Race to Rhodes -Day 2

We (Gavin, Henry and myself), left Allendale at 05:12. The first section was fairly difficult, but we had some old hands in our group and found our way to the Donnybrook forests without too much difficulty. We stopped for some water in Donnybrook and continued through to Centacow. We did turn a little early, but that turned out to be a little short cut!

Here we were treated to some soup again and quickly set off. The initial section involved a climb and some undulations up to the next turnoff. We then started a climb of 355 meters over a distance of 4.72 km.

Once over the top we descended down to a river, which we managed to cross without getting too wet. From here the rout took us through a blue gum forest and over the next hill, which was "easy" compared to what we have gone over before. Down the otherside and onto another " monster" climb. 3.56 km with 376 meter ascent. This took us 49 minutes. Once over the top, we had to negotiate the Ntsikeni northern fence. This consisted of going over a three-meter high fence with a home made "ladder" made from tree branches. Now it was a relatively short distance to the over night lodge,or so we thought! We still had to cover a distance of 12 km and it took us  71 minutes. We arrived at our destination after covering 98 km with 2,621 meter of climbing and taking us 11:58! Total actual riding time was 8:56. The three hours variation was due to stops and pushing!