CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Pretoria it runs 300 km to Pretoria; allow about 5 h 32 of riding. It goes by way of Liliesleaf, Sterkfontein, Constitution Hill and 16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Pretoria is South Africa's administrative capital, and it gets less attention than Johannesburg and Cape Town, which is part of its appeal. In October the city is painted purple by thousands of jacaranda trees, introduced from South America in the late nineteenth century, and the fallen blossom carpets the pavements. It sits in a warm valley under the Magaliesberg ridge, a little over fifty kilometres from Johannesburg, and its centre mixes Afrikaner history, colonial buildings and a lively black African present.
Read the complete Pretoria write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pretoria is where the day begins. Next is Liliesleaf.
In the early 1960s, Rivonia was a quiet farming area on the northern edge of Johannesburg, and Liliesleaf was a smallholding with a farmhouse, outbuildings and a thatched cottage. It was bought, through a front, by the South African Communist Party and used as a secret headquarters by the leadership of the liberation movement, including Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela lived here for a time under a false name, posing as a worker called David Motsamayi. On 11 July 1963, police raided the farm and arrested much of the leadership, seizing documents that led to the Rivonia Trial, in which Mandela and others were sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela's speech from the dock, declaring an ideal for which he was prepared to die, became one of the defining moments of the struggle against apartheid.
Read the complete Liliesleaf write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Liliesleaf comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sterkfontein.
Some of the most important clues to human evolution have come out of a set of limestone caves in the grassland north-west of Johannesburg. The Sterkfontein caves, in the area known as the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, have yielded hundreds of hominin fossils, including Mrs Ples, a skull of Australopithecus africanus about two million years old, found in 1947, and Little Foot, an almost complete skeleton of an Australopithecus, painstakingly extracted from the rock over two decades.
Read the complete Sterkfontein write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 85 km into the recorded legs you reach Sterkfontein. Next is Constitution Hill.
Constitution Hill sits on a ridge between Braamfontein and Hillbrow in central Johannesburg, and few places in South Africa carry so much history in so small a space. The Old Fort here was built in the 1890s under Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic, and it soon became a notorious prison. Over the following decades the complex, including the infamous Number Four section for black men and the Women's Jail, held thousands of people, from ordinary criminals to political prisoners. Mahatma Gandhi was detained here in the early twentieth century, and Nelson Mandela was held in the Old Fort in the 1960s.
Read the complete Constitution Hill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Constitution Hill, about halfway. Next is 16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West.
Orlando West looks ordinary at first: tidy brick houses, kids in school uniform, taxis hooting at every corner, smoke from braai stands curling over the street. It is in Soweto, about fifteen kilometres southwest of central Johannesburg, and on the morning of 16 June 1976 these were the streets where thousands of schoolchildren marched against being taught in Afrikaans. Police opened fire. Among the first killed was twelve-year-old Hector Pieterson, and the photograph of him being carried by an older student went around the world.
Read the complete 16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West sits at 159 km, about halfway. Next is back through Constitution Hill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Constitution Hill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Constitution Hill comes up about 168 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sterkfontein.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sterkfontein write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 216 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sterkfontein. Next is back through Liliesleaf.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Liliesleaf write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Liliesleaf, late in the day. Next is Pretoria.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pretoria write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 300 km.
Pretoria → Liliesleaf is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Liliesleaf → Sterkfontein is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sterkfontein → Constitution Hill is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Constitution Hill → 16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
16 June 1976 - The Streets of Orlando West → back through Constitution Hill is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Constitution Hill → back through Sterkfontein is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sterkfontein → back through Liliesleaf is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Liliesleaf → Pretoria is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.