Cederberg Oasis

To answer the question: the TraTra drif is definately a place to celebrate: it is beautiful next to the river; sandy, soft camping site on the bank of the river, fantastic setting with a steep rock face occupied by a large troop of baboons, clean drinkable water, a waterhole to swim in and it stays in the shade until about 8am this time of the year.

Just by the way, I'll have you know that the flowers were so beautiful that a few hundred pics found their way onto the camera, which made selecting a few for this report very, very difficult. But, one tries...

Gavin and I went with Warren's first trip to the farm Mertenhof in the Biedouw Valley earlier in the year. Loved it, so when the call came to put names down for the same trip but in flower season, ours were pretty much first on the list.

It’s been a long festive season and January. It’s Natalie's busiest time of the year at work and so subsequently I work through every year while most of my staff all take a break. On new year’s eve we were so bushed we had one drink, and went to bed at about 10 past 12. Now it’s already end of Jan, and we really need a break. Just a little time away from the city, work, cell phones and the like.

I've loved riding in the Cederberg since the 1st time I was there, which wasn't much more than a year ago... So any opportunity to do so with some friends is always grabbed with both hands.

Dates 7th to 9th May.

The Club has booked out the entire venue for the weekend where we will be waited on by Gerrit & Chantel.

There will be two groups for the Saturday's ride.

Saturday morning, 05H00, alarm goes off and the usual question is asked still half asleep, “Morning Love, are …….. hang on, that was last week.

The round trip from Cape Town to Wupperthal is usually done over a weekend with an overnight stop somewhere in the Cedarberg. How appropriate then, to do the trip on the longest day of the year with Geoff Russell on a route that seemed to include all the interesting dirt this side of Wupperthal. There are those who say you wouldn't need to stop overnight if you weren't carrying all that camping gear. So we traveled light and fast, rising around 5am, and getting home at 8pm. The longest day. ===Swartland Engen 1-Stop : 06h45=== Rendezvous for breakfast and 7h30 departure. I had managed to convince Shaded Alan to meet me en route at 6h15 (he had wanted to meet an hour earlier - I think he may have confused the Swartland 1-Stop with the one at Langebaan Lagoon :-)