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 Soweto it runs 87 km to Soweto; allow about 1 h 32 of riding. The stops in between: Constitution Hill, Liliesleaf and back through Constitution Hill. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
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 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 comes up 23 km in. 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.
47 km in you reach Liliesleaf. 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, late in the day. 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.
Back at Walter Sisulu Square. That is the ride.
Walter Sisulu Square → Constitution Hill is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Constitution Hill → Liliesleaf is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Liliesleaf → back through Constitution Hill is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Constitution Hill → Walter Sisulu Square is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.