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 Vereeniging it runs 257 km to Vereeniging; allow about 4 h 37 of riding. The stops in between: Walter Sisulu Square, Constitution Hill, Sterkfontein and back through Constitution Hill. 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.
On the morning of 21 March 1960, several thousand people gathered at the police station in Sharpeville, a Black township beside Vereeniging in what is now Gauteng, to protest against the pass laws that controlled where they could live and work. By early afternoon the police had opened fire, and sixty-nine people lay dead, many shot in the back as they ran. The massacre made headlines around the world, led to the banning of the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, and pushed the liberation movements toward armed struggle. South Africa now marks the date as Human Rights Day, and the graves of the victims in the nearby Phelindaba cemetery are part of the memorial landscape, together with the police station and a small museum.
Read the complete Sharpeville Graves site B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sharpeville Graves site B is where the day begins. Next is Walter Sisulu Square.
On 26 June 1955, some three thousand delegates gathered on a dusty open field in Kliptown, one of the oldest settlements of what became Soweto, for the Congress of the People. Police surrounded the meeting on its second day, but not before the crowd had adopted the Freedom Charter, the document that opens with the words that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Its ideas went on to shape the country's post-apartheid constitution. The field is now Walter Sisulu Square, named after the anti-apartheid leader and mentor of Nelson Mandela, and the charter's clauses are carved into stone around a monument at its centre.
Read the complete Walter Sisulu Square write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Walter Sisulu Square comes up about 56 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 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Constitution Hill. 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, 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 sits at 181 km, about halfway. Next is back through Walter Sisulu Square.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Walter Sisulu Square write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Walter Sisulu Square comes up about 198 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sharpeville Graves site B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sharpeville Graves site B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sharpeville Graves site B closes the day.
Sharpeville Graves site B → Walter Sisulu Square is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Walter Sisulu Square → Constitution Hill is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Constitution Hill → Sterkfontein is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sterkfontein → back through Constitution Hill is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Constitution Hill → back through Walter Sisulu Square is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Walter Sisulu Square → Sharpeville Graves site B is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.