THE ROAD TO HELL ..... and back (part 8 THE FINAL CHAPTER now up)

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JustBendIt

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THE ROAD TO HELL ...and back

PART 1

I hate riding with a GPS – I think it takes the adventure out of adventure biking. For me this gadget is like a crystal ball – it tells you exactly what is coming and precisely how to get there – I think that too many of us are too caught up at looking at the little picture on the screen rather than looking around at the big picture all around us.

BUT I must confess that I do have one and I do take it with on rides – I use it as a “safety blanket” if I need to follow the “breadcrumbs” and track back to get out of somewhere or find an easier way out if the shit hits the fan. I also like to mark waypoints of interesting and unusual places so that I can find them again.

The idea for this trip started in March last year – 3 of us (Kneelo, Travolta and I) were wandering around Namakwaland – lost but not hopeless. I had been there before and was riding in front – bopping along and taking every little goat track I could to get closer to the mountains and ultimately find a way over them to the Orange River.

That day was hot – we had left Springbok at 8 am, filled up at Steinkopf and soon hit the dirt to begin our adventure. In 5 hours we had only covered 20 odd km when we stumbled upon this

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It looked a little different than some of the other paths we had ridden – there was lots of rocks and it was fairly steep – I thought the river should be just over the top – what the hell let’s go see

It quickly turned into this

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and this

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with a bit of this

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only to find this

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WTF ?

The Road To Hell – I thought it was a fable - up until then it was only something I had ever seen on a T4A map with a NO ENTRY sign next to it.

I was shivering with excitement and told the guys we had to go down there.

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200 metres later it was quite clear that this was not going to be easy – we held a quick board meeting and decided to retreat and turn around.

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I hit the MARK button on my GPS to record the waypoint – I had to come back here....

Fast forward one year and Michiel starts making noises on this forum about this road and how he would like to go there – little did he know that it was almost all I had been thinking about since we decided to turn around. Like a red flag to a bull I jumped at the chance and invited myself back to the “hell road” as we called it

Berserker joined in first, then Rovrat, See Duiwel next followed by Heddles, Nismark and Dustdevil – all in all we were now 8 bikes and riders - plenty e-mails were exchanged, permits were bought and bikes were prepped

Michiel and his HPN 663

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Dustdevil on his HPN

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Rovrat and his YaKTMaha

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See Duiwel on a 990S

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Nismark on an XT660R

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Berserker on his XR650R

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Heddles on his newly acquired “ex Edgy” SE

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and yours truly, Powerflow Justin, on my SE

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We met in Citrusdal at 7 AM on Friday 27 April with 4 days of awesome Africa in front of us

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We hit the road just after 8 AM – the West Coast Trail from Lutzville to Hondeklipbaai was waiting for us

To be continued...
 
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