South Africa 2026

The start of it all..

Arriving from winter to summer is a real welcomed feeling! Hot sun and dusty trails with proper beach days in between.

The mission for now is getting the lay of the land dialled so I can get you the reader out here for real African biking experiences! We are currently based in the Cape Winelands and the trail networks like Hoogekraal and Contermanskloof get me excited for what's still to come!

I still have a few local Cape Town trails to go test this week and then we start heading down the Garden Route to test some of the Knysna and George region trails. Here the landscape changes from dry fynbos trails to loamy forest trails.

Stay tuned for what's to come. During Feb I will be heading down to Plett and sampling the Gravel route too.

Exciting times ahead and I can not wait to share it with all you riding freaks!

Update 03.02.2026

Another week done and dusted. Met up with Mark Hopkins at the Csixx Factory with a cool tour of what they are doing there.

Of coarse I joined them on a after work ride and hit the famous Glen trail in Cape Town. What a fun little dh track that is! After a few laps of pedalling back up I did start to think, man an E-bike would be the way to go for the steep ascents in the Cape. We then ended our ride with a beer at the local spot after a nice rocky descent down from Table Mountain Station.

The following day I met up with an old school friend and we went on to go test the new DH track "Needles" built by Andrew Neethling. This was a spicy loose off camber type of trail. Brutally steep climb to get to the start, where it starts flat and fast and suddenly changes to some loose, steep off camber terrain. Unfortunately we have no lift systems for biking here so we always end up suffering on our normal bikes to the top! After a few laps we then ended at the bottom for some great coffee at the Spice Route Farm.

Also got to ride a few more xc biased trails this last week like Meerendal and Bloemendal Trail networks. If you feel like a leg day, these are perfect for the xc lovers. Nice switchback traverse climbs and fast and flowy single tracks.

Jonkershoek was a nice day out too, where it was back to more Enduro style trails and big ascents! Hot and dusty, just the way I remember it growing up. Heading to trails like the famous Plumber always gets the heart rate going but its definitely worth the downhill ride back down! Again here I was thinking the E-bike option would make a lot more sense to get more laps in as each ascent is 500m elevation on janky loose rock sections. Jonkers is still probably the best this region has to offer in terms of technical Enduro style trails.

Now we will be heading for a short Family breakaway for a week up the west coast before I get to ride some of the newly built trails in the Knysna area on the Garden Route.

Stay Tuned

Wade

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ca5dae_6955cfca5051482e97cdd2be56db3c60/1080p/mp4/file.mp4