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 Vanderbijlpark it runs 261 km to Vanderbijlpark; allow about 4 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of 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.
Sharpeville is a heavy place, and it should be approached quietly. On 21 March 1960, thousands of people gathered outside the police station to protest against the pass laws, which forced Black South Africans to carry documents controlling where they could live and work. The police opened fire on the crowd, and sixty-nine people were killed, many shot in the back as they fled. The massacre shocked the world, led to the banning of liberation movements in South Africa and hardened international opposition to apartheid.
Read the complete Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station 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 58 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 82 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 185 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 199 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station closes the day.
Sharpeville Massacre Site: police station → Walter Sisulu Square is 58 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 46 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 Massacre Site: police station is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.