I ride what I like — the mountain bike trails of Johannesburg and surrounds

Johannesburg, eGoli, is a city more famous for what lies under its surface than the mountains above it, like the one that has bestowed fame on South Africa’s second city, Cape Town. There, “the Mountain” is synonymous with the city. However, Joburg and its surrounds are anything but flat. The plain of a thousand koppies, you could call it.

In Gauteng, we have koppies big enough to qualify as mountains if you measure their height by how hard they require you to push on your pedals, which makes it something of a mini mecca for mountain bikers.

The ease and accessibility of a variety of mountain bike (MTB) trails is one of the reasons I can survive in and love Johannesburg. The trails must be as good as anything on offer in any city in the world. They give you a way to get down and dirty with what remains of nature in the city, to get intimate with its contours and find the paths less travelled.

In this article, I give you a flavour of some of what’s out there. It’s limited to the trails I have ridden, in alphabetical order. But, hopefully, my A to T will encourage you to get on your bike (or get a bike) and experience the trails for yourself.

And then explore more.

Asidlale Adventure Park (Joburg North)

The Asidlale Adventure Park is situated entirely within the grounds of a prison.

Thirty years ago, Leeuwkop prison, just north of Lonehill, was where I used to visit political prisoners. In those days, you parked your car and waited for the prison bus to pick you up and take you into the prison’s extensive grounds.

To return to it on a bike was special. To discover the beauty and diversity of its trails, all very well maintained, was even more so.

Starting and finishing at the old golf clubhouse (which still retains a whiff of the ghost of whiteness past), you can choose a 10, 30 or 45km route. The golf course has surrendered to rewilding. In its place, single-track trails wind alongside the Jukskei River, through prison farmland and across the constant rise and fall of a gently undulating river valley.

Asidlale has beautiful views: over the changing skyscape of Johannesburg, Steyn City and Sandton City to be precise; on to Lonehill koppie, and across a shallow valley on to the stark prison, nestled in farmland that genteel suburbia had to skirt around.

It’s thanks to the prisoners that this pristine land has not been gobbled up by the concrete jungle.

Braamfontein Spruit and Jozi Trails (Central Joburg)

A big thank you is due to the crew of Jozi Trails, a non-profit organisation that maintains and develops a network of mountain bike and running trails that follow the Braamfontein Spruit and slice through Johannesburg.

Jozi Trails, working in partnership with Johannesburg City Parks and Zoos, is a model of how to turn public pleasure into public good. In addition to maintaining the trails, the team is involved in land rehabilitation projects, clean-ups of the spruit and its surrounds, reporting when sewage leaks into the spruit and environmental awareness campaigns.

The Jozi Trails — more than 37 unbroken kilometres of them — run from the Alberts Farm Conservancy in the west of Johannesburg and then follow the Braamfontein Spruit all the way to Lonehill.

There is a plan to connect the trail to the Asidlale Adventure Park, whose door the outer reach of Jozi Trails knocks on at the point where the Braamfontein Spruit, having merged into the Sandspruit, joins the Jukskei River.

The trail is a wonderful, undulating, single track through a green and not quite blue artery that dissects suburbia. The Braamfontein Spruit, although polluted, has not given up its outward beauty and is full of surprises. In some parts green and gladed, in others almost kloof-like, replete with waterfalls; in some places secluded, in others ducking under a roaring highway.

Along the way, you can branch off into (and cycle the mini-trails around) Alberts Farm, the Johannesburg Botanical Garden in Emmarentia, and Delta Park — three of Joburg’s loveliest parks.

On the latter parts of the route, opposite the Sandton Field and Study Park, you pass through a part of the city’s underbelly: in a country of mass unemployment, recycling or waste-picking has become a livelihood and source of income for thousands of people. Waste-pickers have to live close to the sources of waste (our rubbish) and the banks of the spruit, central yet hidden, are home to many of them.

On the weekends, Jozi Trails employs Trail Guardians (security guards) on parts of the route, but the latter part of the trail (beyond Conrad Drive) — although generally safe — is better done in a group.

