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.
351 km from Pretoria to Pretoria, about 5 h 25 of riding. It goes by way of Sterkfontein, Sharpeville Graves site A and back through Sterkfontein. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 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.
Sterkfontein comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sharpeville Graves site A.
On 21 March 1960, a crowd of several thousand people gathered at the police station in Sharpeville, a township south of Johannesburg, to protest against the pass laws, which forced Black South Africans to carry documents and restricted their movement. The police opened fire. Sixty-nine people were killed, many of them shot in the back as they ran, and many more were wounded. The massacre became a turning point: it brought the apartheid regime worldwide condemnation, led to the banning of the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, and pushed the liberation movement towards armed struggle. Today, 21 March is a public holiday, Human Rights Day.
Read the complete Sharpeville Graves site A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 176 km into the recorded legs you reach Sharpeville Graves site A. 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.
back through Sterkfontein, 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 → Sterkfontein is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sterkfontein → Sharpeville Graves site A is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sharpeville Graves site A → back through Sterkfontein is 106 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sterkfontein → Human Rights is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.