Trygve Roberts
Pack Dog
- Joined
- May 20, 2014
- Messages
- 391
- Reaction score
- 1
- Bike
- BMW R1200GS Adventure
Important Notice.
The Old Postal Route has been permanently closed to all bikers and 4x4's.
Please read the letter below which has been sent to us by the farm owner. This is a sad state of affairs guys. Your comments are welcome.
I am contacting you in regards to the "old postal route". I farm on Achterfontein which is situated on the so called "old postal route" that I see you have included in your website.
Somehow people started advertising this route on all sorts of forums and posting videos on YouTube and telling the story of this route that was used by a young woman to deliver post between Elandsvlei and Wupperthal. This is all a myth.
The original "postal route" is a walking trail between Wupperthal and Elandsvlei hugging the banks of the Tra-Tra river and did not run over the mountain crossing our farm.
The route running through our farm is for the most part a private road maintained by me and our neighbors. It was build by farmers and only a portion of it was proclaimed as a public road in 1980 in order to get it upgraded by the then "distriks raad".
The problem we have with the advertising of this route is that our farm roads are being destroyed on a weekly basis by people on motorcycles. We have no more privacy and peace and quiet on our own farm. I have on numerous occasions gone out to rescue hurt and dehydrated bikers at my own expense and loss of family time having to leave my wife and children alone and returning sometimes at 10 at night. I have picked up rubbish, confronted people just camping on our farm and making fires or people turning my planted rooibos fields into a motocross track. A lot of people come racing through our farmstead at 60 to 70 km/h. I have small children and dogs that can seriously get hurt by this irresponsible behavior. This weekend I damaged my bakkie tyre on rescue mission to get a hurt biker to hospital.
We are basically fed up by people thinking this is a public road and space where they can do as they see fit. It costs us tens of thousands of rands a year trying to keep our road in a condition where we can use it on a weekly basis to go to town as well as to transport our produce.
This is private property and not open to the public. We are in the process of getting signs made that we will put up and then we will be closing down the route permanently.
I would appreciate your help in regards to this situation.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Kind regards
Henk Bakker
