My 2 Day Gravel trip to Ballito ...............

[Iron]

Two Day Gravel trip from Jhb to Ballito …………..
To share with you all my little experience that I been wanting to do for a while and this December lent itself to the perfect opportunity, Some of my family opted to head strait to Ballito while my eldest and I plotted our route using Garmin connect (this is the cycling / sports app and allows the selection of Gravel roads as a cyclist. I don’t have a fancy Garmin with T4A ) to utilize as many gravel roads as we could .We chose to stay over at Muller’s Pass as it looked like halfway and on the plus side found nice accommodation right there ( Moorfield farm ).

So will share what I can remember as it was a brilliant little trip:
Day 1 – 356km – 8h06min driving – avg speed 43.9km/h
I have estimated the Dirt at 241 km and all tar sections combined at 115 km .
We started from the Vale and headed towards Brakpan where we hit our first dirt stretch at 32km , was a bit of a challenge to find this as it looks like a new water pipeline was being laid so at one point I was on the wrong side of the long deep dug trench and had to get to the other side to get back on route, never the less we managed and from that point the navigation become super easy ( I used my cycling Garmin GPS that I had uploaded the routes to a 510 as I don’t have a fancy smacy off-road jobby )
From this point we did 14km of what was not much off a road due to all the rain and then hit a tar stretch that took us to Nigel where we connected to dirt again and pretty much did not see tar except for small connecting patches here and there to link up the gravel. We spent allot of time in what I call no man’s land as I did not go through any towns till we popped out at the back of Memel.
I filled up and did about 3km on tar again then back on gravel to Muller’s Pass. The day was awesome and for me made more fun because of all the rain as it made the roads muddy and fun.
Moorfield Farm was such a treat, old, rustic and peaceful where we did a little hike to the local waterfall of 40m high and then chilled around a fire.
To give an idea of the basic route of places we went close too or through:
Brakpan
Tsakane
Nigel (through)
Hallgate
Greylingstad
Gruisplaats
Memel (through)
Mullers Pass (overnight)

Pics of Day one and Day 2 report to follow ……………………

[Iron]

.

[Mad Manny]

Nice Ian!
Going on tar would have been quicker & cheaper (but certainly not safer) - but who remembers a trip like that?
You created memories, which is awesome.
Well done!

[Iron]

Day 2 – 354km – 6h44min driving – avg speed 52.5km/h
So day 2 , I’m not sure on the Dirt to tar ratio today as we had allot of short small stretches of tar to link all the dirt , I would say a little more tar than day one.

We headed out onto Muller’s Pass and continued down into Kzn in the rain that had started at 1am and it did not let off for most of the morning. This made the roads allot of fun but must say that the dirt stretches from Muller’s pass for the first 90odd km are in stunning condition and in 4H I could sit at comfortable speeds as we did not have to negotiate washouts and pot holes in the gravel roads.
This all slowly started changing as we got closer to Tugela Ferry which was the point We crossed the Tugela River and then the roads turned to shit.There is this new stretch of brand new tar that goes up the valley pass once over the Tugela that is pristine but then all ends again in very crappy washed out donga roads ,This continued till we got to the pine forests and sugarcane fields near Greytown and Fairfield area where the gravel is very good again and the smooth dirt was stunning .
We then went through the cultural villages of the Kzn midlands and rolling mountain passes from New Hanover to Tongaat where going was slow again but very scenic.

All in all I would like to relook Day 2 and find some more off the beaten track roads to enjoy and just see this beautiful landscape by going around the cultural villages in the mountains.

Day 2 towns/places we went close to or through :
Mullers Pass
Normandien ( through )
Pomeroy
Tugela Ferry ( through )
Molomeni
Greytown ( through )
Fairfield
New Hanover
Mayesweni
Makhuluseni
Inhlabamkhosi
Ethekwini
Tongaat
Ballito

[Iron]

.

[Iron]

Nice Ian!
Going on tar would have been quicker & cheaper (but certainly not safer) - but who remembers a trip like that?
You created memories, which is awesome.
Well done!

On this note i travel with Jerry cans so only used Memel to fill up on the trip and used 7.9l/100 avg .
This Jimny needs a bigger tank as this is one of my gripes with this car, otherwise it was a great little vehicle to do this in .

[AndreasR]

Thanks for sharing. Very nice way to travel.

[BushWacker]

Nice account Iron .
I will certainly keep a copy of the routing
for my next trip East.

Great stuff & many thanks.

[Iron]

Nice account Iron .
I will certainly keep a copy of the routing
for my next trip East.

Great stuff & many thanks.

Happy to send the GPX or TCX file if you ever want it .

[CornellMans]

looks epic and fun! especially with the muddy and wet roads

[Shane]

Nicely done Ian!

Definately a nice approach to travelling when time permits.

Nice photo's!

Sent from my SM-G998B using Tapatalk

[Flipside]

Brilliant way to travel.
The back roads are always more interesting.
Forgive Chas,
His South and East seem inexplicably co-located.
And the files wont work with his floppy disk machine.

[BushWacker]

Brilliant way to travel.
The back roads are always more interesting.
Forgive Chas,
His South and East seem inexplicably co-located.
And the files wont work with his floppy disk machine.

... pedantic ...
East or South East , certainly not South to ' E- Coast ' ...

[grips]

Lekker

[Bugger]

Awesome memories made on trips like this