Honeydew / Groot Marico round trip

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Bill p

Pack Dog
Joined
Jul 24, 2012
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Location
Roodepoort
Bike
Yamaha XT660
Hi guys.
Myself and a mate, Sean, decided to do a round 2 day trip to Groot Marico last Sunday. Me on my 600 Tenere and Sean on a 400xr Honda.
Left early morning Sunday, took tar road to Tarlton and then dirt road to Boons. From there went south over R 509 and then followed dirt roads to Koster / Ventersdorp tar road where we headed north into Koster. Had Wimpy breakfast and then just outside town picked up the dirt road to Zeerust which we bombed along untill the turnoff to Groot Marico. Beautiful piece of scenic dirt road which we rode slowly along and ino G.M. Found the famous Santa at the tourist enquiries. Quick as a flash she booked us into a backpackers retreat called Djembe. As we were a bit early, we found the local pub / diner and threw a good few beers down our throats.
Got to backpackers abot 5 and met the owners Jolene and Tabu ( his adopted name, real name I forget. ) What a great and interesting couple. Turns out they run the local Herman Charles Bosman museum and after unpacking she promptly took us back into town to show us all the interesting buildings and museums.
Made us a great curry and rice and after a lot more beers we retired. Great first day.
Next morning we left about 9. What a great place Djembe was. Your basic rustic bedroom/shower rondavel each. And this dinner, bed and breakfast only cost us
R 250.00 EACH! Highly recomended if you just want the basics.
We headed north to the Marico dam and turned east along a tar road through Pella and Lindleyspoort. After abot 60km we turnd south and hit a beautiful twisty dirt road all the way back to Koster. From Koster we did a tar/dirt/tar zig zag to Welverdiend, Just west of Carltonville. From there we went back along the railway line to Randfontein. I was just feeling good about a nice 2 day leisurely trip and thinking of home when Sean decided tht we needed to do the Randfontein / Maraisburg technical dirt route to round off the trip . And thats where the fun began.
Having spent all his life riding and racing off road, Sean is in his ellement and roars off into the distance while I try to navigate the 170kg thumper along the paths, ruts and woops as best I can. We get to this water crossing which is basically a 7m drop down 1 embankment, across about 5m of water and back up the other side.
On my little IT 200 on a Sunday morning breakfast run, no problem. After 300km in the saddle on the rather large Tenere, I'm not sure. Sean goes first and makes it quite easy. My turn. Slde down ( feeling good ) go across water ( feeling better ) roar up other side ( feeling great ) but take wrong line, hit rut and fall over and slide halfway back down. ( Feeling kak ) Lucky no damage to bike. We slide the bike back down to the bottom and I  manage to ride the bike out further down the water and join Sean. I'm now tired and just want to get home but we carry on. Sean decides to take a short cut over this innocent looking pan of mine sand. As soon as we are on it we discover that it is just snot and water and now I know I'm in trouble. I tried to stay on but ended up ploughing into a wall of mine sand, luckily not hard. I pick the bike up and there it is. My first self inflicted dent and scratches on the tank of my beautiful old Tenere. Yerra, I was the moering.
But I calmed down afterwards and realised that this was going to happen some time. I have since patched it up and it doesn't look to bad and has become part of the bikes character.
Anyway, after this incident, it was straight to a tar road and back home. 6 beers and then wash the bike. Slept like a baby. Great weekend.
We did about 350km of dirt and  200km of tar.
 
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