Sak river day11 Nieuwoudtville to Green Point

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Sak river day11 Nieuwoudtville to Green Point 091003 Saturday 436km






Van Rhyn’s pass with the escarpment of the Great Karoo and the Atlantic coastal plain.



The interesting brick steeple of the DR Church in Vanrhynsdorp.



The road to Brand se Berg. I have not been up there – looks very interesting.



Bridge over the Doring river. I have been down the Doring in a blow job – pretty cold in winter. Those steel girder bridges are usually for trains.



The Doring upstream from the bridge.



Doring downstream from the bridge. It soon joins the Olifants. The Doring is mentioned quite a bit in The Forgotten Frontier as the Doorn.



I rode up the gravel road on the eastern side of the Olifants river. It was a road that Crossed-Up mentioned in a report which made me want to come this way. You can see the tar N7 on the other side of the Olifants.



Very picturesque is the Olifants here.



Then you come to this. Called the Bulshoek Dam (Barrage in Mapsource). It supplies a canal 83 km long down to Vredendal and Lutzville. Built in 1924. To me it is particularly attractive, it is built of dressed stone like a cathedral.

In Clanwilliam I had a late breakfast/early lunch.



I have now left Clanwilliam after having a late breakfast there. That old bridge over the Olifants interested me. It is a road bridge. I wrote a thread about some bridges in France. In it I pointed out that the span between the piers can be much greater if the bridge is ‘boxed’. Notice that the span of the centre two sections is double that of the outer portions thanks to the ‘boxing’.



I then cut over the Olifantsrivierberge to Paleisheuwel. This is on the way up. It was White Stripes who alerted me to the Paleisheuwel road in a recent report of his.



On top you have a nice view over the Olifants river valley of the Cederberge.



From Paleisheuwel over the Kapteinskloof road at the back of Piketberg, on to Darling on gravel roads (not beside the railway from Hopefield) and home.







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