land lady arrived, leaving us with wet dreams and other thoughts as she left for the night.

 

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The manne trying to figure out how the hell are we going to braai cheese for Pita the vegetarian…

 

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Bastuur, aka Bles trying to get reception on his phone.

 

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Day three
After a night of which a ghost bearing boere wors tracked down Pita some of the men looked worse for wear. Crazy Frog Johan could hardly walk, Bossie was feeling the effects of his first day spill, and some members had too many alcoholic refreshments the previous night. About 5 kays from the Farm, Crazy Frog Johan's GS1100 stopped running. With him and his bad knee, the general consensus was that he ambushed the bike, but nothing we could do could get it to run again. We employed the help of Kayalami Harry, a local who drove almost faster than Gerhard to transport Johan and his bike to Barkley east, and then the rest of us continued onwards. That’s when the crazy KTM drovers decided to take a short cut to Rhodes…over Tiffendale 4x4 route. I made it about halfway with that fully loaded mobile bar.

 

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The road downwards looked even worse with stones the size of mountains, ramps high enough to flip a 4x4 bakkie, and no grip…for the first time in my life I was scared getting back onto a bike. Those KTM bastids went up and made it look easy.

 

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I made it down without killing myself, and found Bossie waiting at the bottom, shaking his head and asking me if I was crazy going up that road with a fully loaded BM. The angle of attack was about 45 degrees, and let me tell you, I lost 5 kilo's up and down that road.

 

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After a long wait the KTM's returned, and after telling us what pissies we were, we took the long route to Rhodes. There we ate some pizza before finding out that there was only 5 litres for each bike in town, we filled up and made our way via Naude's pass to Mount Fletcher.

 

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Naude's pass was covered in mist at the top, and the road changed from very rocky to very smooth as we came closer to Mount Fletcher.

 

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By the time we reached Mount Fletcher the sun was going down, so we hit tar all the way to Matatiele, where we stayed over at https://www.resthaven.co.za/wmenu.php] [url]https://www.resthaven.co.za/wmenu.php[/url] . There were lots of clean bikes parked there, and the okes just looked at us with our dirty baaiks as if we were from another world. At Resthaven everything is a hundred bucks, just like every distance we had to travel were a hundred kays…if we asked how far. That night because we were split up, some people actually got some sleep.

 

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Day four
This was the day we lost another three of our fellowship, with Gerhard, Pita and Calvin going on to van Reenen, while the rest who were braver stayed to tackle Sani's Pass. Now early the morning it was decided that we were going to split into two groups, with GGG, me and Bossie going via Tar to Himeville, and the rest were going to take short cut, via gravel. The reason for this was because GGG was going to cook for us his world famous Klip Sop, and after eating we would split up. The pic below is of the mountains between Matatiele and Kokstad.

 

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We arrived some time later in a place called Swartberg, where someone stole the Engine…

 

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After doing some shopping, we made it to https://www.dunfordsloft.co.za/ where we were sleeping that night.