My love for all things petrol-powered stems from my dad and his passion for motorsport, adventure and motorcycles. Let’s just say it didn’t take long before I got my first bike. I wanted a motorcycle since the day I could say the word, so my dad made little three-year-old me a promise, and that promise was: “As soon as you learn to ride a bicycle, I will buy you a motorcycle”. By age four, I was on a 98-2001 KTM Pro Jr 50; the rest was history.
Project bikes, throwing spanners at one another during late nights spent in the garage, going to the race track, watching racing after church on Sundays and plenty of open road rides later, it’s fair to say that motorcycles have been the glue of our relationship. Life is a funny bugger though, it throws obstacles, piles of work and with that excuses of why it’s never the right time to go for a proper road trip.
This leads us to the title of this article – a question frequently asked by my dad, “when are we going on that bike trip?” My dad longs for road trips and has had many bucket list rides that he consistently looks back on, so I made him the promise that when the time is “right” we should go on an adventure bike trip. Life and all of its excuses happened to me but eventually, our calendars aligned.
Our plan was simply no plan, well that’s not entirely true, we had a destination and we wanted to stick to b-roads, dirt roads and railway line service routes, basically skipping out on all the boring tolled roads. My dad and I like traveling light so GoGravel backpacks for luggage were all we needed and repair kits were all stored under our bike seats. Talking about bikes, our short list of potential bikes grew and then shrank, crossing off all the heavy 1000 cc plus adventures and rather looking at the more exciting, lighter and dirt-capable middle-weight adventures. Our taste and style of riding soon led us to the Husqvarna Norden 901 and the new BMW F 900 GS.
My dad and I have had a massive crush on the Norden and in particular the Expedition model, which wasn’t available for our trip, but the standard model mixes good open road manners with decent enough dirt-worthiness for both mine and my dad’s skill level. One bike that I never thought I’d see my dad swing a leg over or choose for our trip was Bavarian’s new F 900 GS, the old GS stigma lives no longer with the new 900 thanks to decent Showa suspension, good ground clearance, aggressive off-road geometry and a strong but smooth power delivery. It doesn’t look like your typical GS, but rather a rally bike crossed with an adventure bike, which gets the thumbs up from old Julio and me, especially in the BMW motorsport colours and gold rims.
Day one of our semi-planned two-nighter adventure trip was to visit Julio’s high school mate David Seitz in Witbank, ride to some Nostalgic parts of my dad’s home town and then excavate some dirt at speed towards Dullstroom for our overnight stay at Kinlock Lodge. From Pretoria, we decided to head down Boschkop Rd passing Kitty Hawk Aerodrome and turn left onto a dirt road called Spoorweg Ave, just before the train bridge. This network of dirt roads led us to the R104 which popped out just before Bronkhorstspruit and then seeing us through to the Balmoral turn-off.
Usually, I turn onto the highway at this split road for a short stint, but my dad wanted to show me a scenic road that my grandfather would always drive back home on—even after the highway had been built he always enjoyed driving through the countryside. Nowadays you will find mining operations to the left and right of the R545, but it is still a scenic and peaceful route to take, so much so that I decided to stop for a picture and began to reflect on my time spent with my granddad—I could imagining him driving his Bronze Mazda Capella down this road with the windows down back in the day.
We rolled into Witbank, shot the breeze with David, enjoyed a recommended single track back to the main road and took in the last bit of the Witbank at the dam. First impressions of Witbank? It isn’t as bad as people make it out to be, yes there are some rough parts but the potential of the town and the development that is taking place far out ways the negatives.
Witbank to Dullstroom is just under 120 km and we thought we would b-road through Kromdraai to Middleburg and then catch the R104 to the turn-off that takes you into Dullstroom. Whenever I ride a road bike in this area I always get jealous of the adventure riders, this road makes your inner meerkat itch and it did for both myself and my dad. After the turn-off, we were on the railway line and cutting through the green pine forests into town. I just love adventure bikes!
Before heading into town for dinner we quickly dropped our backpacks off at Kinloch Lodge, a beautiful countryside lodge nestled up in the hills 12 km outside of Dullstroom en route to Highland Gate Golf Estate. If you love the countryside, rolling hills, good hospitality and fishing, Kinloch is a must-visit. Dinner saw us chat about how both bikes faired on day one and how the spec sheets paint them so similar, but in reality they have two completely different personalities.
