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.
A 255 km round trip from Johannesburg - roughly 3 h 43 in the saddle. On the way it passes Human Rights, Sterkfontein and back through Human Rights. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Human Rights.
Pretoria's Union Buildings stand on Meintjieskop, a low ridge looking over the city, and from the terraced gardens you can see the whole sweep of the South African capital spread out below. The sandstone buildings, with two wings joined by a curved colonnade, were designed by the English architect Herbert Baker and finished in 1913, to house the government of the newly formed Union of South Africa. For decades they were the seat of white minority rule. On 10 May 1994 they became the setting for the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected president, and with that the meaning of the place changed.
Read the complete Human Rights write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Human Rights comes up about 56 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 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Sterkfontein. Next is back through Human Rights.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Human Rights write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Human Rights, late in the day. Next is 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 at Constitution Hill. That is the ride.
Constitution Hill → Human Rights is 56 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Human Rights → Sterkfontein is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sterkfontein → back through Human Rights is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Human Rights → Constitution Hill is 58 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.