BB2BB Day 25

For the information of those who read yesterday's blog before I amended it, I duplicate the last paragraph here:

Yesterday afternoon I mentioned to Garth, Elsa's husband, that I will pay somebody to come from Graaff-Reinet to the farm if they can bring a shock pump with a release valve. He then "disappeared" and returned three hours later. He went to his farm in Aberdeen district and came back with a shock pump that works! So I am back with a working rear shock. I nearly kissed him!

Garth had to get up at 04:30 to assist with a fox hunt and fitted in very well with our timing schedule and we agreed to leave at 05:00. Elsa gave us Jungle Oats for breakfast, made us sandwiches and gave us two of her delightful "energy bars" come "crunchies" for the road.

We actually got going at 05:14 and made good time for the first hour. We were surprised by a number mud puddles in the dark resulting in lots of mud on our bikes. The last bit to Aberdeen Road was at a slight incline making it difficult to maintain anything above 12 kph. We turned left at Aberdeen Road towards Klipplaat. We stopped on a hill to capture the beauty of the sunrise. The road towards Klipplaat was fairly straight, but the road surface was excellent and there was some variation in the elevation, making the ride quite enjoyable.

We stopped at the still closed Charles Hotel for a bite and Hoffie replenished his water supply. Just outside Klipplaat we took the turn off to Kamferpoort. This little used road was in quite good condition and the shrubbery was typical Karoo with some mountain ranges thrown in for good measure.

The ride through Kamferpoort was something special. My brother-in-law come up from Kirkwood with Nelis Meiring, the owner of Kamferpoort, to unlock the gate for us. We stopped at Nelis' house in the Poort for a chat and some tea. This pleasure little sojourn took us 40 minutes.

My original plan was to do Allemanskraal to Prins Albert in two days. Fortunately sanity prevailed and I changed it to a three day ride. This resulted in today being quite a bit shorter than originally planned. So the ride from Kamferpoort to Marlu was shorter than anticipated and we arrived at our destination just after 13:45.

Data for the day: left 05:14; riding time 07:14:19; distance 106.86; average speed 13.9 kph; climb 759; descent 879 meters.

Total distance to date in 25 days: 2,505 km.