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.
From Vredefort it runs 324 km to Vredefort; allow about 5 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Sharpeville Memorial garden, Walter Sisulu Square, Constitution Hill and back through 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.
Two billion years ago, give or take, something the size of a mountain hit the Earth here at astonishing speed. The Vredefort Dome is what survives of the biggest verified impact structure on the planet, and also one of the oldest. The original crater is estimated to have been around three hundred kilometres across, and erosion has since scraped away most of its form, leaving a ring of low hills about seventy kilometres wide around an uplifted core. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 2005, which sounds dry until you stand on the rim and realise that the whole arrangement of rock beneath your tyres was thrown up in minutes.
Read the complete Vredefort Dome core area write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vredefort Dome core area is where the day begins. 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 comes up 57 km in. 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.
114 km in you reach Walter Sisulu Square. 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.
Constitution Hill, 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 sits at 229 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 286 km in. Next is Vredefort Dome core area.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vredefort Dome core area write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vredefort Dome core area closes the day.
Vredefort Dome core area → Sharpeville Memorial garden is 85 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 → Constitution Hill is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Constitution Hill → back through Walter Sisulu Square is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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 → Vredefort Dome core area is 85 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.