Bapsfontein to Mamelodi along the railway line.

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DouglasN

Race Dog
Joined
May 22, 2013
Messages
911
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36
Location
Benoni, Gauteng
Bike
Triumph (all models)
Having recently obtained my Tiger 800, I have wanted to do a bit of trail riding and when Mother's Day interfered with the plans to go ride the canals, plan B was put into action, I have heard so many guys telling of riding the servitudes next the railway lines, I decided to go see what lay next to the lines around Bapsfontein/Kittyhawk etc.

I phoned a friend to get some basic directions to the starting point and Mario (MonkeyNot) decided to join me and so we met up at Bapsfontein and headed off the the shunting yard where we turned onto the servitude. (pic 2) and off we went, the road was quite casual and alternates between a full road and a twee spoor every so often, there are some sloots with a little water and you can see where it would get very interesting when there has been some rain.

After meandering along for a while we stopped on top of a high bridge on top of a little river, very scenic (pic 4) and there is a path down to river.  then Mario says to me that the next section could be inetresting, the road is made of the same stones that make the bed of the railway line, it is normally packed down and its not a long way... so I reckon, how hard can it be?  Well, it was loose packed and the "short" stretch was around 8km !  Anyway, nobody died so it was all godd but I admit I am not offroad bike fit so i had to catch my breath a couple of times.  once out of the stones the pace picked up a bit and we crossed under the bronkies road and then exited on the kittyhawk road where we went and had a nice buffet breakfast.

After breakfast we went back tio the the railway line and  ..... noord as they say, it is a little tighter with a few more bends etc but it is all casual and we had to follow a track around a gate or 2 , duck a few thorn trees and we finished up at what looks liek a bit of a dead end which hides the N4 highway.  We crossed the highway and found another small track that looks like it wasn't going to work, but a little legwork proved that on the other sid eof the grass was a road.

At this point I should tell you, don't go there!  the road start off fine but you are basically entering the arse end of maelodi and we road past thwe shacks, around and over a mini rubbish dump and then the road /path ends, in the centre of town.  look, it wasn't a stress, the gusy were pretty friendly but it's busy! 

After exiting Mamelodi, Mario & I went our seperate ways and i decided to head into Cullinan, looong way around, so I took a turn here and a turn there, abd did a stint of tar until the signboard said "Cullina" straight ahead and the tar turned off to the left.  That's when I found that the first section was actually pretty sandy, like in loose river/beach sand and alll those times I watched the guys doing the training on the Triumph adveenture days paid off, " bum back, front light, keep the momentum up and when in doubt, throttle it out" , the road sorted itself out and I eventually hit soeme tar again and headed into Culian for some cool refreshments.

I will add the route file later this evening.

 

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