Overview

2024 Dates & Rates to be confirmed.

Lady Grey – Barkly East – Rhodes

Come and join the Sabie Valley Rider Academy Team to ride the scenic gravel passes, whilst enjoying the beautiful Eastern Cape highlands scenery, experience adventure biking paradise, bordering Lesotho.

This ‘New’ tour offers the opportunity to ride the amazing routes in the Eastern Cape around the hamlet of Rhodes without having to be an advanced rider. Although if the conditions are in our favour we have added the option for the more advanced rider to ride the 10 high altitude passes.

Meeting at Mountain View Country Inn, Lady Grey, Eastern Cape for a rider briefing & dinner by 17h00 on Wednesday 26 April 2023.  There is the option to leave your car & trailer at Mountain View Country Inn until our return on Sunday 30 April  2023.

Depart Lady Grey after breakfast for Mountain Shadow Hotel via the lush sheep & cattle farm valleys, visiting railway reverses, historic stone bridges and over Bottelnek Pass. With the option for the more advanced ride to include Joubert’s Pass, conditions dependant.

The adventure continues from Mountain Shadow Hotel after breakfast to Rhodes via Barkly Pass and Naudes Nek Pass including a sandwich lunch packed by Mountain Shadow Hotel en-route. Again an optional more advanced ride including Bastervoetpad Pass and Otto Du Plessis conditions dependant.

Staying a second night in the Victorian Era Village of Rhodes, today  we ride into the magnificent mountains, up Carlisleshoekspruit Pass and back. Todays optional advanced ride includes the TTT (Tiffindell-Tenahead Traverse), and Naudes Nek Pass, conditions dependant. With everyone returning to Rhodes in time for lunch and an afternoon Rhodes Village Tour.

Sunday we leave Rhodes for Mountain View Country Inn,  via Wartrail, to Bidstone Farm in time for a farm tour & EPIC pizza lunch. The last optional advanced ride goes up Carlisleshoekspruit Pass, down Volunteershoek Pass to lunch followed by Lundin’s Nek Pass. Before returning to Mountain View Country Inn for a final dinner. Here we collect our cars & trailers before heading home on Sunday.

The Passes

• Bottlenek Pass (2204m)
• Carlisleshoekspruit Pass (2563m)
• Volunteershoek Pass (2581m)
• Naude’s Nek Pass (2590m)
• Lundin’s Nek Pass (2170m)
• Joubert’s Pass (2234m)
• Bastervoetpad Pass (2240m)
• TTT [Tiffindell-Tenahead-traverse] (2720m)
• Otto du Plessis Pass (2115m)
• Barkly Pass (2018m)

Fun Facts

• Rhodes, the Victorian-era Village, is nestled in the southernmost end of the mighty Drakensberg mountain range of the Eastern Cape Highlands, bordering Lesotho. And is surrounded by pristine rivers and a magnificent mountain range. It form part of the magisterial district of Barkly East and was declared a conservancy in 1997.
• Pioneering farmers settled the more remote areas of the Highlands of the Eastern Cape in the 1880s. Prior to this, the only inhabitants of this inhospitable region were seasonally migratory members of the San tribe.
• It was founded on the farm Tintern that belonged to a Mr Jim Vorster. Vorster agreed to the establishment of the village on condition that 100 plots be sold and that it be named after the mining magnate and then Prime minister of the Cape, Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902). The plots were duly sold and Rhodes was founded on 16 September 1891. The rest of the farm was given to the village as commonage.
• Rural legend has it that the village was first named Rossville but, no evidence of a name change from Rossville to Rhodes was found. 
• The village endured 29 invasions during the Anglo-Boer War.