With the holiday season upon us, here are a couple mountain biking trails you simply have to ride on the Garden Route!
Plettenberg Bay has great beaches, but you can’t swim there, currently. It has old-style wide pavements and quiet suburban roads, but you can’t skateboard there, at all. Fortunately, it now has a wide range of mountain bike trails. You can definitely ride there, as we did recently. And then rode some at nearby Knysna. Here’s why we cannot wait to get back there…
Twenty years ago, while editor of Bicycling magazine, I wrote that Knysna in particular and the Garden Route in general, was over-rated as a mountain biking destination. I took some flak for that, but in my opinion, it was. I’ve ridden there a few times since then and only on this most recent trip, in early November 2022, am I ready to change my opinion.
Two decades ago, the mountain biking trails on the Garden Route revolved around the Harkerville Forest’s trails and forest tracks like Kom se Pad, Homtini and Petrus se Brand. While they take you through incredibly beautiful indigenous forest, they’re not built for mountain biking. Some are old logging roads and others are pretty much hiking trails.
These routes haven’t really changed much in that time, but what has changed is that mountain biking has become less race focused and more recreational and social, which has led to the development and expansion of purpose-built mountain biking trails. And it’s some of these relatively new trails that we rode during our recent trip.
MTO is a forestry company and one of the biggest landowners in South Africa. It has actively focused on ecotourism, which essentially involves permitting – actually encouraging – the use of some of its land for recreational activities, such as mountain biking. We recently gave some insight into how the MTO Plett trails became established .
It made sense to meet the two key people that are responsible for the now established – and growing – trails network in Plett: Douw van der Merwe and Danny Aaron. Both are Plett locals.
Danny is from Club 100 and largely responsible for getting the trails on the MTO land in Plett up and running. He’s raised almost a million Rand through Club 100 members to fund the building of the trails over the past year. He hasn’t been paid to do this, he’s one of those guys that loves mountain biking, loves to pay if forward and loves to build – and ride – cool trails.
Douw is the Eco Tourism Manager for MTO, South Africa. Under the guidance of Danny, he’s employed and trained a team of four to build and maintain trails, over the past eight months or so. He’s also a mountain biker and is now committed to building on Danny’s foundation. Douw is also supporting the development of a trails network on MTO land in Knysna, which we also went to ride.
It’s hard to beat the scenery of a place that sits between mountains and the ocean. That’s Plett. Add in a combination of planted and indigenous forests and some reasonable-to-generous gradient and you have a mountain biking template of the highest value.
The MTO Plett trails are on MTO land about eight kilometres to the south of the town of Plett. They’re adjacent to the indigenous, protected Harkerville Forest, which belongs to SAN Parks and falls within the Garden Route National Park. The trailhead is at Cairnbrogie, a working dairy farm that occupies coastal-front land and which has its own trails network.
You can pay your R60 day pass fee at the coffee shop at Cairnbrogie Farm. If the shop is closed (it’s closed on Mondays), then you can buy your pass via the MTO app, but this doesn’t work well for everyone. There’s a season/annual access pass you can purchase for R465 that most locals choose. Even if you’re there for a few weeks in the summer, it’s worth it. The price decreases through the year to R350 after 1 April 2023 an R235 after 1 August 2023.
The Cairnbrogie Farm trails are ideal for just about anyone. They’re relatively flat or have minimal gradient changes and have uncomplicated surfaces. There’s a variety of scenery too, from local fauna to pine-tree forest to coastal trail. This section along the coast is really stunning and one of the few mountain bike trails in the country that offers significant ocean vistas. Breathtaking actually.
This is a perfect place for newcomers and less fit riders to hone confidence and stamina. The well-made bermed corners also help riders improve cornering prowess. It’s also a good way to start or end your ride if it’s going to be a longish one. There are large trails descriptions boards at the trailhead, but you need to walk/ride there from the car park to see them.
Heading south from the Cairnbrogie Farm, you reach the entrance to the MTO Trails where you will see a large Biogen-branded signboard that includes all the trails in the MTO Plett network. Because we rode these with Danny and Douw, we were essentially able to head straight to each trail without wondering if we were going the correct way. Although it’s not a huge area, it’s forest plantation land on a gradual slope. You aren’t likely to get lost, but you could struggle a bit to find some specific trails.
If you’re a visitor, you will have to refer to Trailforks for some guidance. They were also going to add two marked routes ahead of the festive season for those that like to ride a set loop. Something we recommended should be a year-round offering for visiting riders.
We were all on eBikes, which made it easier to ride every trail, some twice during our time there. The trails have all been hand built, which has clearly required huge time and effort and we really were impressed at the consistency of the all the trails, which are pretty much Blue and Red on the IMBA grading scale, with a few Black detours.
