Time to Ride

Arthur Joubert is a super stoked grommet at the age of 43. As a JBay local, he lives next to the best right hand point break in the world. He surfs when the swell is up, but under the surf stoke lies another passion: mountain biking.

As the owner of a local construction business, Arthur Joubert Construction, he has sunk a lot of cash into building kilometres of single track in the hinterland behind Jeffreys Bay for the JBay MTB Open, which is part of the JBay Winterfest.

It has consumed his time for months as he prepares four routes coming up tomorrow. On a ride with him through the bush this week, we ground our way through pristine bush over several farms, sometimes cruising on dirt road, but often dipping into classic lines along river banks and through virgin indigenous fynbos.

After some technical dropoffs, tight berms and sudden inclines that can trick you into poor gear selection, we came to his particular pride and joy. We have already negotiated his other one, the hand-built Bull Shark that appeared for the inaugural event last year, a 180 degree wooden-planked berm on stilts that looms over the banks of a river built by him and a carpenter to give riders a sudden surprise as they come belting through a downhill section.

After that, we cruised along a riverbank and straight into a surreal tunnel of vegetation, with a shale-stone cutaway flashing by inches from our right hand side.

This is classic single-track. It's what mountain biking was made for. Tunnelled through thick riverside bush, with vegetation to the left, above and right, the mulch-based soil is soft and forgiving. Speeding in a moderately high gear, you can put the hammer down. The natural bumps in the path become like moguls on a ski run.

"This is an old water way that we had to clear ourselves. It was a lot of hard work, but we had the help of a front-end loader that I have purchased for the main tasks of grinding through veld to create a lot of new single track," says Arthur.

Coming out of a forested section of single track, he shows me a sign lying face down in the veld. It is riddled by bullets.

"The farmer here likes to use it as target practice. He's not a bad shot eh?" We look at the tight grouping. "There's his farm, 800 metres away."

He says the farmers who mountain bike are the most accommodating to work with. They believe in his work to link the area together in a classic MTB route, with the ultimate aim to create a three-day stage race.

The pathways have been opened and the trails are ready for tomorrow. Arthur reckons that the 85km route is going to test even the hardiest riders, while the 60 km is a great route for a burn and a solid technical test.

For the less ambitious, there's always the 20 and 40 kilometre routes.

Brace yourself for a breezy ride with a few rain spots. Some weather is on the way.

Book at www.jeffreysbaysport.co.za

Post by JBay Winter Fest.