mountain_lion

If you have contact with the landowners, ask them to consider joining the Bottelaryhills Conservancy. If there is a route that they are willing to let MTBers use to cross their farms, I am sure we can get it formalised and marked via the Conservancy. First step is always to approach the landowners.

The routes shown are the best I am aware of at present. Unfortunately the farms you crossed (illegally) before are not members of the Bottelaryhills Conservancy, at least not as far as I know. (A public bypass road over the hill to Devonvalley Rd has been on the long term road planning maps for several decades to alleviate the traffic congestion through Stellenbosch; if or when it will be built is unknown).

All the BHC MTB trails are mapped on Trailforks, including all the latest changes. https://www.trailforks.com/region/bottelary-hills-conservancy-mtb-trails/?trailstyle=random&activitytype=1&m=hybrid&z=13.0&lat=-33.90447&lon=18.77488 Get the Trailforks app to keep up to date with changes to the trails. https://www.trailforks.com/apps/map/ You can submit ride reports via Trailforks to indicate trail conditions and report issues that require attention. Reports are monitored by the trail maintenance team and help to inform priorities for the next round of maintenance work. By connecting your Trailforks account with Strava, anonymised ride data is is shared with Trailforks whenever you log a ride on Strava, This provides helpful data e.g, to generate heat maps indicating which trails are ridden most often, shows up mapping errors etc. This is very useful for trail management and can be used by riders too. If you use Strava and often ride the BHC trails, please consider connecting your account to Trailforks, it is an easy once-off process. How to connect Trailforks to Strava: https://www.trailforks.com/help/view/1/ (You can also connect your Garmin account directly to Traiforks if you use that but do not use Strava). Also note that Trailforks maps are fully route-able. Not only can you plan a route on the trail system, you can also route on the public roads to the trails. You can route for yourself, or you can create and publish a public route which other riders can then use too. https://www.trailforks.com/region/bottelary-hills-conservancy-mtb-trails/routes/

I am not 100% sure about the status at Asara, but seeing that nobody has replied yet: Rumour has it that Asara will open 1 December 2020. (Best is to confirm with Asara directly before going). Also note that Brenaissance Wine & Stud Estate on Devonvalley Road has just been added as a park & ride venue for Bottelaryhills trails. Access to the trails is still the same: Join the Yellow route via the security gate for Fransmanskraal / Dwars-in-die-Weg / The Styling Shed. Day permits can also be purchased from the security guard at this gate (Zapper payment only - no cash or card), but strictly no parking of cars at this gate please. See facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/183227135056695/posts/3706492699396770/?sfnsn=scwspmo

Big thanks to Trailblazers for the new trails and to the Bottelaryhills Conservancy for funding the build. For now we still have access to the "old" Ribbok trail, but the Kastanjeberg game fence is due to go up in the near future (not exactly sure when). Unfortunately this fence will cut off access to, Ribbok and Rooikat. At least we have alternatives in place.

It is already too dry to build decent berms and jumps; Perhaps next winter. Fingers crossed...

As you might have seen the Bonfoi fence went up earlier than expected cutting off the track accross the top of Wolfkloof. You need to use the Ystervark trail going down into Wolfkloof and back up the other side for now. Kastanjeberg fence is not up yet, so Ribbok single track is still accessible at present via a temporary "detour" through the veld. Construction of alternative singletrack is due to start soon and should be completed by end November.

Poles are going up now while ground is still softer after the rains. Not sure when the wire fence will go up, but should only be in a few weeks time from now. BHC MTB sub-com is actively busy with discussions re alternatives with landowners. Indeed a big thank you to the landowners. All BHC trails run across privately owned land and all funds generated through the MTB trails are used for trail maintenance and alien clearing. The mission of the BHC is primarily to preserve and grow the existing Renosterveld in its area and no funds go back to the landowners who generously grant us access.

Entries sold out for the Paarl Cycle Tour (guess partly due to the recent SCT being cancelled). Anyway, mrs mountain_lion has been planing to ride this event for weeks, but err never actually got round to enter... Anybody with an entry who is not planing to ride PM me please for a substitution.

