The moment you take your first pedal stroke you realize this is it, the start of a real adventure. From here every hill takes you further away from your car and life as it was yesterday. Now it’s just you, your best friend, two much loved bicycles and the Cederberg mountains!
Everything about this adventure was home baked. From route planning around our handmade dining room table, the delicious dinners home cooked specially for the two of us to the two beautiful custom hand built carbon frames we chose to journey with.
We started on Fri the 14th April at 14:00 after a friendly send off from Becky and James at Alpha Excelsior Farm at the bottom of the Pakhuys Pass, we made our way up the pass and turned off onto the donkey track to Heuningvlei at the top of the pass.
We traveled though the boulder fields of Rocklands for 12km till we made it to Heuningvlei, our stop for the night.
Here we were welcomed by a couple of youngsters who acted as our tour guides and introduced us to our host for the evening, Madelyn. She was eager to please and with a big smile on her face, told us to head to the backpackers lodge where we would find our room key in the door marked Room No 1. As we headed off she shouted after us “what time would you like to have your dinner served?”.
Little did we know at the time that our dinner would be 10min late but with good reason. Madelyn must have spent the better part of the day cooking for us…it would have taken 4 people to carry the mountain of farm style cuisine about to be set out for us!
The next morning we had a bit of a sleep-in and allowed the stress of the weeks running up to our micro adventure to wash off our tired hearts as we eased into the slower pace of our surroundings. To our right the imposing Krakadouw peaks of the Cederberg rose up and ahead: the road we were about to travel, our only mission for the day. One pedal stroke at a time. The headwind freshly greeted our warm cheeks as we started the day with a steep climb out of Heuningvlei. Sometime during the morning, rolling past the many fields of Rooibos bushes on this undulating sandy track you look across to your partner and realize that there is no better place to be. A Blissful morning of riding, stopping, having a snack, sharing a laugh and continuing down the road to see what lies around the next corner, what beauty the Cederberg has to offer.
We cycled into Suurrug where we met Oom Louis who had many stories to share. He also gave us some good trail advice – an alternative track to the Biedouw valley. This section of the ride was more technical but also completely sheltered from the wind, an absolute joy!
Once we joined the main road again we stopped and had lunch, ash bread with cheese and ham made by Madelyn in Heuningvlei that morning. With happy tummies we set off down the final descent of the day right to the bottom of the Biedouw valley where the Lubbe’s awaited us with a cup of rooibos tea and some home baked rusks. We had arrived at Mertenhof, our home for night number two on our little adventure.
Mertenhof is a beautiful working farm with holiday accommodation that has been in the Lubbe family for 7 generations. That afternoon Barend, the farmer’s youngest, gave us a tour of the local caves in which bushman paintings can be seen. We stayed in the family home which is over 100 years old and slept in a grand four poster bed. We got to experience country hospitality at its best, Mariette prepared us a hearty meal of Mutton, potatoes, rice, beetroot, spinach, curried pickled peaches and souskleitjies with custard for dessert. We spent the rest of the evening reading and dreaming up our future adventures and making plans to ride our bikes more often. Sunday morning we woke up with breakfast prepared, again a real feast with fruit salad, freshly squeezed juice, an omelette and of course some homemade bread.
And so we started a slow climb out the Biedouw valley and up Hoek Se Berg pass! As the name implies, it had many corners, was very steep and had some false summits, but man what a sense of achievement it was to get to the top!
From here we cycled alongside Bushman’s Kloof, a Private nature reserve, and we had the most amazing encounter with herd of Zebra who ran with us as we cycled down the road and who waited for us to catch up if we took too long! Day number three was in every way the perfect day, moderate temperatures, a tail wind, beautiful views and hearts overflowing with gratitude.
We may even have gotten a little over excited as we hit the tar road on what we thought would be an easy home stretch…we stopped for a pizza and a beer at the Travelers Rest. And like all good beers it turned into a couple which in turn made the last climb home many hours later slightly harder than expected
But all’s well that ends well. We finished off our micro adventure at Alpha Excelsior guest farm where we spent the night sampling some of James’s wine made in the winery right there on the farm. So cheers to little micro adventures!
THE TECHNICAL LOW DOWN:
What she rode: Black Composites custom hand built Carbon 650B Dual Sus
What he rode: Black Composites custom hand built Carbon 29er Hardtail
The gear we took along: each of us carried a 25 liter backpack containing a change of clothes for off the bike and a change of riding clothes, water proof outer shells, thermal warm layers, a couple of buffs (she took slippers), travel towel (although towels were provided at the overnight stops), emergency thermal blanket, map (Slingsby), compass (to look cool), headlamps, basic first aid kit, tea and coffee and a small Jetboil gas stove for a cuppa joe. We also took a supply of riding snacks. Don’t forget all your usual bike repair goodies and an extra tube is a good idea.
We packed the heavier items like stove and food into 1 dry bag that was simply strapped onto the handle bars. Pack your repair kit into a saddle bag. If space is an issue, a top tube bag is handy for snacks and camera. We also packed everything into dry bags and zip locks in case of rain.
Day 1 (20km’s):
Start at Alpha Excelsior farm, 8 km’s of tar with a steep climb ( Pakhuys pass) into 12 km’s of 4×4 track to Heuningvlei (enquire with Cape Nature for permits) which started as smooth sand track but had some very rocky sections with a couple of short steep climbs and descents further on. Overnight at Heuningvlei.
Day2 (24km’s):
Short climb out of Heuningvlei followed by rolling dirt road with some soft sandy sections. Turn left before hitting the main Wupperthal road and descend into Suurrug village where you can join a 4×4 track (under Mertenhof management) and follow the valley down. We cut across after a few km’s and rejoined the main Wupperthal gravel road which is fairly smooth and wide all the way down to Mertenhof.
Day 3 (29 km’s):
Fairly big climb out of Biedouw valley up the Hoek Se Berg pass followed by a rolling section of gentle ups and downs. You will rejoin the tar road at the Englishman’s Grave with one more big climb after an ice cold beer stop at Traveler’s Rest before arriving back at Alpha Excelsior Farm.