Contego Wine2Whales driven by Maserati

Wine2Whales is said to be the Sani2C for cyclists in the Cape region as it also provides thrilling single track and spectacular mountain views (Personally I think you can’t compare the two as they are each unique in its own way).

This was my 2nd time competing in event and this year they promised it to be even more enjoyable as they added extra single track to an already great route. To say that I was excited to experience the new route would be an understatement.

Early Friday morning I, together with my partner Caitlin de Wet, took to the start in Somerset West.
The first stage was 68km long and finished in Grabouw. Here we camped for two consecutive nights with stage two’s 63 km route being laid out in the surrounding area of Grabouw. On the 3rd day we would leave our camping ground to finish the last 80km stage in Onrus.

On day one Caitlin and I had a good ride together. We truly enjoyed the fun ascending and descending single track which even counted to our advantage towards the end. In the final kilometres Caitlin and I were narrowly in front of team Fair Cape Ladies Desiree Loubser and Marleen Loubser. Luckily the last pieces of the course were mainly single track and as Caitlin and I could ride them faster helping us to hold off the Fair Cape Ladies in order to take the 3rd spot.
Team Contego’s Mariske Strauss and Ariane Kleinhans finished a mere 13 seconds in front of us to take 2nd place. Ischen Stopforth and Catherine Williamson (bizhub) finished in
1st place.

Stage two consisted of 65 % single track. Again Caitlin and I had fun on the single track as our technical skills were fairly the same. At the end we finished in 4th place on the stage.

On the last day, stage three, gusting winds appeared around 3am. This saw tents being blown to a 45 degree angle. Nobody was able to sleep the night in fear of their tent’s being blown away. To make matters worse, at 5am it started pouring with rain. Unfortunately the rain didn’t want to ease up and caused the stage to be cancelled.
I was content the moment the stage was said to be cancelled as I was soaking went (and freezing) from running up and down loading bags, getting dressed, fetching bikes in the bike part etc.

But on having time to think about it I am truly sad there were no end to this great experience. I do hope to come back next year as there is still one stage left to be explored!