Ok, having spent the past long weekend in the Sabi area, herewith some feedback:
1. Induna Adventures They have some amazing trails, and are very well categorised according to how technical they are. We rode the technical and the moderate routes, and found them to be a lot of fun, and the moderate route had a nice set of longish climbs which are great for (a) training, and more importantly (b) for getting you up high so you can fly down awesome jeeptrack. All routes are around 10km, and start at the parking area, so you can string a few together to cover the distance and training you want. I must add that I would love to do the technical and very technical routes again, these do, however, seem to be the least ridden judging by the tracks we found and the overgrowth in some sections. Fine by me! Cost: R40pppd for as much as you can ride! Includes a decent colour map too. 2. Mankele MTB These guys have nice facilities, showers and a pool which you get access to, as well as shady parking and braai areas and a coffee shop (which we didn't get to as we were in a rush to get pancakes after a day's riding in 30+deg heat :-) These guys have negotiated some really nice trail access with the local forestry people, and also built some amazing, albeit shorter, routes along the river which have incredible fun factor. Their routes unfortunately change quite a bit as forestry moves, so their maps were heavily out of date, and the poor but very friendly and helpful guy at the gate only managed to confuse us even more as to how the routes were laid out. However, we never got lost, as the trails are VERY well signposted at very regular intervals. The trails are graded by difficulty and technical ability, which is really nice. We did their purple (tough) route, which involved about an hour of climbing, partly on tar, partly in the forests, unfortunately in temps from 20 to 34deg, but was every bit worth it for the following 3 hours of trail we got as reward. Awesome fast downhill jeep track, wonderful river-side tracks with some bridges and steam crossings. The route sections built by Mankele are VERY well maintained, and the forestry routes cover very nice clean, albeit sometimes loose, jeep track and dirt roads. The place is almost perfect, and if they got their maps sorted would score 100% in my books. Cost: R30pppd for as much riding as you want. 3. CycleJunkies (Sabie) These guys have 4 awesome routes starting from Merry Pebbles, and range from 25km to 45km, and of course you can string them together. The routes have a lot of climbs in (see forest 2 falls route), but are breathtakingly beautiful! Cost: R40pppd including a map. We didnt get to go to Misty Valley Lodge - Harrie's Pancakes hijacked us! Next time! Happy trailriding, and thanks to all of you for your advice on MTB locations - the routes were awesome! Cheers Brendan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DarkAndDirty" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/darkanddirty?hl=en.