The BMW surprised both of us as to how well it handled the dirt, the suspension ironed out the corrugations, rocks, ruts and jumps but what made riding off-road on the F 900 GS so comfortable was the dirt-focused rider triangle. Navigating the electronics rider modes was simple on the fly, with the mode button on the right switch gear selecting from the road-biased Dynamic to the dirt-worthy Enduro Pro mode with a single press of the button and better yet switching TC off was just as simple with a button on the left switchgear. For a modern bike filled with sophisticated electronics, we were both happy to see how easy it was to navigate.
The Norden was definitely a favourite coming into this ride and having ridden both models before I was glad to hear similar feedback from my dad. We were both impressed with how light the motorcycle feels due to the lower centre of gravity thanks to the low-slung fuel tanks. Fuel economy, fuel range, comfort and peppiness from the motor from low in the RPM range was a consistent visor open and giggle every time we made a stop. In what world is a KTM, I mean Husqvarna a better do-it-all bike than a BMW, yes I know BMW has an F 900 GS Adventure, but frankly, the base Norden fits right in the middle of both Germans, as it does with its Austrian cousins.
Negatives so far on the BMW were short fuel range from the small 14-liter tank and what we complimented the F 900 GS for on the dirt was its compromise on the road, leaving you slightly uncomfortable in the seat and arms on prolonged tar stints. On the Husqvarna, we had got the bike a day before our road trip and the suspension wasn’t set up for our ride and we felt it on day one with many angry head shakes both on the tar and especially on the dirt. After opening the Norden’s suspension manual we quickly dialled the suspension on its more sporty off-road setting making our complaint null and void. Suspension setup aside, the engine heat riding through town was a bit toasty, but that’s just nit-picking from me.
At this stage, both bikes were like two tasty meals that neither of us could make our mind up on quite yet—we also had plenty more riding to still do.
Day 2 saw us ride up to Mashishing formerly known as Lydenburg to meet up with old family friends Philip and Lenie Grover, before winding our way through twisty mountain passes and logging routes into Sabie for an overnight at Sabie River camp, a ZA Bikers favourite. We decided to ride the potholed R504 with plenty of reserves left in the wrist and boy is that road stuffed, we do hope to see the road works in Mashishing carry their way out onto the R504.
Once in Mashishing, we road up a lovely dirt road where we got to stretch both bikes’ legs and suspensions on the way up to the Grover’s. Once at the gate we wound our way through a stunning pine forest to Philip’s place and were greeted by massive Caucasian Shepherd Dogs or Caucasian Ovcharka as they are formerly known. A stout was a must as we planned to stay out of the blistering sun, spend some quality time chatting with the Grovers and also get to know and build trust with the dogs.
You must be thinking, what the heck is a Caucasian Shepherd Dog? These big grizzlies are large livestock guardian dogs that are native to the Caucasus region, notably Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Dagestan. These stunning dogs were bred in the Soviet Union from about 1920 from dogs of the Caucasus Mountains and the steppe regions of Southern Russia. Philip’s wife Lenie takes care of these amazing hounds and is a South African breeder.
From the Grovers, we headed out on Long Tom Pass and enjoyed plenty of twisty tar. The one reason I love adventure bikes is that you don’t get a set menu like you do at a Michelin-star restaurant, but rather you get the full menu which means you are never dissatisfied. We got to the top of Long Tom and we could have easily chosen another twisty way down that was on dirt and it didn’t feel like we were sacrificing that much on tar compared to a touring bike and not that much on the dirt compared to a lighter travel bike. These adventure motorcycles are truly for those who have FOMO (fear of missing out) and once you’ve experienced it all you’ll struggle to go back.
We settled down in Sabie after riding as much tared and dirt road nirvana as physically possible in beautiful Mpumalanga. If you love riding bikes Sabie has it all, fast road riding, twisty logging routes and slow and technical forest routes, at one stage my dad and I were making our own routes as the skies had blessed the mountains with plenty of rain, leaving us with overgrown forest sections. Over at camp we lit our fire, poured our rum and just sat back reflecting on two full days of adventure riding, finding new routes and making awesome memories.
Right there we knew “that” bike trip had come to an end and we had already started planning “that next bike trip” by the time the ice in our rum had melted in toasty Sabie. Owning an adventure bike allows you to see the world or those holiday destinations from a completely different perspective, from being there to getting there and bonding over it all at the end.
As for the motorcycles we were impressed to see what these two companies had built after what seemed like engineers taking notes from one another. A wild off-road focused beamer and a feature-packed and sophisticated Husqvarna—two fantastic adventure motorcycles with two very tasty flavours.
For more information on the bikes featured in this article, click on the links below…
