The Bokkeveld Tour

Strange, how only after the fourth wingman couldn’t accompany me on my proposed spring tour through the beautiful Bokkeveld Mountains, did it dawn on me that it was a good idea to go it alone.

- Nick Yell

I mean, spring had sprung, my newly serviced steed was waiting for me along with my Spot-X satellite messenger for emergencies, what on earth was I waiting for? The idea for this trip was born during a 4x4 excursion I’d been on a couple of month’s back. En route to the Eselbank 4x4 route, I’d noticed an alluring-looking dirt track to Clanwilliam (just before Algeria campsite) I hadn’t done on a bike before. This, coupled with a new dirt track route being launched by Mandie and Ernst Kotze of Grasberg guest farm outside Nieuwoudtville, gave rise to the 1056 kilometres I was to cover over the next three days.

Yeeha!, my faithful old KLR, blatted along happily on the first stretch of Cederberg dirt track after 200 km of mind-numbing tar from Bot River. This 112 km section of gravel before the Clanwilliam virgin dirt track (it lies between the esoterically-shaped Skurweberge and the Swartruggens Mountains in the Koue Bokkeveld) is another one I haven’t been on for ages.