We braced ourselves with coffee (me) and icecream (him) at the last outpost of civilisation an hour of mainroads from home, and there we got talking to a largish herd of Africa Twins, Varaderos and even more GS 1250s, the latter loudly admiring my mate's tank mounted Camel Pack. Two of them had moved on from Crosstourers and were not looking back, apparently.
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2 downloadsWe got good intel on our planned route, as a few of them had just come down the opposite way. In particular, a few steep slopes had been fortified with some very coarse gravel, so speed was advised. Very amicable, and very hot at 27 deg C.
On approaching our next milestone, a very nice log shelter by a river, we encountered the prewarned coarsely gravelled incline. Both of us on road tires, standing on the pegs and feeling the bike skip and dance beneath. Only there was a large bike parked square in the middle of the path, exactly half way to the top. So we had to dodge that while keeping the speed and the dance up, and it got interesting there for a moment. But no pain, no gain, we kept up the speed and got to the top. There we found the rider idling next to the path. Turned out he'd been going too slow, almost stopping and then dug his rear tire down to well below the axle. Another GS 1250, biggest knobs I've seen bar one (grin), still se ve re ly stuck. He'd been waiting for an hour for someone to pass by. We heaved him up in seconds, of course. He'd been heading for the shelter too, but decided to turn back. As it turned out, it was only another 400 m to go.
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1 downloadsFantastic place, fish jumping in the stream, fire pit ready - I'll definitely go back sometime.
The path onward was awesome. Fording a couple of very small streams, negotiating some more gravel, then it widened into a proper road. Still gravel, but fine, firm, very wide, straight with wide turns. Bone dry, very dusty, and as we picked up our pace to 90-ish km/h we trailed plumes that would have shamed a Falcon X. What a blast!
All too soon we were back on the asphalt for the transit stretch home. A few ice cold brews, a joint family barbecue and a soak in our pop-up garden pool put a nice cap on a very satisfying day.
Edited by Norwegian, 02 June 2020 - 09:54 pm.
