Cycle Around South Africa 2013: Day 30: Van Zylsrus to road camp

I returned the key and said thanks again for the awesome place to stay. I also got to see some of the inside of the hotel which had some interesting décor. Well worth a look if you in the area and need a place to stay. I had planned to ride to a place called Severn but while buying some food, I was swayed by the owner of the one café plus a customer who was a farmer in the area. I had explained how I wanted to be border riding as much and close as feasibly possible, so the other option was to head up to via the McCarthys Rest border post as apparently there was fokall to see in Severn. Plus the farmer gave me the name of his farm in case I needed a place to stay when and if I came to it. I thanked them then left.

Cheers little wooden lodge.

Cheers to the guy who let me stay in his lodge. Too much flash, I know.

The road out of Van Zylsrus was brick laden for a couple of meters which lightened my heart. Were my gravel days over? Could it be? Alas, my optimism was shattered as gravel roaded reality hit in. Boo. I did reach 2000kms shortly after leaving so that was major highlight. Shit! 2000kms! That’s pretty far I thought. I reckoned I was 1/3 through with my trip. How wrong I was. My front gear switch also decided to give me problems all of a sudden. I couldn’t change down from the middle gear to the bottom one. I thought it was proper bust plus being out in the middle of nowhere, who the hell could help me. Wasn’t a big deal really. I could still ride. I just had to manually pull the chain over onto the lower gear. Plus it later came right itself, much much later, to my relief.

A nice little milestone.

Leap you say? No hills in this area. Maybe a deep hole somewhere.

Loads of these cattle loading docks in this area.

So about 52kms later I came to a turn off heading north which took me over the Kuruman river bed. I was now on a stretch towards the farm I was told about. I only managed about 25kms on this little stretch so never made it there that day. This bloody section of the road I was told was supposed to be quite decent. For a bakkie or 4x4 yes, but a cyclist, nope. There were many many soft sandy sections requiring me to push my bike through. I would always try my best to peddle as hard as possible because the speed helped but I slowed down quite quickly, then it was a case of gear shifting down as quickly as possible to avoid breaking the chain before I just came to a stop. I eventually just decided to push through any sections to avoid chain damage plus the rage that built up over the constant failure to ride over the sand parts. I found a big enough space to camp on the side of the road and called it a day.