My hostel-mates returned late last night with such a commotion that I thought at first that we were under attack. This morning they packed up and left for good, which entailed further commotion that forced me from bed. Thankfully they were out quickly and I was able to make my breakfast in peace. At 9 I headed up to the trail center to sort out the day’s destination. The only one manning the center was Fee, who handles reservations and administration for the guest house but is not a cyclist and didn’t know much about the local rides. After printing out the list of spots that she had in their computer we called her boyfriend for advice and he recommended that I head out to Grabouw, which sounded vaguely familiar from my conversations yesterday. Dirtopia maintains a set of trails out there at a place called Thandi Farm and there was promise of additional trails in the nearby forest.
I packed up for the day and was on the road by 9:15. I headed due south to Somerset West along the coast and headed east and over ridge of mountains that lines the whale coast. The drive alone was worth it as the high pass afforded me beautiful views of the coastline and the high mountains that line the eastern shore of the bay. Over the pass I dropped down into open farm country that is home to South Africa’s entire orchard industry. I turned in at Thandi Farm and plunked down my $2 to access the two marked routes on the property; a 24K dirt road
outer loop and an 8K singletrack inner loop. Pulling the bike out of the car I looked up at the mountain ridge that stood before me and scrutinized the map hoping that the route would take me high into the open Fynbos (the unique ecoregion that is endemic only to the Western Cape), but fearing that I’d be confined to the dirt roads that appeared to run along the edge of the farm property. I headed off first on the longer outer loop through the orchard, which was a nice opener before climbing up to the property’s edge along the Fynbos. On the high end of the route I skirted along the contours through the high protea bushes but could only look up wistfully at the several hundred meters of untracked mountain slopes that soared above me. On a few occasions I followed track off route that looked like they might take me higher, but inevitably the dead-ended. The marked route 
itself wound up and down the foothills of the ridge. After dropping back down to the orchard level I ran across the Dirtopia truck and the trail crew (they’re names are Afrikaans and I’d butcher them by trying to spell them) who were out for the day tending to the trail markings. They told me that I wasn’t far from the end and that they’d be down at the farm for lunch in 20 minutes and could point me to more riding in the area. The outer loop connected back up with the inner singletrack loop and I enjoyed a few K of swooping singletrack back down to the farm. The boys hadn’t made it back yet so I decided to go back out quickly and do the full inner loop which opened with a nice switchbacked climb through a bamboo grove before dropping be back out at the section I’d just ridden and back around to the farm.
Back at the farm I met up with the boys for lunch and heard stories about all the trail that the are either building planning to build. The name of the game in South Africa is access. South Africa operates under a land management policy of private ownership, so all trails have to be built in conjunction with private owners (hence the trail fees everywhere).
They pointed up to the vast open slopes of Fynbos above us and said that they’ve been working on getting trails built, but that the owners were reluctant. They did have plans in the works for a set of trails that would connect up to a set across the valley and would traverse 5 landowners and link up as much of 100K of single and double track. It was exciting to see a group on the verge of such an accomplishment and we chatted it up about potential race series and ways to get the riding community more involved. The conversation also made me thankful that we have a public land system with open access. Once these guys get a hold of land they can build beautiful trails that are designed specifically for mountain bikes, but their resources are so limited and the guys I talked to couldn’t believe that I can ride from my doorstep to hundreds of miles forest roads and trails.
