Eselfontein V2.0

Im the heart of the Boland, just outside Ceres, surrounded by mountains, is nirvana. MTB Nirvana. Is is a farm called Eselfontein, and it should be on you MTB Bucketlist.

This past weekend has been spent with the Parel Valley MTB Team at Eselfontein. It was a training camp and Hanri invited me and Marike to help her and John.

We drove up with John in his mommy wagon with two Meridas on the roof and a Silverback hanging off the back. We bumped and scraped our way up the rough road to the camp site.

How not to tie a bike to your bike rack...

Clean freshly serviced Merida.

When we eventually arrived we saw that the PV families knows how to camp. We might have been camping, but we were camping in style.

We ate like kings the whole weekend. The boys' parents pulled out all the stops to ensure everyone recieves the necessary nutrishion to ride hard. And then they gave us more food and pudding. I think I gained weight despite all the riding.

Curry Pot being finetuned.

Saturday morning I awoke with a fright when the calf size dogs barked loud enough to wake me up, after rushing out to protect the bikes and kids (in that order) I realised it was a jackal. As I said, MTB nirvana.

After ride briefing (keep left, pass right, no helmet no ride, don't ride over John if he hits a tree, the normal race briefing tipe stuff) and a route explanation (attempt) we set off in two groups.

John raced after the faster boys to ensure they don't get lost while he doesn't lead the way. (he didn't, they did, we all went riding up the wrong hill. Oops.)

With the faster guys under John's wing, Me, Hanri and Marike took the intermediate group on the same loop. After about two km's we had our first puncture. This was indicative of what lay ahead. I can honestly say that I have enough experience in fixing punctures, and that tubeless is the best upgrade to make to any MTB.

The routes on Eselfontein consists of singletrack connected with short farm road sections. On saturday we did 50kms in about 5 and a half hours. This included awesome sections with names like Snakebite, Philip's Creek, Dead Man Walking, Shapiro's drop, Silver Forest and Dark forest to name a few.

Lunch underneath the bridge.

Going up Dead Man Walking was tough. I clocked 34 degrees on my watch, we ran out of water, we had a few punctures and some of us were cramping. The beauty of Eselfontein is that it is easy to bail out en route and still have a lekker ride home. Dead Man Walking took a couple of casualties and a couple of riders called it a day. Last time I went up this climb I cramped and had a serious sense of humour failure. This time I went up strong and even managed to summit it in my middle blade. I was lank chuffed. I was also excited to see Marike on top of this climb and we ended up finishing the ride together. On the way home we jumped into a dam and filled our bottles. The down hill was awesome. Fast flowy singletrack intersperd with rocky sections that needed serious concentration levels at speed. Marike handled this with aplomb and I was stoked to see how much her technical riding improved. After buzzing through the Silver Forest we met up with John and Hanriu to have lunch underneath the bridge. After lunch we zipped through the silver forest and went home. 5 and a half hours later me and Marike did a hard 50km MTB ride.

I wolfed down lunch and retired to my hammock. 

Living la vida loca

While enjoying sundowners on the dam some of the boys came cruising past on their MTBs. They were just riding to have some fun. For me, that was beautifull. This is MTBing in its best form. Just being on the bike because you enjoy it.

Saturday night we did a night ride of about 12km. This fast loop was really fun, and riding through the Silver and Dark forests at night adds a new dimension to these trails.

Everyone slept like babies saturday night.

Sunday we did a more chilled ride of 27km. We still did most of the fast singletrack but skipped Dead Man Walking. John even stopped to take photo's of us taking the jump at Philip's Creek. Check out his blog to see some of the action.  Sunday also saw some pranks going down, with my bike spending most of the afternoon hiding from me, and John's bike was tied halfway up a tree.

All in all we had a great weekend. We rode all of the trails, did most of the singletrack twice and some even three times. The camping was fun, and the group of boys were awesome. They are strong riders and I hope they take this far. Best of luck to the team at SA's.

A special thanks has to go out to the parents for taking such great care of us. We ate like kings, the hot water cylinders had hot water in it after every ride and they seemed to sense what we needed before we even realised it. Another special thanks also has to go out to Hanri for organising everything.

Me and Marike ( left,) with John and Hanri.