Cradle Moon Lakeside Game Lodge (Joburg North)

The Cradle Moon Conservancy, part of the Cradle of Humankind, is one of several mountain bike meccas in Muldersdrift. The area has a 30km ring road, with a protective shoulder for cyclists and runners, and a shoulder-on-the-shoulder for mountain bikers who eschew tarmac for soil/soul.

If you go out to the area on any Saturday or Sunday morning, up around the Bidon Bistro, you will feel as if you’ve been teleported into mountain biker heaven.

Lycra, Lycra everywhere…

After shedding the name Heia Safari Ranch, Cradle Moon has undergone a transformation over the last half-decade, reinventing itself as a multisport outdoor centre, taking advantage of the beautiful land it rests upon.

It has several exhilarating trails varying in difficulty and distance. Radiating outwards and, in the case of the Red Route, steeply upwards from the dam, the trails take you into and around the hills; through small forests; up to the edge of the Swartkoppie (another mystical mini-mountain that can be seen from the northern suburbs); through the middle of an abandoned home (literally); and among small herds of giraffes and zebras.

If you are that way inclined, at the end, on a hot summer’s day, park your bike and cool off with a swim in the dam.

Hennops Hiking Trail (far north Joburg/Pretoria West)

Hennops Hiking Trail (now close to the outer reaches of Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria) is not strictly Joburg. But it’s one of my favourites, and its contours call out to be canvassed.

A hundred years ago, the Hennops River must have been resplendent. It winds its way through the foothills of the Magaliesbergs, dotted with aloes and cabbage trees, and although the water is now horribly polluted, its craggy beauty is intact.

There are usually more hikers than bikers here (since the Covid lockdowns it’s become incredibly popular). But, although everyone starts and finishes at the same point, cleats and takkies follow separate trails.

If you max it and put all the parts together (Safari + Sani + Snake + Dragon), the MTB trail comes to about 42km. However, there are various loops and exit chutes if you want to make it shorter.

It’s a wonder-filled route, with a Magaliesberg backdrop, climbs and views over the escarpment above Hartbeespoort Dam, and a look at the towers of the Pelindaba nuclear research centre. Throw in some switchbacks, shaley mountain descents, and mountain meanders, and you have all you need.

The rocky descent of the Snake Trail is thrilling, graduating into an extended roller coaster before you reach the fast flats of Kyalami.

The routes finish on the forested banks of the Hennops, sadly despoiled but intrinsically beautiful. There’s a swing bridge over the river, and then you are home.

Huddle Park (Central Joburg)

Huddle Park is a poor relative of most of the trails I describe in this article. I’ve included it because it’s embedded in my muscle memory and is a healthy green lung in the centre of Johannesburg (almost).

The MTB trail mostly circumnavigates the golf course. It’s not particularly taxing or technical, but it’s flowing and fast in parts, with some beautiful views on to the Linksfield ridge.

If you live in town, need a ride and don’t have time to escape the city boundaries, then Huddle’s the place to be.

King’s Kloof Farm (Joburg West)

Kings Kloof Farm is reputed to be one of the toughest and most technical sets of trails in the Joburg area. As if to prove the point, it’s where I fell and fractured my hip (although not on a particularly technical part).

But it vies for top spot as one of the most beautiful.

You have a choice. Or several choices. Ride on the lower slopes, or venture into the kloof, and when you do make another choice: Black — arduous, technical and electrifying; or Red — most of the above, but shorter and saner.

You decide.

But whatever, it’s beautiful.

Up the side of a quartzite ridge, then over into the kloof. Suddenly you are between mountains, in a hidden valley, with a stream running through it. The vegetation is lush and tangled, a corner that urban development couldn’t intrude into, even though urban creep and ostentatious homes now blight the upper parts of the hills.

There are a few steep ascents, a lovely viewsite, and then a rocky, rapid descent to the start, along what feels like a once-ancient road.

