Road trip to the Namaqua Flowers

[royw]

The plot:
I will be taking a road trip to the Namaqua flowers with my two sons, Donovan and Warwick in honour of my wife Tanya. The trip was planned together with her earlier this year before she left to be with the Lord. So, we will be scattering Tanya's ashes amongst the flowers, and doing a round trip covering about 3000km over 5 days - on three NC's. I will be riding my NC750X, Don will ride my Dad's NC700X and Wazz will ride my brothers NC700X.



The Plan:
The Lord willing, we will be leaving Krugersdorp on this Friday afternoon (4 September 2015), as soon as we can all get away from work.

We will be staying over in Delareyville Friday night. Saturday night will be spent in Augrabies, Sunday night in Hondeklip Baai. We will then be spending Monday cruising the flowers and sleeping over in Loeriesfontein. Tuesday we will be heading back and spend the night in Kuruman. Wednesday we will be heading back to Krugersdorp.

We will be travelling very light, with a cellphone, first aid kit, spare chain, can of chain lube, and the bare necessities.

We are praying for good weather, but come rain or shine .....


I hope to upload photos as we go, so you can all enjoy the trip with us.

[royw]

So, here we are in Delareyville. And it is still , although not as much as last night. We travelled 268km, of which we did about 100 with no rain. As for the other 168km, IT HOSED down. We were drenched and frozen when we arrived in Delareyville.
The traffic along the N14 wasn't too badn with the occasional heavy truck moving in our direction. They were a challenge to overtake though because there was usually a string of about 10 cars or so behind them. Combine that with a misted, slightly muddy visor. Haha. Well, you get the story. It was fun.
Weak signal so will upload photos when we can find a hotspot or something.
Leaving Delareyville just before 9am in a slight drizzle.

[EcoRider]

Eish.....good luck. Returning back home would not be a good option either. Apparently it is and very cold in Pretoria at the moment as well

[royw]

Arrived in Kuruman. The roads are good in this area. Only not very twisty, unless you regard a 1 degree corner to be a twist. Not even many of those. Haha. Everything is flat, but it has a kind of beauty. Saw a few donkey carts, something of a rarity these days. Locals are friendly. Lots of them waving at us as we passed. Maybe it's just because of the cool bikes we are riding

[royw]

We found one twisty. About 3km before Keimoes. Beautiful.

The roads in this area are excellent. Long...... Straight ....... But excellent. Traffic is light, so the journey is pleasant. All the way through you will find beautiful scenery with wide open expanses of scrub bush. Look out for the weaver colony nests. They are very interesting. There is safety in numbers against predators.
Struggling to upload any photos.

[royw]

Shrunk the photos

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[royw]

Somewhere before Biesiesvlei when there was a break in the weather. Biesiesvlei is about 60 km East of Delareyville

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[royw]

The B&B we stayed at on Friday night in Delareyville was not what we thought it would be.
Something I didn't know until booking for this trip is that most B&B's don't do breakfast. So the second B isn't breakfast. I don't know what it is, but you mostly just get a bed. Fortunately we knew that before going.
Anyway, back to the Delareyville experience. The room was okay, with a small ensuite bathroom attached to the room with three beds. However, the shower messed all over the bathroom floor, requiring the use of the towels to dry it so we could walk in there later. There was a photo of an under cover braai area on the website but I don't know where that photo was taken. It wasn't where we were. So we had to use the microwave, with no dishes. A plastic bag was our plate for cooking. Thd moral of the story - check all your assumptions with the establishment before booking. But all said and done, the management was friendly and the beds were comfortable. We were also able to use an iron to get our clothes mostly dry, and we used the oven in the main area to (almost) dry our boots and gloves for the next day.
Our bikes slept under cover too.

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[royw]

On Saturday night we slept in the Augrabies backpackers. A big step up from the previous night. It probably also helped that we were dry when we arrived, but it was certainly a much better situation.
The access road is a short windy section of dirt, with quite deep, loose gravel, but nothing the trusty NC's couldn't handle. We had to go slow though. On our arrival, Malcolm was very friendly and helpful in getting us settled in. We had phoned earlier and he let me know where we could stop in Kakamaas to get meat for our braai. He even offered us wood to use, but we were carrying charcoal which we wanted to use seeing as we had used the valuable packing space to bring it along anyway. The room we were given was clean and quite comfortable. We didn't expect 5 star for what we payed, but it was ample. Clean and big enough. Lekker shower too!! We even had a round of pool while we waited for our fire to get ready. After an early supper it was bed time. The whole day in the saddle is exhausting. 597km is quite a respectable distance and it make it more tiring because we stayed wet for at least half the journey. Thankfully we each had a spare jersey for under our damp jackets. Something to remember for long trips where there is the possibility of rain. Have spare warm gear. You can't get warm on the bike like you can in a car. If you are cold, you will stay cold for a looong time, even if the sun is shining warmly.
As a point of interest, I have the original Dunlop on the rear wheel. My bike has done just over 3000km and I have been watching the rear tyre because of the discussion around the rapid wear on the Dunlops. It isn't gonna last guys. On the warmer road it began to form some sort of beads on the tyre, almost like I had been spinning the tyre. Even though We had just been cruising along at 120km/h. So I can see myself on my way to Honda for a new rear tyre when we get back.

