Riding the new Schapenberg Mountainbike trail from Ongegund in Somerset West
Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 8:52PM 
Greg and I headed out to ride the new Schapenberg MTB trail ride this afternoon - it is just above Sir Lowrys pass in Somerset West. We intended doing the red route. But, when we arrived they were closing up and so Johan Kriegler (the guy who does the Wines2Whales trail) told us how to get in along the Knorhoek road.
We met up with a few friends along the way and started riding the route with them. They turned off onto the shorter yellow route and we decided to take the red route. About 10 km into the ride we realised that we were at the cut off point of day one of the wines2whales! We knew that with just a little climb we would link up with the most amazing single track (from Hans se Kop down into the valley). So, we braced ourselves and climbed the black route... Quite a climb to the top, but some beautiful views and incredible single track on the way to the top! It was worth doing the black route!
At the top we made the turn and hit the road down. Greg was in fine form flying down the technical stuff! I was a little... shall we say ‘sensible’ about my descent? Just when we thought it was over the route took us into a tunnel of trees and a whole new section of single track! At the end of that we climbed next to the railway for a few km’s only to be taken into another section of incredible downhill single track – some of it quite steep like on our Helderberg ride. Super stuff.
This is certainly a route worth riding. Because we came in from the side (since the Ongegund office was closed) we probably missed the first 18km of the trail. But, the last 23km we did ride was absolutely amazing!
Blessings,
Dion
PS. If you have google earth installed on your computer just click on the attached file for a ‘fly through’ of the route. If you don’t have it installed download google earth from here:
Reader Comments (2)
Where exactly is the start of the new Schapenberg mountain bike trail?
Hi J,
Sorry for the slow reply! Please check the post for a link to Ongegund wine farm. All the routes start from there and are well marked.
God bless,
Dion