Shortly before midnight on Friday, January 21, a Pretoria resident, Jason Kilian (48), stopped his BMW 1200 GS Adventure motorcycle just past the Augulhas Lighthouse at the southernmost tip of Africa, after having ridden solo for 2 050 kilometres from the most northerly point in the country.
The non-stop ride started at 03:00 on the banks of the Limpopo River at a point slightly further north than Musina, with the first 10 kilometres or so on farm dirt roads, before meeting up with the tarmac on the way to Alldays, Musina and down the N1 to Pretoria.
“It was a fantastic adventure,” said Kilian, who runs a company called Modderbok Adventures that tailors off-road adventure outrides for motorcyclists.
“We live in a fantastic country and it is so worthwhile getting out there to see it. This trip came about because Covid totally decimated the tourist industry. My background is as a lawyer, so I went back to law and hated every minute of it.
“I wanted to get out and do something that had not been done before, and came up with this idea of ricing from the northern tip to the southern tip of the country in one day.
“I worked it out and mapped a route that, although 25 kilometres longer than the shortest possible route, kept me on decent roads with back routes that bypassed tolls, which just hold you up. I needed to average 85.5km/h for the journey in order to make it in the 24 hours and was in fact able to average 115km/h for the trip, which took 20 hours and 30 minutes.
“I needed five stops for petrol and am glad this BMW 1200 GS has a 30-litre tank. Still, fuel consumption had to stay around 7 litres/100km, so that also dictated the speeds I was able to do.”
Kilian said the final 400 kilometres was done in the dark.
“Although I did not have any support vehicles or people riding with me, friends and supporters regularly called me on my cell to ensure I was still wide awake, and we had live tracking running for most of the time so people could see exactly where I was.
“I was extremely fortunate in that the traffic was light and I hit some rain and wind only on the approach to Pretoria. Other than that, the weather was perfect.”
Source: The Write Idea / Jason Kilian – 083 379 1328
