Adventure Recee

[Asjas]

Well late last year I had a brainfart.

"Can we do adventure bike type of Rideout's?" This got me head busy and I was soon planning.

First off I live in the Kosmos area in the eastern portion of the interior plateau and till this day I'm still convinced it flatter than the 500ml coke that got lost under your overlanders seat, saying this NO body wants to go on an adventure around these areas as its al the same grasslands or mielie farms where ever you go... One advantage to this thou is that Eswati's border post is just 200km away and everyone that's been in the area will know its Saturated with pine plantations.

This got the ball rolling thou... The plan was as follows, get some buddy's, buy wood, buy meat and Booze, drive to the border & rough it in the plantations for a night before heading home again on Sunday. Only rule is more than 75% of the trip has to be on gravel. That being said i quickly got the recruited a few mal koppies + Toppie.

THE execution:
Saturday Morning we all got together at the Garage to fill up. Toppie is his d40 Navara D/c, My brother in a bone stock Lada Niva, JC In his V6 Suzuki Sj & myself in rattle trap.

We Left Secunda and headed to the silo's just outside of town, Why you ask? Well these silo's had a track linking them to the main coal railways due east towards Ermelo. Cruising along these rails can be quite fun as some of these maintenance routes aren't of the best quality. This lead us all the way to Bethal.

leaving home around 9:30AM we arrived in Ermelo at about 13:00 Yes almost 4Hrs to do 100km's. from here we had no choice but to get on the black stuff and headed towards Lotair

We Had a quick lunch next to the road at Westoe Dam before heading down to little Scotland, a guesthouse just north of Amsterdam. You see Toppie wasn't to comfortable to spend the night in one of these fake sappi forests without their consent. We lets' just say we both got what we wanted. He was on private property and I managed to convince their management to wild camp on their ground's between the plantations

We spend the night between the trees under the stars.

[Asjas]

Sunday morning we packed our gear and headed to Amsterdam about a 20kms of tarmac. from Here it was another few kms of tarmac to Jerico dam. I mean we had the whole day to get home so might as well do some sight seeing.

Ariving at Jerico dam it was soon very clear that this area had alot of rain, the campsite was flooded with dam levels quite a bit above 100%. Leaving Jerico meant it was time for stage " of our trip, the 180ish km's of gravel roads home. Morgenstonddam Was due south and about 10ish Km away via the plantation roads, unfortunately when we arrived the whole area along our planned route was fenced of thus not allowing us to go down towards the lake itself.

Panbult saw mill along the N2 was our next "TARMAC" crossing, so we headed down their waited for ever for a Coal train to pass by and headed even further south on this 4 lane wide gravel road with lots of loose sandy spots. It was a long section almost 20km's long but we could easily get the 4bie's up to a 100km/h on this section. Dust was a huge concern so we kept fair distance in the convoy. Progressively the road got narrower and narrower until we reached a washed out climb where most bakies would at least need a diff lock to get up, it had very loose shale and a few nasty erosion gully's. Reaching the top it was a smoothish gravel road again. surprisingly enough we were just a few km's from Country Trax offroad ridding academy.

From this point it was smooth sailing again along farm road towards the Paul Kruger limestone bridge right next to the N11. Cool Bridge build in yesteryear to cross the vall river. At this point the V6 Was also spluttering as it ran out of fuel...Well what did you expect from the essex lump?.
Luckily JC had a full Jerry and we felt confident that we can reach Morgenson on that 20l of life support. So yet Again we Hopped over the N11 and made our way towards Morgenson.

On approach to Morgenson the lada passed me as we fooled around and i saw the front wheel hopping like one of those Colourful drawer ornaments, (jy weet as pappa nie genoeg was ni). Stopping to refuel the thirsty v6 in morgenson we checked the lada and found the shock mount has broken clean off. I wasn't supersized at all ,as some section of our last 330km's 2 day run was very close to baja style racing. Anyhow, Toppie was now gatvol and it was late in the afternoon so he opted to head back home via Bethal and the n17. Our younger lads 8 shades darker by now due to all the dust was still motivated to complete our out ride on gravel road. We played around and acted like teenagers for the last few kms home, and some how arrived just minutes after toppie did.


Map plot of our entire route:

SO ultimaly, Yes. Yes you can do adventure style drive just like Steven on his KTM.....

Im just recovering all Footage then id add it here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/9ymnBBFdQsg?feature=share

[Rechardt]

Very lekker write up, those kinda recces are fun.