Feedback - Brits Beestekraal Railway Exploring

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If the objective was to find a nice rideable track along the rail line from Brits to Beestekraal, then I am afraid the ride was a bit of a failure.

But if the objective was just to get out there on a public holiday and have some fun riding about then we did not do too bad, and a big thanks to Malgat, Jules, Li and Silverwolf for coming along for the exploration. 

The short news is that I don’t believe there is a railway service road all the way; something I should have suspected from my Google Earth eyeballing. We would be riding along a nice bit of road and then suddenly it would morph into a footpath, and in some parts it was pretty “white knuckle” stuff.

One place in particular was one of the scariest riding experiences of my life. The path had narrowed down to not much wider than a tyre width, a steep unclimable wall of railway ballast to the left, and a steep dropoff into the bushes to the right, with no way to turn the bike round and retreat. I stopped for quite a while wondering what to do; convinced my back tyre could not hold the camber, but there was no choice – I had to go on.  My major concern was to high-side down the slope and end op with a KLE on top of me, so I edged forward like a woosie with my left boot along the ballast. Scary stuff, but we all got through.

A few metres later however. Li decided to do a bit of diving down a slope. I think it was a forward somersault with a half twist in the tuck position – degree of difficulty 2.5 – I would have given her a good mark but her entry into the blackjacks was a little untidy, and her toes were not pointed.  A little after that Li and I decided to leave the others doing their footpath riding and head off to Beestekraal on tar. At the stasie it was lekka to meet up with Malibu and Dakota on their way back from their weekend in Madimole/Thabazimbi area.

From there we rode part of the North Canal route back, and then Malgat and I stopped for a drink at O’Hagans. 

The good news is I have some GPS tracks of the rideable bits, but the bad news is I cant tell from the tracks which were the bits that could be included in future social rides, and which bits can’t. Will have to go back and explore a bit more, but be prepared to do wider detours. 

I think there is nice riding to be had in that area – it is just to find the roads that are not on private farms. Malgat’s next mission is to find a route along the crocodile river – that could be fun.

Thanks to Malgat, Silverwolf, Jules and Li for coming along. 
   
A few pics, but not many I am afraid – we just seemed to be too darn busy.

Jusr beyond Brits

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Found this camping spot along the way – think it is called Klein Paradys or something like that. 

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Jules and Li returning from one of the many dead-end detours. 

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Jules and Silverwolf checking the KLR after Li’s somersault – Li emerging from the blackjacks after having passed the “are you okay” test.

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Malibu and Dakota after adding their names to WD section of the wall at Beestekraal.

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