Still waiting for our cancellation SMS messages... I am on MTN & Mrs. mountain_lion on Vodacom. Neither of received the SMS cancellation message. We did receive our race numbers & the mySOS info via SMS though. Something went wrong somewhere... My guess is that the bulk SMS service provider used by MedihelpSCT choked on the bulk notifications which had to be sent high priority... Fortunately we are in Stellenbosch and did not even need to get out of bed to make the call to go back to sleep when our alarm went off.

Facer supports Tizen (Samsung) and WearOS (Android). I think Garmin is using their own watch OS, so doubt if Facer designs can be used on Garmin at present.

Is nobody else here designing their own smart watch faces?

You can find my Facer collection of beer watches here: https://www.facer.io/collection/beer-glass-1254962f67

AFAIK Facer currently supports devices running WearOS (Android), Tizen (Samsung) and WatchOS (Apple).

I successfully petitioned Santa (aka Mrs mountain_lion) for a smart watch. Over the holidays I tried my hand at building custom watch faces using the Facer platform. They have a web based creator with a not to steep learning curve and allow you to share your creations for free. Anybody else here using Facer or other platforms like WatchMaker / Galaxy Watch Designer etc? Which platform do you prefer and why? My first attempt was this: https://www.facer.io/watchface/HxTIRrVbvU And then I challenged myself with this: https://www.facer.io/watchface/DQl9GCshpI and then did even more just for fun (beer glass, lego, new year etc). See https://www.facer.io/u/mountainlion for all my creations, they are all free to use if you like. (You do need the Facer apps on your watch and paired phone though).

If you want an overview of the making of the Bottelaryhills trails and the cool riding available, have a look at this video (from 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2EZcEclYAs

Please note that the STBB4GOOD MTB Challenge will be making use of the Bottelaryhills trails on Saturday 12 October 2019. https://www.stbb.co.za/stbb-mtb-2019/ If you are not entering the event, rather schedule your ride for the afternoon. You will also note that most of the trails have received some love from the trail fairies (aka Trailblazers) in preparation for the event.

Found on Bottelaryhills trais on Sunday 2019-01-13: Alpinestars glove. I have it in Stellenbosch. PM me if it is yours.

I heard that the perps were arrested. Hope this is correct...

Thanks trail fairies (aka land owner) for clearing the fig tree last week. Several trees down on Ribbok today as expected during the windy season... Fortunately not on blind corners.

Trail fairies please come back to Fish Eagle! Wild fig tree has come down on the bridge below the top dam wall, blocking the trail. I came down there at full pace and only just managed to stop in time! I broke and moved some branches to make it possible to pass, but it is still dangerous if you come down there at speed.

Thanks Dirtman en Trailblazers! :clap: :w00t: Very hard work in this heat!! Much appreciated. Those pesky sticky leaves does not seem to be affected by the drought at all; was becoming a challenge not to be pulled off your bike by them

There are steps that the sender can take to reduce the chances of the message being identified as SPAM, but this is limited. SPAM filters sit on the receiving end and are configured to be as stringent as the receiving mail administrator prefers; this is beyond the control of the sender.

With any automated message you should always check your spam folder. SPAM is mostly automated mail. However one person's SPAM is another person's HAM... SPAM filters work on probabilities and trends; easy to get it wrong with mail like this. Some SPAM filters will "grey list" potential SPAM, i.e. delivery is delayed until later to obtain more data to determine a trend. In this case it could take hours for the mail to be delivered, or might not even be delivered at all if the trend goes the wrong way.

There are a few options to link to Yellow. Most obvious is where Purple splits off from Blue just before the Cork Screw (which is now ridden in reverse). If you follow Purple down the hair pins, you first join up with Red for some more sweeping single track. At the bottom there is another split over a dam wall that will take you to Yellow. To get from Yellow to Blue, the gradual way up is to link back on to Red and then follow the route almost to the top of the Wolwedans Vastrap climb, where Purple splits off right. This brings you back to the point described above. There are more direct ways to link up to the top from Yellow, some of which were part of the routes before, but I am not sure if these are still part of the official route options - Helwarp & Dirtman need to confirm. By the way, I did ride the new Blue route the other way round just before it was officially marked and opened (misunderstood Dirtman about the intended direction). I must say that I preferred that direction. In general the single track flowed better and the 2 really steep sections are down hill that way. Of course going down the brick paved road is a waste of hard won elevation, but there is potential to build a single track alternative. Perhaps something for the future. For now we ride it as marked.