The ground ranges from hardpack lower down to soft sand higher up. The latter is more difficult for the trailbuilding team to keep firm, but conscientious maintenance as well as some experimental concreting of some flaky bits, ensured we were able to charge down with confidence.
The volume of singletrack in this trails network is significant! Many of the climbs are also singletrack, which Danny has ‘switchbacked’ to make a little less arduous and more interesting and which we really appreciated. There are more direct forest road climbs too, but they’re not as stimulating.
The descending trails are truly engaging, and we thoroughly enjoyed the way Danny has designed them to make the most of the gradient and space. Each trail itself has an entry and an exit signboard with the entry board containing loads of information about that trail, including distance, rider suitability level, trail name, trail sponsor and emergency contact numbers.
As a major contributor to the funding of the maintenance of the trails network, Biogen is on every trail board, along with MTO and Club 100. But most individual trails within the network have been funded by an individual and/or company and the trail entry board reflects that.
About 30km south of Plett is the more established town of Knysna. There are pockets of singletrack trails in the area, developed and nurtured by local riders over the years, but none have become nationally recognised or revered. Yet.
Sure, the Red Route in Harkerville Forest has a certain appeal and will always be a Garden Route icon. But purpose-built singetrack trails on sloping land is what we were hoping for when we fumbled our way to the ‘trailhead’ of the Concordia Contours, which are largely located on MTO land.
Don’t follow Google Maps to Concordia Contours Trails because whoever added this location, dropped it on a very rough, overgrown jeep track road where some of the trails intersect. We know this because we drove our Toyota Rav4 Hybrid virtually to the spot before we realised that a pin-drop on a computer screen map does not a trailhead make. We backtracked to the entrance of Simola Estate, a residential estate that’s roughly where the trailhead is. Or will be one day.
We parked our car just off the gravel road, which was relatively busy as it was a weekday morning and squirmed into our riding gear inside and next to our car. There’s no large signboard with a map of the trails, but there is what appeared to be trail-start pole but turned out to be a cross on a grave on closer inspection.
Fortunately, we have the Trailforks app and the local crew of committed mountain bikers that built these trails have diligently uploaded each trail. We got onto the first trail without too much problem, but it wasn’t intuitive after that. We stopped regularly to look for the next trail, pedalled towards it, found it and rode it. Some we rode more than once because some familiarity gives you the confidence to roll faster and enjoy the ride more.
What there is here is a sprinkling of singletrack trails that weave through and down – and sometimes along – forested slopes. This is of course a recipe for success. The trails follow thoughtful lines to deliver a good amount of flow and are mostly ideal for intermediate and experienced riders.
There’s a lot of gradient, which made us grateful for the eBikes, which allowed us to sample a reasonable number of trails in our two-hour session there. There are trail markings, but they’re not what you’d expect. From a koki-drawn arrow and the word ‘Trails’ or the trail’s name, to painted pieces of wood, to decorated smooth stones. Endearing and quaint and an indication of the commitment and passion that’s gone into this somewhat informal trails network.
Stuart Lightley is one of four local mountain bikers that is responsible for the Concordia Contours trails. We spoke to him after our visit there to find out more about the network. Funds are raised via a local Whatsapp Group and trail work is done after work and on weekends, driven by an ingrained passion for creating and riding cool trails.
Stuart says that MTO is working on delivering more formal trails description boards and trail signage. He also mentioned that the four-member trails team that works at MTO Plett is also dispatched to the Knysna network when required, helping with some building, but mostly maintenance.
What Stuart and his local mountain biking mates don’t know is that they may have just started what could become one of the most enjoyable and valuable mountain bike trails networks in the country. Having ridden around 90% of the mountain bike trails in South Africa and some in Europe and North America, it’s obvious to us that the potential here is massive.
The size of the land owned here by MTO is vast. But more significantly, it has ample gradient. Not huge mountain gradient, large hills gradient, which is actually perfect for mountain bike trails a la Karkloof… A shared community desire, a plan, a man (or woman) to drive it and some decent funding and this area can definitely become one of the most irresistible places to ride a mountain bike.
SUMMARY
After this trip (and one a few years ago to ride the Garden Route Trail Park near Knysna), I most certainly have changed my opinion on the mountain biking value of the Garden Route.
Our trip to ride the MTO Garden Route trails was hugely fulfilling. From the very structured, superbly maintained MTO Plett trails to the somewhat pioneering, almost informal Concordia Contours network, to the incredibly scenic oceanside trail at Cairnbrogie Farm, we were consistently stimulated. And there are more trails and trails networks in both Plett and Knysna areas that we didn’t ride on this short trip.
We’re not sure if the locals know how fortunate they are right now. We’re not just looking forward to returning soon to ride the same trails – and other existing trails – but we’re excited about the potential for the region (from George through to Plett) to become not only a South African mountain bike jewel, but an international must-ride destination.