After lunch they headed up to work on a new section of singletrack and pointed me towards the Lebanon Valley mountain bike trails a few kilometers away. After giving me two sets of conflicting directions I loaded up and set of in search of the trails. It turns out the second “correct” set of directions were completely backwards and I wandered about for a bit before finally figuring it out on my own. The trail-head and registration was at a set of cottages with an honor system payment box and a big map of the trail system. There were 4 interconnected trails, the longest of which was a 27.5 K loop up through a big pine plantation. The upper part was formally closed for logging, but I’d been given the heads up that it was well enough marked to follow and that I’d pick up some extra singletrack if I bent the rules a bit. I headed out on the red trail through a set of low apple orchards before hitting the pine plantation and heading up a set of forest roads. After climbing a while the forest opened up into a wide open clearcut but I could see tire tracks heading in so I figured I’d not be the only one ignoring the posted rules. The road went up through the clearcut and ducked back into the woods as it looped around the hilltop. There were a couple of nice ups and downs before the road grunted back up into the clearcut from the other side and dropped over the top. The road dropped away and went from a heavily traveled forest road to a washed out, cobbled jeep track. At this point I lost the tracks ahead of me, but did manage to find a few trail markings that hadn’t been lost to the logging. The trail turned back into
the woods and turned down a set of long singletrack descents that wound for 5K down the mountainside in big sweeping turns. The terrain varied from fast, soft pine mulch to tighter rocky bench cuts and was definitely the best I’d seen since my arrival. At one point a duiker sprinted across the trail ahead of me completing the exotic African experience. The trail wound down, in and out of the singletrack before dropping back out in the orchards and weaving back through the apple trees back to the trailhead.
I got back to the car after 2 hours and did a quick wash up under the hose and loaded up to head back to Sellenbosch for a well-earned beer to finish of a great day of riding. As I was driving out I was flagged down by a bunch of guys staying at one of the cottages. They’d managed to slide their truck into a fence as they were backing out of the driveway and needed help to push it away from the fence as they tried to get it fully backed out. We tried for about half an hour with various combinations of the truck tied to my car to keep it from sliding sideways as they attempted to extract it forwards and backwards. Finally, we managed to get it out forwards, dragging my little car behind it to keep it from sliding too far into the fence. Afterwards, they invited me in for a beer, which I happily accepted. There were 4 of them, out for a guys weekend of mountain biking and theirs were the tracks that I’d followed up into the clearcut. Thankfully, I hadn’t followed their tracks too closely as they got lost soon thereafter and missed out on nearly all the singletrack down the mountainside. While Allan and Gareth made a run into town (the maneuver that had stuck the truck in the first place) I stayed at the cottage for a beer with Brian and Bjorn. The four were all from Cape Town and gave me the scoop on local riding: basically I’d seen about half of it. I paced myself at only one beer as I had to drive back into town before eating, but as they prepared for their own meal it came out that I’d not yet experienced a proper South African braai (barbeque) and they insisted that I stay for dinner. With that I opened another beer and settled in for the night. A braai is basically a barbeque over an open flame, but they insisted that it differed fundamentally from the American style of barbeque, which they found to be a substandard form of cookery. As much as I could figure, the big difference is the time required to get a good set of coals from dry wood instead of charcoal, which necessitates additional drinking. As the night proceeded I learned a number of useful lessons about South African culture, including the existence of a handful of descent microbrews and enough Afrikaans expletives to get me in trouble. By the time the coals were ready we dispensed with any pretense of a balanced meal and made due with several pounds of sausage, steaks, and ostrich. By way of an appetizer was bacon, grilled over the fire in barbeque sauce. We carried on for a few hours but I ultimately had to pace myself for the drive back to Stellenbosch and they were settling in for a long night of drinking. At about 9 I thanked them for the lesson in Afrikaans culture and made my way back to Stellenbosch. Back at Dirtopia I struggled to stay awake long enough to pack up the bike for my departure.
It turns out that I got the weather perfectly as rain rolled in in the morning. I’d planned on either heading down to Cape Point or up to Table Mountain above Cape Town, but the rain kept me from both of those. Instead I drove down along the coast and into Cape Town. Without a real plan for the city the best I come up with on the fly was to head to the shopping area along the waterfront which is home to a collection of covered malls (and by mall I mean the full on first world mall concept) that would at least afford me distraction and protection from the rain. After a lunch of fish and chips and few pints of bitter while watching the Australia-New Zealand rugby match I headed to the airport for my marathon trip home. After 12 hours on the fist leg I now find myself in Heathrow for the rest of the day. The recent bomb plots make leaving the airport for a day in London a challenge, so I’ll spend the day in the airport watching the people of the world reshuffle themselves.
