The two women who are sharing the hostel with me appeared to be initiating some sort of construction project at 7AM. I did what I could to ignore it, but after 20 minutes I figured that getting up at least offered the hope of a warm coffee. They were out the door by 7:30 and said “I hope we didn’t wake you” as they left. I had plenty of time until the trail center opened, so after my coffee I hopped on the bike and headed up the trail into the vineyard a bit to get snap
some pictures as the sun climbed up over the eastern mountains. There were already work crews out tending the rows of vines as I climbed up the hillside. In typical African fashion, each work crew had set a small fire to warm themselves at the end of the rows they were working which gave the area the classic smell of earth and smoke that I recalled from my time in Kenya years ago.
As 9 approached I turned around and headed back to the trail center to find out about the local trails and recommendations for trips farther afield. At the center I bought a $2 permit for the resident trail system which consisted of a 15 kilometer loop to the top of a nearby hill and back. It was estimated at 1.5-2 hours so I figured I’d be able to knock it off quickly and head out for something else in the afternoon. At the trail center I got to meet one of the locals that worked on trail maintainence. After a bit of chatting about my exotic bike (singlespeeds and 29ers are uncommon in South Africa) he gave me directions to the Jonkershoek nature reserve which promised many more miles of single and double track riding for the afternoon.
I headed up the well marked trail as I had in the morning, up a set of winding dirt roads through the DelVera vineyard. The pitches were at times severe but mostly it was a winding path along the contours. Once at the top of the fields the single track began, climbing up into a small preserve atop the lone hill that stood above the vineyard. The reserve was designated as a protected area with aims at reclamation with native vegetation after years of being overrun by exotic species and woodlots. The singletrack wound up the contour with a series of well banked hairpin turns. The entire hillside had burned the year before and from the
second turn on I went from the lush greenery of the well irrigated vineyard below to a stark
landscape of black soot mixed with the red earth and the charred skeletons of trees littering the bare ground. At the top I paused to admire the view and got my first glimpse of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the distance. The descent showcased some nice trail building as the trail cut down the rockier side of hill with some nice rock features that gave way to wider banked turns that held speed well. After about a kilometer of high speed swooping turns I was back onto the vineyard roads that led back to the hostel. The quick, open descent back down was broken up by a new section of trial with a set of built ramp features that were mid-construction but were plenty for me and my limited
trials skills.
Back down at the vineyard compound I stopped in for a quick brunch of french toast (served with bacon and cheese!) and an espresso which put my head and body back on track following the pitiful cup of french press coffee that had started my day. I quickly loaded the bike into my Volkswagen Citi and headed through Stellebosch and towards the Jonkershoek Valley in serach of a slightly longer ride. On the way I stopped by Mason’s, a loca shop run by the recently crowned South African singlespeed national champion. I’d stopped in two
days before and chatted it up with the owner about the burgeoning single speed scene (currently numbering about 50 nation wide) and the challenge of getting access to anything bu the most standard of builds for his bikes. Mason and his crew gawked at the big wheels and the drivetrain for 10 minutes or so before he simply looked at me and said “Get it out of here, go ride”. And with that I took the road out of town and followed to its end at the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve. At the trail head I again paid the $2 permit fee and picked up a map, which featured 5 sectons of single track, the longest of which was 2.7K, connecting a network of dirt roads. I did a quick survey of the map and picked a route that would start off climing up a twisting single track to the highest of the roads on the north side of the valley, which would allow me to hit most of the others on the descent. Though the trails were named on the map, the roads weren’t and nothing was marked, so I headed up what I thought was my intended road but could find no confirmation and struggled to match landmarks up with the contours on the 
map. After climbing a while without seeing any singletrack I ended up riding along the contour on a jeep track. I tried several times left and right, and turned around a few times before giving up any hope of finding the trails as marked on the map. I finally climbed up to a 4-way intersection that I could only match up against a spot well on the opposite side of the reserve from the gate. The reserve, it turns out, was much smaller than I’d anticipated and I managed to ride from one end to the other while looking for my first turnoff. From the intersection I turned around and headed back along the high road that had been my initial goal in search of the single track, this time from the top down. I still managed to miss it and ended up following an unmarked singletrack that led me out of the reserve and put me on top of the downhill course from the recent national championships. After shooting down the race course (all dirt and built jumps, no rocks) I turned back uphill to climb back into the reserve and retraced my previous route. This time, the singletrack seemed to be jumping out at me; after abandoning any hope of matching the trails up with the map I decided to follow whatever I could find and quickly managed to sort out the trails I had missed on the first pass. Though few
and far between, the singletrack here is expertly built and lovely to ride. The trails all had nice flow with wide turns that suited the big wheels and were all of reasonable grade for the singlespeed. My initial frustration melted away as I cruised up the first singletrack ascent and then enjoyed the views across the high dirt road to the far end of the reserve and a beautiful 2K descent through a pine forest. At the bottom I hit two of the three remaining sections of singletrack and found myself back out at the entrance gate 3 hours after I’d started. There was still plenty of light, but I decided to leave the other side of the valley (which was all dirt roads) for tomorrow in the event that I came back. At the coffee shop at the gate I had a chat with two guys that were refueling after riding up and through the park from Stellenbosch. I probed them for info about more riding in the area, but between my first day and the ground I’d covered today I had seen the bulk of what Stellenbosch had to offer. They rattled off a handful of names of places that were a little further afield, but the Afrikaans names didn’t stick in my head long and quickly forgot much of what they told me, except that if I wanted more riding tomorrow I was going to have to look a little harder.
Heading back through town I resolved to ask questions at the trail center tomorrow and find some new spots. The riding today was good, but not good enough to justify a second run tomorrow. By striking out a bit further tomorrow I’ll at least be rewarded with a better view of the countryside.
