Lesotho

Over Easter, club member Noeline T went to play in Lesotho for some 9 days. The bikes were trailered up to Bethulie, and the car & trailer was left there while four of them went to play with some great mud, water, ice, gravel, tar, donkeys, sheep - even other humans, when they met up with Geoff's group near Rhodes

Read her great trip report here. Awesome pics!

 

Lesotho Tour (click on image to enlarge)

A little before Christmas the urge came upon me, would it last, could I sustain it? The urge for a quiet trip, that is! Last year it came and went due to exhaustion of work.

Now as a fair few know, I am Bi, I swing both ways, bike riding-wise that is. Tar and dirt do it equally for me!!

Now, what with the 'Ladies Training' and the 'Club's Track day' and the 'Slightly faster breakfast' run, my masculine side was out balancing my feminine, so a bit of dirt was called for to re-balance!!

Day 1 1100KM Cape Town to Hobhouse Steve, Henny, Joe and I, met at the N1 one stop at 06:00 we thought it was cold then but only if we new what was in stall for us…………. I was quite tired as I’d only got to bed at 02:00 that morning. I had to grapple with map source and my route, for 3 hours, before I got it to work on my pc and then only could only download it onto the GPS. We mounted and made our way north, vents closed, inners, buffs and heated grips on. Brrrrrr cold cold cold…. Idea was to get to Laingsburg and have breakfast… the Hex river valley was -1 and at times I thought my heated grips were off…. Teeth chattering I pulled off at Touws River for coffee and breakfast. After a few warm cups of coffee and tucker we were on our way again temp now 8deg. We made good time through the day stopping for a late lunch at Three Sisters. On the road again we turned onto the R701 just after Colesberg. This road is awesome taking you all along the Garip Dam and some spectacular views of the area. +- 70km before Wepener we hit our 1st stretch of dirt of the trip, nice piece of road hard and flat. It was now getting dark and we had our spots on. About 20km before we got to Wepener we crested a rise and as our lights hit the road again we found a huge pothole in front of us. Nowhere to go I preloaded the suspension and tried to get over it, but being loaded and 2 up we couldn't get the back over. We hit it quit hard and not long after that got a burning rubber smell from the wheel. In Hobhouse found the torsion bar had bent and was now touching the tire. I called BMW on call and got the technician from Bethlehem. He advised that I should see if I can bend it straight if I wanted to carry on with the trip. We could only get to it in the morning so no use stressing about it then. We had a bath and settled in to our accommodation a quaint place called the Emily Guest house. Currently being renovated and fixed up, by Françoise and his family. After cleaning up it was time for food and a drink, word had it that the "Policie Broodtjie" was nosh to have. We placed our orders and headed to the bar. When arriving at the bar we found that the tradition in Hobhouse is that you have to introduce yourself by shaking hands with everyone in the bar as you enter. It was a festive crowd and before long we had all the towns' folk calling and making plans to help us.

After much pre trip planning we had all the fine details for a sucessful trip and everything seemed to go according to plan. We plotted the route after speaking to the guys Wayne Haylett, Cobus Botha, Hendro Scholts (5 Capped springbok), Niel Duplessis (Coach for the Cheetas.) and myself Russ Rathbone ROUTE: Day1: Packing and loading Bikes · Bloemfontein After a long trip by car we arrived in Bloem exhausted