BB2BB2 Day 21

So now I was in Freedom Challenge "country". From here to Romansfontein where, I am due on Sunday, I "hug" the Freedom Challenge route, with the exception that where they "hike-a-bike" I take the district road. 

Today was a short day and as I do not have the route on my Garmin, I did plot it on Komoot and that worked very well. Tomorrow I have the option to stick to Komoot or use the Freedom route via Blackfountain. That entails quite a bit of navigation, which I can do with the maps and narratives I have on my celphone or I could stick to the Komoot option going along the district road. I was going to do that from the turn-off to the Vuvu valley in any case, so I may just opt for the whole district road option.

I got going at 06:58 and used the Freedom route out of Masakala until joining the Qacha's Nek road after 5 km. This is a tar road and it is in an excellent condition. One kilometer further I turned left onto the road that would take me to Queens Mercy. The Freedom route turns off this road after 9 km to follow a route through some small rural establishments and over the Kinera flood planes to come out at Queens Mercy. I had a reasonable ride on this bumpy road going around the righthand side of the flood planes and reached Queens Mercy after just more than 3 hours covering 35 km. I stopped at the Queens Marcy (note spelling) spaza shop and bought a Coke, an apple and two tomatoes to supplement the sandwiches I made for the road. The lady at Masakala also gave me two boiled eggs. After having some of that and filling my waterbottle with Coke, I was on my way again.

Riding was smooth and I "toggled" along. In the distance I could see the Gladstone abandonded farm house, which is one of the reference points for the Freedom route. A little while later I passed the road I took in 2011 with George Schutte when we could not find the right way out of Gladstone to Malekonyane. I also went over the bridge where we stopped at that time and recalled how my one glove nearly blew off the bridge into the water. It now was easy going and the only "obstical" was the climb up to Malekonyane. It took me 21 minutes to do the 3 km from the turn-off to the guest house. Tomorrow morning I will go back there and then turn right onto the Ongeluksnek road on my way to Vuvu. 

Getting to the gate, I found it locked and nobody around. I called Tsepo, who arranged the accommodation and he got somebody to open up, but I had to waite quite a while. I am used to the Vuvu way of washing in a bucket with water from other buckets, but last night I had to do that at Masakala and today also at Melekonyane as they both have water problems. Masakala was a plumbing problem and at Malekonyane nobody knew how to get water from the tank to the showers! These are the small "gems" of using this kind of accommodation.