[royw]

The backpackers proved to be a good stay. A view of the front with three NC parked outside.

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[royw]

Today we travelled 500km from Augrabies to Hondeklip Bay. The first 300km was straight road to Springbok. Strong side winds pushed us hard, but sitting off center of the saddle improved the balance of the bikes. We stopped in Springbok to fill the tanks as we weren't sure when the next fuel station would be. From Springbok we headed towards the coast, with the temperature dropping rapidly. We followed the GPS which took us onto dirt road. After deflating our tyres the roadholding improved in the soft sand and loose gravel. The route took us through a whole series of farm gates, but eventually the GPS seemed to be taking us the long way round. So we stopped and found a farmer who gave us some sane directions. After another 30km of dirt we spent about 50km on the De Beers road along the coast. Unfortunatey the cold weather has sent all the flowers into hiding so we didn't get the spectacular shows we were hoping for. The last 25km was again gravel road. The NC's behaved themselves beautifully with the slightly deflated tyres. We used 2 bar for the rear and 1.8 bar for the front. We arrived at Honnepondokies in Hondeklip baai in super cold conditions. But this place can sure be recommended. Absolutely beautiful view of the bay.

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[royw]

View from our pondokkie over the bay.

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[royw]

Well, we left Hondeklip Bay in the rain and travelled 80km along the dirt road towards Garies.
Something I want to put on my bike before a dirt trip again is a fender extender. With a wet tyre and gravel road you get sand and grit flung into your radiator and up through the steering column. If you have your visor ajar in order to see because of the rain misting your vision, you get the grit into your face and eyes. Also the grit goes everywhere around the key holes of your ignition and the frunk. So, a fender extender is my next must-have.
Another small shortfall of the NC is that the suspension isn't really designed for extended trips on corrugated roads. It wasn't terrible, but the ability to adjust our shocks softer would have been nice. But having said that, the roadholding was still good and predictable, even when we suddenly went through a deeper sand section without seeing it due to the poor visibility.
Once we hit the tar we decided to turn left towards Kamieskroon as we hoped the weather would be a bit more open with sunshine. We hoped that there might be some flowers on display in that direction. Well, it wasn't! It just rained all the way to Kamieskroon, and no flowers. There we filled up with petrol, reinflated our tyres for tar riding, rinsed out our radiators as much as possible, and stopped for an early lunch at the Kliphuis Kombuis. They also had some killer koeksusters so we bought one each for padkos. About 300mm long, very juicy and very tasty. So tasty that a bee had tried to get some syrup from mine before it was cooked into the dough. Poor bee.
From Kamieskroon we turned around and headed back past Garies to Vanrhynsdorp, and then up through Vanrhyns pass to Loeriesfontein. We had about 30 km around Vanrhynsdorp with no rain. That was nice.
Heading up the pass were some really tight corners, however we took it very cautiously because it was again from the foot of the pass, and then we went through very thick mist all the way to the top and for a while thereafter. Not a good recipe for fast riding.
We arrived at Lizards Place in Loeriesfontein, cold and wet, but our friendly hostess kindly offered to tumble dry our soaked gear for us. They are also bikers.

These folk have been so amazing our whole journey. The people in Namaqualand are warm and hospitable. There is also a noticeable lack of burglar bars on the places where we have stayed. So refreshing!
The three NC's have really done well. I will total op the fuel bill at the end of the trip for interest sake, but the consumption has been pretty consistant around 3.6 l per 100km. The wind has been pushing against us a lot and we have been travelling fairly quickly, but not too fast. My 750 has used the same amount of fuel as the 700s. We have filled up more regularly than we needed to, but rather fill up more often because we aren't always sure where the next filling station will be. We have also made a point of stopping every hour or so.
Something to remember when touring this area - some fuel stations and food outlets around here only take cash. No card facilities. Thankfully the local farmers co-op had a cash machine in Kamieskroon. Also they work decent hours here in the Namaqualand, everyone goes home on a Sunday afternoon. Most of the shops close on Saturday afternoon, and all the shops are closed on Sunday afternoons. No mad rat race like Gauteng!
Today we travelled 450km and so far we have travelled just over 1800km on our journey.... Now if only the rain will stop!

[iano]

Keep it up

[iano]

Sorru about all the rain. We are following your progress. Dad