Modderfontein Reserve (Joburg East)

Modderfontein Reserve is not a trail I’ve frequented often, and my recollection of it is sketchy. But because it’s in the east of Joburg, less well endowed than the north and south, and because it has some lovely trails, I’ve included it.

To the best of my memory, the trails (which I’m told are now expertly managed by Taroko Trail Park) have some long and lovely open stretches that follow the perimeter of the reserve. But they also dip inwards to the centre of the reserve, into forested areas and through and around the skeletal remains of homes and factories.

I’m not familiar with the history of the area, but it sure feels as if it has one. It is also truly an unexpected oasis, not the type of wild space you expect to find in the wasted lands of the East Rand.

Northern Farm (Joburg North/Diepsloot)

Northern Farm is fun. It offers the most extensive set of trails in and around Joburg. If you want, you can ride for more than 60km, most of it on single track. Depending on your legs, you can dice that up into smaller subdivisions, all of them interesting.

I always experience joy at Northern Farm. In part, it’s because of the diversity. There are grasslands and wetlands, switchbacks and slow poisons. There’s a great stretch along the banks of the dirty Jukskei River, awash with plastic detritus that is pecked over by flocks of African sacred ibis, seemingly the waste-pickers of bird species.

From the trails on the west side of Northern Farm you look onto the runway of Lanseria airport; on the north and east sides, the vistas of the Magaliesberg. In the middle is a series of quiet and relatively hidden dams, still and peaceful, drawing busy bird life to their edges.

Northern Farm is a working farm. It starts and ends at a lovely little garden and cafe (open on weekend morning). It is also home to the Diepsloot Mountain Bike Academy.

Rietvlei Zoo Farm (Joburg South)

Not far down the road from Thaba Trails (see below) are the MTB trails on Rietvlei Zoo Farm. They get a shout-out even though I’ve only ridden there once. They offer variety in terrain and difficulty, arboric corridors and climbs up the side of another of Joburg’s many uncelebrated mountains. If you haven’t heard of it, Rietvlei Zoo Farm is something of a surprise: usually busy with picnicking families and home to one of Joburg’s most popular parkruns.

Read more: A users’ guide to some of the Parkruns of Gauteng

Thaba Trails (Joburg South)

Thaba Trails is off the Kliprivier Road in the south of Johannesburg. From when I first started riding there 10 years ago, it’s shifted from a couple of containers, acting as a gateway to the trails, to now being squeezed to the edges of a large eco-estate that has seized on the beauty of the area to produce an ostentatious all mod cons housing estate.

That said, once you hit the saddle, the trails are largely unspoiled.

The three MTB trails (and a miscellany of running and walking trails) are the brainchildren of cycling legend Wendell Bole, whose spirit is somehow ubiquitous in the paths that flow out of his imagination.

The area is beautiful, quite different from the northern Joburg trails. Rocky koppies, tangled and dense bush, and a big open meadow where a mix of fauna graze placidly. And from the tops of the koppies, a long view over Joburg’s endless southern plains.

If you want a seriously technical and hard ride, the Red Route is the one for you. But otherwise, the main 20+ km route provides a variety of challenges, taxing but not too testing, flowing and broken, good on the eye and legs.

I hope this has given you a taste of what’s out there. Get on your bike and ride! DM

Mark Heywood is a social justice activist. In a fairer world he would have been a professional mountain bike rider.

For other accounts of his adventures on a mountain bike, read:

• ‘Kinship with the nonhuman’ — reflections on bike riding and being;
• An account of the Go2Berg: From my saddle I saw South Africa in its Sunday best – observations on a six-day ride across the country;
• An account of the Colin Meyer Tour: Mauritius by bike – a humbling race through a land of contrasts and contradictions;
• An account of the great Sani2C: A mountain bike race like the great KAP sani2c can raise a village and rural education;
• Reflections on a ride through Joburg’s inner city: This is the sound of the suburbs: A bike essay.

If there are great trails that I’ve missed that should be included in a future edition of this article, write to me at Markjamesheywood@gmail.com