CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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 397 km round trip from Potchefstroom - roughly 7 h 47 in the saddle. It goes by way of The chocolate tablet breccia site, Vredefort Dome, Sharpeville Memorial garden and Walter Sisulu Square. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Microbes made this. That is the surprising thing about stromatolites: the layered, domed structures that look like cabbages turned to stone are the fossil remains of mats of bacteria that lived in shallow water and trapped sediment, growing layer on layer. They are among the oldest evidence of life on the planet, and the rocks around the Vredefort Dome in South Africa carry some very ancient examples.
Read the complete The stromatolite/basal fault plane site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The stromatolite/basal fault plane site is where the day begins. Next is The chocolate tablet breccia site.
There is a piece of rock in the Free State of South Africa that looks like a bar of chocolate. Look closely at the Chocolate Tablet Breccia and you see a grid of intersecting cracks, cutting the stone into neat rectangular blocks that really do resemble the segments of a chocolate tablet. It is a small thing, and also a very large one, because these cracks are a record of the shock that hit this land about two billion years ago.
Read the complete The chocolate tablet breccia site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The chocolate tablet breccia site comes up 48 km in. Next is Vredefort Dome.
A hundred and fifty kilometres from Johannesburg, the ground rises into a ring of low hills about seventy kilometres across, and that ring is the surviving core of the largest meteorite impact the Earth has kept a record of. Vredefort Dome formed about two billion years ago, when an asteroid several kilometres wide hit what was then a very different landscape. The structure was once perhaps three hundred kilometres across, and erosion since has scraped most of it away, leaving the central uplift visible. UNESCO listed it in 2005.
Read the complete Vredefort Dome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
97 km in you reach Vredefort Dome. Next is Sharpeville Memorial garden.
On 21 March 1960, a crowd of several thousand people gathered outside the police station in Sharpeville, a township near Vereeniging in the south of Gauteng, to protest against the pass laws, which required black South Africans to carry documents restricting where they could live and work. The police opened fire, killing sixty nine people and wounding many more, most of them shot in the back as they fled. The massacre shocked the world and marked a turning point in the struggle against apartheid, leading to the banning of the liberation movements and the start of armed resistance. The date is now commemorated in South Africa as Human Rights Day, and internationally as the day for the elimination of racial discrimination.
Read the complete Sharpeville Memorial garden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sharpeville Memorial garden, about halfway. 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 sits at 194 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sharpeville Memorial garden.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sharpeville Memorial garden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sharpeville Memorial garden comes up 242 km in. Next is back through Vredefort Dome.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vredefort Dome write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
290 km in you reach back through Vredefort Dome. Next is back through The chocolate tablet breccia site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The chocolate tablet breccia site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The chocolate tablet breccia site, late in the day. Next is The stromatolite/basal fault plane site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The stromatolite/basal fault plane site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 397 km.
The stromatolite/basal fault plane site → The chocolate tablet breccia site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The chocolate tablet breccia site → Vredefort Dome is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vredefort Dome → Sharpeville Memorial garden is 86 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sharpeville Memorial garden → Walter Sisulu Square is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Walter Sisulu Square → back through Sharpeville Memorial garden is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sharpeville Memorial garden → back through Vredefort Dome is 86 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Vredefort Dome → back through The chocolate tablet breccia site is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The chocolate tablet breccia site → The stromatolite/basal fault plane site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.