Roma –
The first trip into
Intro:
We had planned a ride into
We were looking to ride the ‘Roof of Africa’ route,
or parts thereof, to see how tough it was.
We had no desire to ride the Roof, but wanted to
see what it was all about.
I did some calling around and found a place called
the ‘Trading Post’ just outside of Roma.
This was basically a farm house that had been
converted to a type of store and would be a good base to ride from.
[Most of the Google Earth Locations on this page
point at the same spot. This is because the Roma area has not been scanned in
detail]
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Getting ready |
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Crack of dawn on a pretty cold July morning in
’96. JR was loading up the bikes on a rented trailer. This trailer had a
solid loading ramp that bolted across the back of the trailer acting like a
big airbrake! It must have doubled our fuel costs! JR was riding his early ’90’s KTM 250 EXC which
was a decent machine; my WR was still pretty much in full off-road format: no
lights or anything. It was still pretty new too! We were towing this lot with a Toyota Corolla
1.6i, not a bad little car but it had a bit of a problem with the
differential (I think) as it used to squirm around all over the road when on
the throttle. Every bit of the poor road seemed to have it
heading towards the hard shoulder. Not too much fun, especially as it started
snowing when we were nearing Ladybrand. |
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Trading Post |
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This is JR in the room we shared at the Trading Post.
It was warm and comfortable but quite ‘rustic’. I think the trading post had
been there quite a while and they traded the usual essentials with the locals
(paraffin, tinned goods, etc.) The owner’s son was about 15 at that time and
owned a Honda XL200R. He had a friend with a slightly better bike and they
took us up into the mountains and showed us some of the route that the Roof
follows. Unfortunately this Honda was not up to the task
and kept stalling all the time, but we were grateful for them taking the time
to show us what they did. This bike also had a cracked engine mount so it was
on its last legs! |
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Warm Up |
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This is outside the Trading Post, it was pretty
cold at that point as there was a really cold front coming up across The WR was crackling away here making enough
smoke to fill up the valley. I think we ran the bikes a rich here as there
were some long descents where the motors got really cold on the closed throttles. |
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River Bed |
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JR riding down one of the rivers. I can’t remember if this was part of the route but
the riding was pretty good. Unlike |
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Forests |
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JR riding up through the one of the few pine
forests. This was another pretty good place to ride, if a
little wild. There was nobody around up at that altitude, most of the locals
remained in the (relatively) sheltered valleys. |
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Relaxing |
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JR Relaxing next to the bikes. |
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Yamaha and KTM |
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The WR and the Katoom in the forests |
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WR |
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My WR (YZ 250 WR) This was a good bike. I think it was a ’93 model, the last model before the exhaust /
silencer join went underneath the rear shock reservoir. At this point it’s
not had all the bits and pieces on it, just bark-busters. It had a 13 litre
fuel tank which gave good range and had the wide ratio gear-box (hence WR in
name). It also had a lighting coil installed but I never got it to work,
never really needed it. |
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KTM |
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JR and his Katoom. This was also a good bike, JR put a some time and
effort into fixing it up after he bought it. JR is a trained fitter/turner so
he is pretty good when it comes to that sort of stuff. The bike was less
peaky than my WR, the power-band was less pronounced and it came off the
bottom a bit harder but didn’t have the top end hit. |
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Mountain top 1 |
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This was taken at the top of one of the smaller
mountains near Roma. The wind was biting cold here and the weather was coming
in with a vengeance from the south. Looking behind JR with the camera I could
see it all coming up. We didn’t take any face protection so the wind
practically froze our faces when we got the bikes up to speed. |
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Mountain top 2 |
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JR at the same place. |
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Mountain top 3 |
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Having a shot of Bourbon to warm up. It was
pretty dry up there and this was before we discovered the wonder CamelBak’s. |
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Homeward bound |
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This is again just outside Ladybrand when the
snow (slush at this point) started falling. Needless to say it was absolutely
freezing. One of the tie-downs on the bike had come lose, we
stopped to pull it down again. The ‘air-brake’ can be seen here. We just made it to the motorway before it was
closed. The traffic police closed it due to snow – not something that happens
too often in About half an hour after this photo was taken ice
had formed over the bikes entire front ends. It was forming from the falling
slush and building up across the bar and the lights, there must have been
about 10 kg’s of snow/ice on each bike. The About a month later there was some pretty serious
snow in We decided to take a trip up the |
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