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 129 km round trip from Pretoria - roughly 2 h 01 in the saddle. On the way it passes Liliesleaf, Constitution Hill and back through Liliesleaf. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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 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 44 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 65 km into the recorded legs you reach Constitution Hill. 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 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 at Human Rights. That is the ride.
Human Rights → Liliesleaf is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Liliesleaf → Constitution Hill is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Constitution Hill → back through Liliesleaf is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Liliesleaf → Human Rights is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.