The Best (Steepest) Road Bike Climbs in Cape Town

stephen road cycling

This is a list of the Best (Steepest) Road Bike Climbs in Cape Town (Western cape), that you will not die on.

According to Dr.Ferrari the inventor of the VAM measurement only climbs of 6% and higher are relevant

I also remember an article stating that only climbs of 7.5% and higher are true tests...but I could not find the article to verify.

Nonetheless here is the list.

1. Gordan's bay pass (3.64km 7.7%)

Unfortunately there is a gate for the Cape town water works - that prevents us from going the full 5km at 7.5%...a proper climb.
Go early and avoid on weekends as lots of cars go up there.

gordans-bay-pass

2. Camps Bay > Kloof Nek Short (3km 7.6%)

camps-bay-kloofnek-short

3. City > Kloof Nek (2km 8.9%)

City-to-Kloof-nek

4. City > Vredehoek (2km 6.9%)

city-to-vredehoek

5. Hout Bay Hill (2km 6.4%)

hour-bay-hill

6. Camps bay > Kloof Nek(4km 5.6%)

Camps-bay-to-kloofnek

7. Table Mountain Start (1.6km 6.9%) Table-mountain-start

8. Bakoven to Landdudna (4km at 3.8%)

bakoven-to-lunddudno

Kids play

Exceptions

Not included due to being on dangerous roads (I have read and seen not much space in the yellow line on google maps...)

Franschoek reverse (6.3km 6.5%

franschoek-reverse

Franschoek (7km 5.5%)

Franschoek

11. Pine Haven climb (5km 4.9%)

pine-haven-climb

Running a mainnet and testnet on the same bitcoin node

stephen bitcoin

In this post I will tell you how to run a mainnet and testnet bitcoin node simulataneously on the same device.

Bitcoin Conf Sections

It boils down to splitting out the bitcoin.conf into sections:

[main]
mempoolsize=300
maxconnections=20
maxuploadtarget=144
txindex=1
[test]
mempoolsize=100
rpcport=80332
maxconnections=20
maxuploadtarget=144
txindex=1

Then adding an additional systemd startup script for bitcoind -testnet -daemon

You dont need to set the rpcport or other options as they are different anyway:

  • Default Bitcoin network protocol listen port is 18333 (instead of 8333)
  • Default RPC connection port is 18332 (instead of 8332)

Setup Systemd scripts

/etc/systemd/system/bitcoind_test.service:

[Unit]
Description=bitcoin
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu

Environment=BITCOIN_PID=/home/btc/testnet/bitcoin.pid
Environment=BITCOIN_HOME=~/home/btc/testnet/.bitcoin

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind -testnet
ExecStop=/bin/kill -15 $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/bitcoind.service:

[Unit]
Description=bitcoin
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu

Environment=BITCOIN_PID=/home/btc/bitcoin.pid
Environment=BITCOIN_HOME=~/home/btc/.bitcoin

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/bitcoind
ExecStop=/bin/kill -15 $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable the services:

sudo systemctl enable bitcoind_test
sudo systemctl enable bitcoind

Start the services:

sudo systemctl start bitcoind_test
sudo systemctl start bitcoind

Identifying Net in Commands

Now the problem is that when running bitcoin-cli commands it will by default use mainnet, so you must specify testnet.

Example calling mainnet:

bitcoin-cli getblockcount

Example calling testnet:

bitcoin-cli -testnet getblockcount

Sources

Western Cape Mountain Bike Trails (MTB): Year 2022

stephen Mountain Biking

I am touring the Western Cape Mountain Bike trails...

Closed:

Dissapointing that so many are closed

  • Paul Cluver Mountainbike trails are Closed from 31 December 2020 until further notice
  • Koeberg Trails - closed due to Eskom Keoberg being a national key point (scamdemic)

Open:

Climbs:

Going

West coast:

  • namaqua national park (524km 5.5 hours)
  • goekap nature reserve - sprinkbok (553km)

too far - have not gone

  • cederburg wilderness area (169km - 2 hours)
  • piket-bo-berg (short) (121km)

Cederburg has a dirt road ride from Clanwilliam to Algeria. A big climb on the way. The road is a bit corregated so ensure you have shocks on your mtb. The ride is 60 - 72 km long depending on route and reminds me of Suikerbosrant in Gauteng. Piket-bo-berg is a tarred climb - but has 2 way traffic and not much space for cyclings - too dangerous to attempt.

Namaqua and Goekap were too far from where I was based.

central:

  • tulbagh MTB trails (115km 1.5 hours) - Voelvlei
  • Eselfontein (Ceres) (153km 2 hours)
  • Paarl adventure trails (53km 50 mins)

do tulbagh, Eselfontein and Paarl together

  • tokai (done)
  • table mountain national park (done)

South:

  • boshendal (60km 1 hour)

  • bottelary hills (38km 40 mins)

  • jonkershoek trails (65km 1.2 hours)

  • franshoek wine vallery trails (80km 1.1 hours)

  • grabouw forest trails (76km 1.1 hours)

  • helderburg trails (done)

do jonkershoek and franschoek together

  • hermanus trails (116km 1.4 hours)
  • greyton mtb trails and gravel (150km 2 hours)
  • vadersburg (170km 2.5 hours) - skip
  • klipspringer MTB (gansbaai) (170km)
  • potberg trail network (246km 3 hours)
  • heidelberg (grootvaderbosch) (280km 3.15 hours)
  • George (436km 4.4 hours)
  • Garden route national park - very long trails and lots (500km 5 hours)