Tswaing Crater Ride

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bmad

Race Dog
Joined
Feb 16, 2006
Messages
3,555
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Location
Gauteng 1150ADV
Bike
BMW R1150GS Adventure
I saw this ride on this forum and got the gps route from Shark_za (thank you), so Saturday undertook the ride.

We left early on Saturday Morning, it was freezing when we past Hartebeespoort Dam, crossed the bridge, took some pics of the dam wall and headed off for a warm breakfast. Found that the Wimpy was closed down, so settled for the house of coffees.
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Leaving the city behind us, we headed for De Wildt to start the trail and took a small detour.
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Let the locals pass first:
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Back on the trail, we came across all types of road conditions. In places there is thick, loose sand, jeep tracks, hard compact dirt roads and tar. We followed a canal for a while, then through game farm territory. Along the route we passed through townships and what felt like isolated villages because they are miles from anywhere. All this contributing to an awesome ride. Very dry at the moment, but i think this will be an awesome ride after some rain!

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We even managed a small river crossing:
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There were a couple of onlookers along the route, most of them just stand in the road, i think this guy was camera shy:
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After 250km or so we get to the Crater, claimed as a National Heritage site. You can see it lurking in the background:
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and then:
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and of course the "me in the pic" photo to prove i was there:
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The crater was formed by a meteorite that fell approx 300 000 years ago and measured 50 meters wide. Prior to it becomming a National Heritage site, it was used by the locals as a salt mine / pit.

Unfortunately the new museum, coffee shop and facilities are not yet open (they are upgrading the facilities), so you need to bring your own lunch and drink. After lunch we headed home on tar back through hartebeespoort.
We did about 380KM or so for the day, all in all a good day outing!javascript:emoticon(':D')
Very Happy
 
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