The weekend past I completed a very fun Houw Hoek Tour. The 2 day "race" was coordinated by Johan Kriegler from Wines2Whales fame and included some of the trails used during this race. Funds generated from the event goes towards maintaining and expanding the ever growing trails network in the Grabouw Area, so in my books its as good a cause as any.
I decided to travel from Table View to Houw Hoek (close to Botriver on the N2 towards Caledon) daily as weekends at home these days seem few and far in between. This meant getting up at 5am, but the benefits of sleeping in your own bed outweighs the rising early bit.
Registration:
This was done at the Houw Hoek Inn which was also the start / finish venue for day 1. I registered early on Saturday morning and was done in 5 minutes. We all received good quality arm warmers and a long sleeved T-Shirt that will definitely be worn. My wife commented that its cotton-Lycra and this is apparently good quality. For me it simply looks cool, so for now it rests with my winter clothes in the cupboard to be worn this winter.
After greeting some of the regulars I lined up in the "Medium Fast" group. The so called "Fast" group consisted of a mixture of racing snakes, recently converted house wives, roadies and overweight baggy-panted riders, so in essence the self seeding system failed dismally. Never mind: Its not a race (well not a timed event in any case) and the first climb sorted out a few of the not-so-fast "Fast" riders. Getting stuck in the Lebanon trail network behind riders that over estimated their ability to start in the Fast group was inevitable, but to all the newbies out there: This is often what stage races are about. Experience and patience usually pays off in these situations and a friendly "thank you" when riders move over helps everyone to enjoy the ride.
Once we got to Thandi, the field have spread out slightly and I decided to skip the water point to get some nice clear track for riding up the switchbacks. As we crossed over to Paul Cluver, we nearly missed the turn to Oak Valley, but a huge bunch of riders up front was coming back our way and signalled to us that we needed to turn around, and so we did. Hey, its not a mountain bike ride if you don't get lost at least once.
Oak Valley treated us with her usual flowing fast single track, done in reverse from the usual trail position. This provided a nice little twist to a route that most of us can ride with our eyes closed. We stayed on what was essentially the Green route and it took us back up to Paul Cluver where we made our way past the infamous Pofadder (venomous and very aggressive African snake) and the less intimidating Erdwurm (Earth Worm). I opted for the less intimidating route as we were advised at the start that when slightly wet, the wooded embankments may be a bit slippery. Since I am doing Sani2C in less than 2 weeks, caution was the better part of valour.
The trails taking us back to Houw Hoek Inn yielded some surprisingly good single track on the slopes of the hill that guards the Inn and with much fun and fanfare the ride completed in just over 3 hours.
Not a hard ride by any stretch of the imagination and a great way to introduce stage race virgins to the concept of multi stage races.
Big thanks to the Medium-Fast guide (Lance Stevenson from Epic Bike Shop) who kept all of us in good spirits while we waited at some of the more congested sections of the trail. The guide system seemed to have worked well lower down the field too.
Day 2 report to follow :)
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