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 Soweto it runs 311 km to Soweto; allow about 5 h of riding. On the way it passes Liliesleaf, Sterkfontein, Human Rights and back through Sterkfontein. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Liliesleaf.
In the early 1960s, Rivonia was a quiet farming area on the northern edge of Johannesburg, and Liliesleaf was a smallholding with a farmhouse, outbuildings and a thatched cottage. It was bought, through a front, by the South African Communist Party and used as a secret headquarters by the leadership of the liberation movement, including Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress. Nelson Mandela lived here for a time under a false name, posing as a worker called David Motsamayi. On 11 July 1963, police raided the farm and arrested much of the leadership, seizing documents that led to the Rivonia Trial, in which Mandela and others were sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela's speech from the dock, declaring an ideal for which he was prepared to die, became one of the defining moments of the struggle against apartheid.
Read the complete Liliesleaf write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Liliesleaf comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 85 km into the recorded legs you reach Sterkfontein. Next is Human Rights.
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, about halfway. 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 sits at 193 km, about halfway. Next is back through Liliesleaf.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Liliesleaf write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Liliesleaf comes up about 268 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Walter Sisulu Square closes the day.
Walter Sisulu Square → Liliesleaf is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Liliesleaf → Sterkfontein is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sterkfontein → Human Rights is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Human Rights → back through Sterkfontein is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sterkfontein → back through Liliesleaf is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Liliesleaf → Walter Sisulu Square is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.