The ease and accessibility of a variety of mountain bike trails is one of the reasons I can survive in and love Johannesburg. Here’s my A to T of trails, which hopefully will encourage you to get on your bike (or get a bike) and experience the trails for yourself. Johannesburg,eGoli, is a city more famous for what lies under its surface than the mountains above it, like the one that has bestowed fame on South Africa’s second city, Cape Town.
There, “the Mountain” is synonymous with the city. However, Joburg and its surrounds are anything but flat. The plain of a thousand koppies, you could call it.
In Gauteng, we have koppies big enough to qualify as mountains if you measure their height by how hard they require you to push on your pedals, which makes it something of a mini mecca for mountain bikers. The trails must be as good as anything on offer in any city in the world. They give you a way to get down and dirty with what remains of nature in the city, to get intimate with its contours and find the paths less travelled.
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In this article, I give you a flavour of some of what’s out there. It’s limited to the trails I have ridden, in alphabetical order. But, hopefully, my A to T will encourage you to get on your bike (or get a bike) and experience the trails for yourself.
TheAsidlale Adventure Parkis situated entirely within the grounds of a prison. Thirty years ago, Leeuwkop prison, just north of Lonehill, was where I used to visit political prisoners. In those days, you parked your car and waited for the prison bus to pick you up and take you into the prison’s extensive grounds.
To return to it on a bike was special. To discover the beauty and diversity of its trails, all very well maintained, was even more so. Starting and finishing at the old golf clubhouse (which still retains a whiff of the ghost of whiteness past), you can choose a 10, 30 or 45km route.
The golf course has surrendered to rewilding. In its place, single-track trails wind alongside the Jukskei River, through prison farmland and across the constant rise and fall of a gently undulating river valley. Asidlale has beautiful views: over the changing skyscape of Johannesburg, Steyn City and Sandton City to be precise; on to Lonehill koppie, and across a shallow valley on to the stark prison, nestled in farmland that genteel suburbia had to skirt around.
It’s thanks to the prisoners that this pristine land has not been gobbled up by the concrete jungle. A big thank you is due to the crew ofJozi Trails, a non-profit organisation that maintains and develops a network of mountain bike and running trails that follow the Braamfontein Spruit and slice through Johannesburg.
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