Eselfontein Getaway: Day 1

We were literally counting down the hours until Friday 12:00 when we would head towards Ceres for our yearly Eselfontein getaway. The car was already packed the previous evening and there were just a few hours of face showing at the office between us and single track heaven!

Hanco picked me up in town and we made our way towards Ceres. After a few Whatsapp's we met up with our friends Reto and Madeleine at a picnic spot on the Bainskloof Pass overlooking the Welvanpas mtb trails. We enjoyed a cup of tea tea and homemade muffins before continuing the rest of the journey together.

En route to Eselfontein, we received an sms from Riaan warning us about the MOERSE speedbumps on the farm road leading to the huts. Not taking him seriously was  a rookie mistake. We were quite surprised at the size of the "speedbumps" and Hanco had to pull out all of his driving skills as we were unfortunately not in a 4x4. We later realised that this was not speedbumps, but rather bumps made to curb the erosion in the area.

When we arrived at the eco huts, we scouted a spot to pitch our tent and started unpacking. After a while the friendly farmer, Deon, came past on his motorbike to come and say hi. We asked him about some new trail options and after trying to give us directions to some fresh exciting trails, he decided to rather fetch his bakkie and shuttle us to the top. Obviously, we accepted his offer and quickly kitted up and got our bikes ready for an unexpected Friday afternoon trail ride.

Hanco and Reto decided to stand on the back of the bakkie while Madeleine, Riaan and I took our seats in the cabin. After the first few kilometers, it was evident that Deon would not make the cut as a WP downhill shuttle driver. Hanco and Reto were holding on for their lives! At one stage Reto was holding onto Hanco's helmet to keep him from being thrown off the back of the bakkie!

After about 8 kms of shuttling, we eventually reached our destination: the entry of one of the moto enduro tracks. Deon's last words were: "it's not really meant for bicycles, but give it a try..." We were all thinking that it couldn't possibly be that bad, we've all been down a few downhill tracks, so what's the worse that could happen? Ahem.... steep, rocky, unexpected uphills, huge rocks in the middle of the trail... and overall not as fun as we imagined, but definitely a challenge!

Taking a bit longer on this descend than anticipated, the sun started setting and we had to get a move on to get back to the huts in time. Luckily we soon spotted some awesome single track (that were meant for bicycles) and all the sweat and swear words of the enduro track were forgotten. With a quick pedal back to the huts, we met up with all the other campers who had arrived while we were out exploring.

With the only hot water in the campsite coming from the 'donkie', Hanco quickly made work of starting a nice big fire and an hour later we were all cleaned up and chatting in front of the fire. We started planning our routes for the next day, and eventually headed to our tents and huts to get a good night's rest in.

Read the rest of our adventures at Eselfontein here!