BB2BB Day 22

Alta and Barry Stretton accepted us on short notice and we had washing done, a good supper, a warm bed, breakfast and food for the road.

The aim was to get going by 05:00, but in the end we only left at 05:15. The road to Molteno is in quite a good condition and we were averaging 17 kph. The temperature went down to 2.7 degrees Celsius! The stars were shinning and there was very little wind. We managed to complete the 31 km to Molteno in under two hours.

We wasted some time in town looking fir the road to Romansfontein, but did eventually found it. The drag out of town is a long steady climb followed by the typical ups and downs. We reached Romansfontein at 08:45. I was very glad to see the shock pump in the kitchen and immediately set about pumping the shock. Unfortunately it is very difficult to not loose some pressure after pumping a shock to 300 kpa and then unscrewing the  connection. On the third attempt, we gave up. The shock is better, but the pressure is       still too low. We had something to drink and rusks while chatting to Stephanie and Will. It turned out that Hoffie knew their former local GP, so they had a lot to talk about. We left there after 40 minutes.

The road from Romansfontein to the Hofmeyr/Burgersdorp junction is mostly uphill, but it us those gradual inclines. To make matters worse we had to ride into a fairly strong head wind. Once you get to the top of the hill, you realise it is not the top! The road will flatten out our make a small dip to the next rise and so it carries on until we reached the end if the escarpment. From here we had a magnificent view over a very wide area. This was followed by a 9 km downhill to the junction.

Turning left at the junction and with the wind now on ours backs, we really motored. The road surface was excellent, the elevation was either level or down hill with the occasional up hill. We averaged over 20 kph for the last 35 km.

A very nice and productive day after yesterday's ordeal!

Started 05:15; total time 08:28:38; distance 119.28 km; total ascent 1,088; total descent 1,577 meters.