Riley was planning to ride up the West Coast road to Langebaan on the first leg of his tour. I "convinced" him to change by agreeing to ride with him on the first day if he was willing to take another route which I suggested. He agreed to my proposal, but first we had to take the new bike for a test ride!
So when we got home after collecting the bike, we doned our cycle gear and went for a lap of what I call our "lock dowb" route. This is circle route through Blouberg, West Beach, up the R27 to the Table Bay Mall traffic lights and back. On our way back we stopped for a "compulsory" photo of Riley with the bike and Table Mountain in the back ground. Back home Riley fitted all his luggage, with help of Henk, my son-in-law. We did weigh the bike with all the "assessories" and ot cane in at about 16kg. We did not weigh it after all the luggage was added, but my guess is that the final product would push thescal past 39kg. We did weigh his bag and that was just short if 10kg. To that must be added two 1 liter water bottles, two 750ml water bottles, a tent and a sleeping bag sng mat!
The plan was to get moving at 06:30 this mirning, but we only got away at 06:54! The route started with our regular Botterberg route. At the left before the Oliphantkop hill, which we skipped today I took a photo of Riley with Table Mountain in the back ground, for the last time! At the Old Malmesbury Road we turned left towards Malmesbury. For the next 30km we would be on tar, going through Kalbaskraal and past Abbotsdale. The "drag" up the hill through Malmesbury was quite an effort. We reach the new mall on th NE side of Malmesbury after 3:21. Seatle Coffee was our destination and the order was for two slices of banana nread and two coffees. If took us 25 minutes to get and consume this.
Now there was 45km left to Moorreesburg and most of it on gravel. When we left Seatle my temprature gauge indicated high forties! That partly was due to the bike being in the sun and it did come diwn to tge high thirties, but between the two towns the temperature hovered between 37-42 and did go up to 45.7 for a while! Up the last hill it was between 42-45. That is hot! There was a little breeze, which did help in making it more barable! We did stop at a farm just after crossing the R311, but found nobody home, only some dogs, which was reasonably friendly after they saw that we were no threat. We did find a tap with some water, which was quite cool, at least cooler than our water bottles which have been in the sun!
On the the last hill Riley did fall behind a little and I had to wait for him before we crossed the N7. In town we stopped at Shoprite to get some cool drinks and something to make for supper. Our accommodation was right at tge SW corner of town and we arrived there at 13:50.
Total riding time 6:54:42; distance 106.49, meter acsent 1,117.
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