Just a short report on an awesome ride we did a week ago. I didn't have my go-pro so could only snap some shots every now and again.
the intention of the ride was to ride to the top of Emlembe mountain. This is Swaziland's highest mountain at 6,109 ft / 1,862 m (for those of you with proper mountains please don't laugh!) and forms a beacon for the border between swaziland and south africa.
We started the ride from Maguga Dam at about 2100 ft/ 650m and headed through some beautiful countryside that i will just show in pictures below. Maguga to eMlembe is about 23km as the crow flies but i think we rode about 50km there and about the same back
eMlembe peak is the furthest right on the horizon, this was about 10km in first ktm repair stop lol
Komati River footbridge
single track
a mean steep firebreak path, good if you get it right in one go
the start of a long switchback downhill - an old mine route. peak is behind the pylons on the horizon.
the grey (mid-left is the asbestos mine dump at the old mine town of Bulembu)
Awesome!!
we stopped for a break in bulembu town, a coke and a bag of crisps. this is a really interesting town. founded on the discovery of a huge asbestos deposit and a town built around it that lasted about 60yrs (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulembu). It closed down around 1999 and pretty much became a ghost town for a few years until it was taken over by a charity
www.bulembu.org who took over the town and turned it into an orphanage mostly for hiv/aids orphans (a huge problem in Swaziland - smallest country in the southern hemisphere with the highest hiv infection rate)
https://mg.co.za/article/2014-09-04-...tos-mine-dumps I believe they are also making a tidy profit out of the forestry that came with it!
Anyway the mine is about to be reopened to process the tailings and the orphanage will need to move - we thought we should hit the highest peak before they close it off for mining. I didn't take any pics while i was at the town but you can google those lol