Cave Girl
Race Dog
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2007
- Messages
- 2,506
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Croydon - Kempton Park
- Bike
- Kawasaki KLR 650
Decided to take a few days leave and make a long weekend out of my trip down to Midmar.
The plan was to leave early Friday morning – follow a route, given to me by Michael from the Africa Twin club, to Memel and then push on to Dundee for the night and get to Midmar on Saturday morning.
Well laid plans sometimes just don’t work out
a stop at the local pub on the way home on Thursday evening ended up in a rather late night and a late start on Friday morning. By the time Michael had downloaded waypoints to the Nuvi which does not take a track it was midday. :-[
I did realize after riding around for 2.5 hours that GG had not taught my Nuvi one thing about how to get me from point A to point B >
I finally got to Greylingstad (I think) all on tar and was getting very frustrated so turned onto the first dirt road I came across with the intention of heading in the general direction of Natal – severl phone calls to Michael had me heading towards ‘Roodepoort” at one point however several T junctions without direction boards had me totally lost and riding in circles ??? so the first time I finally came across a signboard that said Villiers – a name I recognised I followed it in the vain hope there would be a turn off to a town closer to Memel or directions to Newcastle or something but no luck 35km later I popped out onto the freeway just before the 1stop garage where GG found me.
The decision to follow him to Swinburn and ensure a decent ride on Saturday was quickly made. GG spent Friday evening teaching my little garmen forex some interesting things and I managed to follow the railway track most the way the next day. He had also managed to retrieve the Memel waypoints from the Nuvi and load them as a track onto the Forex so I was set to do the intended Memel trip on the Monday.
My Midmar swim was not great with me considering climbing onto a boat at some stage because of cramping in both calf muscles – Mmmmm need to remember not to drink so much the night before a big race >
Monday morning I left bright and early all excited about finding Memel and the talked about route back to Johannesburg. Having needed to phone a friend (GG) several times I finally figured out how to set up the Forex to let me follow the route and by lunchtime I was sitting at the hotel in Memel having lunch after a great ride on some sandy roads which fortunately were damp so the sand was nice and hard although there were a few scary moments when the back wheel wanted to overtake the front one. But managed to get there without falling
By the time I had finished lunch the storm clouds had built up and with the advice of the hotel owner I agreed it would not be in my best interests to take the better less travelled road so had to head home on tar.
Total distance covered 1511km and unfortunately only about 300km of that on dirt but hey I still love riding enough to have enjoyed every single KM.
It was great meeting Custonrv on Sunday for a drive through the Valley of a thousand hills – will defiantly make an effort to get down there to do a ride on the bike as it is so beautiful.
The road to Roodepoort and Villiers
The plan was to leave early Friday morning – follow a route, given to me by Michael from the Africa Twin club, to Memel and then push on to Dundee for the night and get to Midmar on Saturday morning.
Well laid plans sometimes just don’t work out
a stop at the local pub on the way home on Thursday evening ended up in a rather late night and a late start on Friday morning. By the time Michael had downloaded waypoints to the Nuvi which does not take a track it was midday. :-[I did realize after riding around for 2.5 hours that GG had not taught my Nuvi one thing about how to get me from point A to point B >
I finally got to Greylingstad (I think) all on tar and was getting very frustrated so turned onto the first dirt road I came across with the intention of heading in the general direction of Natal – severl phone calls to Michael had me heading towards ‘Roodepoort” at one point however several T junctions without direction boards had me totally lost and riding in circles ??? so the first time I finally came across a signboard that said Villiers – a name I recognised I followed it in the vain hope there would be a turn off to a town closer to Memel or directions to Newcastle or something but no luck 35km later I popped out onto the freeway just before the 1stop garage where GG found me.
The decision to follow him to Swinburn and ensure a decent ride on Saturday was quickly made. GG spent Friday evening teaching my little garmen forex some interesting things and I managed to follow the railway track most the way the next day. He had also managed to retrieve the Memel waypoints from the Nuvi and load them as a track onto the Forex so I was set to do the intended Memel trip on the Monday.
My Midmar swim was not great with me considering climbing onto a boat at some stage because of cramping in both calf muscles – Mmmmm need to remember not to drink so much the night before a big race >
Monday morning I left bright and early all excited about finding Memel and the talked about route back to Johannesburg. Having needed to phone a friend (GG) several times I finally figured out how to set up the Forex to let me follow the route and by lunchtime I was sitting at the hotel in Memel having lunch after a great ride on some sandy roads which fortunately were damp so the sand was nice and hard although there were a few scary moments when the back wheel wanted to overtake the front one. But managed to get there without falling
By the time I had finished lunch the storm clouds had built up and with the advice of the hotel owner I agreed it would not be in my best interests to take the better less travelled road so had to head home on tar.
Total distance covered 1511km and unfortunately only about 300km of that on dirt but hey I still love riding enough to have enjoyed every single KM.
It was great meeting Custonrv on Sunday for a drive through the Valley of a thousand hills – will defiantly make an effort to get down there to do a ride on the bike as it is so beautiful.
The road to Roodepoort and Villiers
