Freedom Challenge Race Across SA Day 2

FCRASA day 2

We decided to leave verg early, like 04:30! We actually got away at 04:32, not bad. I intially we had to navigate our way out of the farm through to a district road 6 km away. There we crossed the road then had to navigate our way through the forest up to Donnybrook. We first went up a Sani2C single track and then into the forest itself, where we mostly traveled down forestry tracks. The experianced people in our group, who have done the race previously, managed to get us through without taking any wrong turns. This was followed by an equally difficult navigatitional section through the forests leading to Centacow. The first 12 km was easy riding down a forestry track followed by some tricky navigation into Centacow. For the first time, in the four time which I did this route, I managed to get the last section correct. We were on Centacow at 09:30, where we an early lunch. We left at 10:17.

We now had to tackle the the difficult part of the day. Two monster climbs followed by a techical entry into Ntsikeni. The road out of Centacow is quite undulating up to the point where we had to make a left turn and go up an spur. For the next 7 km we had to slog up this road, which was so steap that we had to push our bikes most of the time. It probably took us close to two hours to get to the top of tge watershed. Down the other side was a quite hair raising downhill up to the point where we had to take a turn down to a river. This was about 50 meters wide and about thigh deep. After the crossing we went through a blue gum forest to cross another ridge. The downhill was fast again. We then had another monster climb to negotiate. After 300 meters the road goes left and we had to take a track which looked more like an erosion scar than a track! This lasted for about two km and was totally unridable! Johan Radcliffe and Hanko de Beer was a little in front of us and listened to some locals, who advised them to continue along the road! It took them quite a while to realise their error and we had to waite for them to catch up with us again. We all regrouped at the top of the hill and road together to the entrance of Ntsikeni.

The entrance to Ntsikeni was well know for the stillts over the fence, but currenly there is a gap in the fence and we did not have to go over via the stillts. The ride through the reserve starts off with a small climb and the crossing of a stream, followed by a long climb through a wattle plantation and over a ridge. Once over the ridge we were rewarded with a beautiful view over the Ntsikeni plains, where we would be riding through the next day.

We clocked in at just after 17:00 having completed 97.92 km