Lourensford Father's Day Trail Run

Our trail grading: ORANGE 1B
Distance: 21.1km
Extremeness: 500m altitude gain
Location: Lourensford, Somerset West, South Africa
Joggers: Deryck Nel & me

Today Riana organised us the most awesome farther's day gift ever: a extreme jog in Lourensford! Lourensford Wine Farm is only open for trail running during races once or twice a year, but they made an exception for us for which we are extremely grateful! We had to take advantage of this privilege and I planned the route out on Google Earth and realized that there is actually only one way to get to the saddle I wanted to reach. The farm is absolutely beautiful (and huge) and to my amazement we only got lost once on the way up. It added 1.5km to our route, but we can view it as a scenic detour. We reached the saddle after 10km and 500m of altitude gain. We were very tempted to take the top contour running further into Lourensford, but given the time and the way my legs felt we decided to head downwards. At 16km my legs were paste and lucky I met a fellow father and Lourensford farm worker Tulani (originally from Zimbabwe). He drove next to me for a kilo or two efficiently distracting me from the jog at hand. What an awesome jog and present from my awesome wife! Thank you Riana and thank you Lourensford!

Jogging on yellow leaves
Deryck starting the ascent
This is me with an awesome view behind me
The dam where we lost our way... not a bad place to get lost
Where we started to realize that we where on the wrong trail
Deryck, this time on the correct trail
We reached the saddle... beautiful views!
Deryck pointing out where we ran up Stellenbosch mountain
The last look back before heading down... the "Dome" is visible on the right
Posted by Picasa


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts