Graaff-Rienet

What a fantastic day today, I am grateful to my Saviour for watching over me as I did some hard riding and gently pushed the boundaries at times.

I left Plettenburg Bay at 7 am and made my way toward Uniondale over an exquisite pass; see the picture and you will understand the view I had. I lost my replacement petrol cap soon into my ride, so I am back to cable ties and a plastic bag, it will have to do until I get back to Joburg, and it seems to do the trick quite nicely. The mirror I had fixed in Queenstown is once again broken and I will live with one mirror instead of two, it is not the end of the world.

My ride started with me having to soon concentrate as the mountain pass was full of bends and had no barriers so if a mistake was made on a corner, flying lessons without any safety nets would have been the default conclusion. It was rather beautiful and near the end of the pass there was an amazing waterfall, in fact there was two of them in close succession. I could not resist getting my feet wet, I didn’t have the stomach o jump into the plunge pool, and it was still very early in the morning, if it had been midday, maybe I would have braved it. I also hit another locked gate and had to turn round before my first stop.

I had breakfast in Willowmore and stood in a bank teller line for 20 minutes to draw some money and I thought it was only in Johannesburg that we needed to queue.

From there I decided that I would venture into Baviaans and do the easier top half of it, this is where I had a lot of fun, and my bike is full of mud as the rains left many difficult mud pools on route for me to cross.

I went down once and thought I was going to be stuck for a while. However I managed to right the bike even though I was shin deep in water and mud. From there on in I found a way around the mud puddles.

I must have gone through at least 10 gates but thankfully they just needed opening and closing.

I had lunch in Aberdeen but missed the sand road from there to Graff-Rienet and that was the worst part of my ride, the tar is not pleasant, give me sand any day!

I then stop to catch my breath just outside Graff-Rienet at a pretty lake with lots of coloured children intrigued with my presents. I was feeling rather de-hydrated and instead of pushing on to Murrysburg I decided to turn round and pull into a caravan park for the night.

Until tomorrow then…

Signing off

Tyrone