CountryTrax
The Country Trax off road motorcycle training academies in South Africa, offers off road trainingcourses for all makes of dual purpose and offroad motorcycles, suited for beginner, intermediate as well as advanced motorcycle riders.By providing you with a combination of the basic theory of dual purpose and off road motorcycling, and lots of practical
demonstrations and exercises, our academies and instructors ensures that you get the highest standard of motorcycle trainingprovided in South Africa,
that will assist you to become a better, safer, off road motorcycle rider.
What makes us different ?
Firstly, our main focus is on the person, then the training, then the motorcycle
and lastly whatever we can do or add, to improve the person.
Secondly, we only allow small groups, 6-8 riders per instructor. This ensures a hands on approach, with lots of
individual attention.
The above is the spiel they provide from their website ....
The Day Arrived and I had 4 Hours of driving in front of me ... It was raining and closer to Greytown the cold was really starting to get to me. Only the left side heated grip was working and the uneven heating had me going in shivers every now and then ....
In Greytown at the garage .....YES I did !! , I forgot to put my feet out and continue to fell over lying half under the bike .... foolishly picked myself up and put the bike on main stand and continue to fill up. My First damage on the bike (scratches) and I have not even started the course yet !!! Well I blame it on the freeze , It was cold and wet !
Drove the last kilos to Imbabala . At the venue I quickly unloaded and got my self sorted ....Do not expect 5 Star accommodation , more like 1 star but adequate.
The food over the period was also adequate , not great neither bad ...definatly enough. Friends was made easy enough with everyone sharing the same interest. The Instructor John was good although my general feeling of the course itself was that it did not progress slow enough into difficult challenges ...ex: STEEP downhills and Up hills , Inclines if you want ... before we did the main "mean" one I would have liked to do more intermediate ones the progress to the more intimidating stuff ...
Please note , I'm a road rider of more than 30 years and complete novice as far as gravel is concerned ...so maybe someone else will feel different about above .
Imbabala Lodge is approximately 4 hours from Johannesburg and 2 hours from Durban. Imbabala Lodge, nestled in the lee of the Umhlumba Mountain on the R74 in the KZN Platteland, between Colenso and Greytown, in close proximity of the Midlands Meander and the Battle Fields. The venue is yours to share for the day or a week.
Imbabala Lodge is 500 ha of pristine bush situated around the hub of Mt. Moraih (1090m), 10m lower than Van Reneen's Pass.
Imbabala Lodge offers the perfect remote getaway weekend whether you want to do 4 x 4 trails, motor biking or quading, cycling, horse riding or just want to escape the everyday pressures surrounded by many species of game.
Above Spiel from their Website
All Training is done on the reserve roads and run in with wild buck and Giraffe is frequent , this makes for quite a novel way to train and truly enjoyable ...
Off course they do have right of way !
They have approximately 100km of the best quad and bike trails in Natal. 20km of this is enduro track, which is in the immediate vicinity of the lodge. We have supervised trails that go over Mt Moriah. On our trails, you will encounter all the challenging obstacles usually sought out by enduro riders, from technical to advanced riding including many kilometres of riverbeds, inclines, loose rocks, ramps, jumps and mud. These are gruelling rides, which are to be enjoyed by expert or novice
What did we do you ask ?
Well things are definatly more difficult than what road riding is , road riding according to me now is for "sissies" real men do Adventure riding .....AND FALLING !!! Trust me I had my fair share ...
First one on the Figure eight ...then it went well till we hit the sand ! Man I hate sand ! This monster just do what it wants , at least falling now is soft enough ...and the a major one on the last day ...more or less blaming the Heidenau tires ( off course I did everything right ! )
Bikes with me on the course (If I remember right) was Me , BMW R1200 GS , 2 x F800GS , Yamaha 600 Tenere and 2 Kawasaki's (KLR/E's ?) and of course the Instructor had a HP1200 BMW ...
Some exercise's we did , Slow Race (Balance) which I won , should have seen that as a omen ...hee hee , Figure eights , Walk your Bike , Pick Up your Bike , Walk Around your Bike , Tools , Spanners , Setting Shocks , Repair Punctures , Stand on seat , Stand on the right peg then left , Drive through narrow space , Get over obstacle in road , log in road , Unload bike Shocks while riding , Inclines , recovery from stall or fall on Inclines , Sand , Water Crossing , Lean the bike for better grip , How to grab on to handle bars (fingers) , Braking , emergency , with and without ABS , Latte balancing ,learn about the right clothing (Boots in my case where road ones and let me tell you after the weekend the soles of my feet where sore .Road boots does not work !!) , driving over holes ....yes BIG gate in die pad ! ( See Photo ) etc .
John (Instructor) explaining how to get over the "GAT in die PAD" yes people, look in front of the guy with the black clothes , it is not a shaded area but a MOERSE GAT !
Guys taking a break after doing Zig-Zags through cones ...
Regarding lying down on the outride ... I suppose to a large degree I can be to blame but my confidence in the Heidenau tires are not where they suppose to be , during the ride on fairly hard but loose gravel the front of the bike on several occasions slipped to just grip again ...on the fall the front went which dumped me into a donga on the side of the road where the Bike hit a fairly large rock with the Exhausts pipe ... No real serious damage and I only had a roasty inside my jacket .... I had to get a new header Pipe and Screen , the screen I wanted to replace anyway so the fall was just the incentive for it ...
Besides for fairly large spill on outride on the last day a throughly enjoyable weekend and a recommended thing to do if you going to venture out on sand , gravel , mud or where there is no postage codes for the areas you are in ....
