freedom rider

9 781431 405589

FREEDOM_RIDER_COVER.indd 1 2012/12/13 11:40 AM

FREEDOMRiDER

10 000kmBY MOUNTAIN BIKEACROSS SOUTH AFRICA

Kevin Davie

Freedom rider.indd 3 2012/12/12 2:42 PM

First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd 2012

10 Orange StreetSunnyside

Auckland Park 2092South Africa

+2711 628 3200www.jacana.co.za

© Kevin Davie, 2012

All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-4314-0558-9

Cover design Maggie Davey and Shawn PaikinCover image Gallo Images

Set in Sabon 10.5/15ptJob No. 001907

See a complete list of Jacana titles at www.jacana.co.za


Also available as an e-bookd-PDF ISBN 978-1-4314-0559-6ePUB ISBN 978-1-4314-0560-2 mobi ISBN 978-1-4314-0561-9

For Lucille


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Freedom Rider

Freedom Rider Routes Overview

BeitbridgeMusina

PolokwaneHaenertsburg

Mankele

Badplaas

lothairamsterdam

lünebergwakkerstroom

Memel

Bewaarkloof

Soutpansberg

Drakensberg

Drakensberg

Misty Mountain

n1Ganna 2011

Spine 2010

Freedom Challenge 2007

n4nelSPruit

kaapsehoop

warburton

n3

SwinburneGeluksburg ladysmith

Bergvillewhite Mountain

DonnybrookntsikeniMasakala

Malekhonyane

rhodesBarkly east

rossouwDordrecht

Molteno

Hofmeyr

Mtn Zebra Park

Sterkstroom

tarkstad

MortimerPearston

toekomst

Jansenvilleklipplaatwillowmore

Prince albertDie

HelanysbergMontagu

McGregorStettyns- kloof

PaarlCaPe town

Cape Point

tulbagh

Baviaanskloof

MatatieleVuvu

underberg

lotheni Pieter-MaritZ-BurG

DurBan

n10n1laingsburg

CeresMatjiesfontein

worcester

JoHanneSBurG

BloeMFontein

Port eliZaBetH

kiMBerley

Penge

ohrigstad


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Contents

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ixPrologue: Trail Head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

1 Trance Karoo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 A Trail Called Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3 The Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The Drakensberg 4 Kestreling through the Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 5 Trekking with Trichardt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 6 The Road Never Travelled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 7 Connecting the Drakensberge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 8 Minus Eight in Memel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Spinerun: Wolkberg to Dordrecht 9 Black Mambas and Fanta Grape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7710 The Dog Did Not Bark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8911 A Valley of My Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9512 Riding with Eland, White-out in Mcambalala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103

Lesotho13 In Thin Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11514 With Dagga Smugglers and Cattle Rustlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12115 On the Trail of Soai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131


The Ganna: Beitbridge to Cape Point16 Riding with Baobabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14117 Mpumalanga Mountains and Plantations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16718 Christmas in Heaven on Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17519 Windmills Aplenty, Spaza Shops None . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19720 Headwinds into the Cape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21321 Trail End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233Photo Captions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .241Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .242


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Foreword

‘The way To see This country is on horseback,’ a farmer from the Little Karoo once told me. Perhaps it held true of a time when he was young and the Fencing Act had not yet come into effect and the great Springbok migrations, about which Kevin writes in this book, were still occurring. It is no longer true. The country has since been divided up by fences; roads, many of them public, have been blocked with locked gates. To ride it on horseback is simply not possible. The way to see this country is on a mountain bike.

With a mountain bike it is possible to climb over fences and locked gates; to venture into places where few people travel anymore; to be overwhelmed by the majesty of the Bewaarkloof; to pick a trail between the lakes of Chrissiesmeer; to ford a swollen Tinana River; to negotiate the 22 gates of the Saaipad or scale the locked gates of Bandelierkop, the Letaba Valley, Perdekraal and Anysberg; to follow the migration routes of the antelope and the journeys of Burchell and Gordon and the early settlers; all of which Kevin does. To be able to travel in this manner is to be able to experience some of the true splendour of South Africa and to enjoy the country in all her glory.

With a mountain bike it is also possible to overcome some of the social and cultural barriers that constrain us. Repeatedly, as we follow Kevin’s journey, we see the willingness of people to engage with a sole mountain biker. The engagement is not limited to offers of lifts or polite enquiries about the rider’s well-being, from where he is coming


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or to where he is going, however, for those enquiries are a constant refrain that follow a rider across the country. The engagement extends to the many offers of hospitality and assistance that Kevin constantly received. As I read about these, I was again struck by the incredible generosity of the people living in the rural parts of this land; people willing to invite others into their houses, to share their meals and their drinking water, to offer up their beds to a complete stranger on a bicycle. To be able to experience this is to be able to experience the soul of South Africa.

In undertaking such journeys, we not only learn more of the country and her people; we learn more about ourselves. As Kevin battles the hak-en-steek of Kranskloof and the sleet around Sterkfontein, he battles with himself. So it is with such expedition rides. A path to Taung that was good riding six months ago might be overgrown when we next get to visit it; we might end up on the wrong side of a forest in the Kasteelberg; we are swallowed by the thick reeds of the Stettynskloof. Such incidents force us to search the inner depths of our souls and it is in our response to these that we are measured. We learn to appreciate a bike that works, a dry place to sleep, a pair of R10 leather gloves, a new pair of riding shoes, a cold drink (still generically called a ‘groovy’ in some of the rural spaza shops) or a packet of lemon cream biscuits. We learn to be humble.

There are times in this book when we are afforded a glimpse into Kevin’s soul. We read about how he rages against the wind at the Patat River. We witness the quiet focus it takes for him to ride from Beitbridge to Cape Point, following trails and dirt roads, in 30 days; the resolution that it requires to pass up an offer of a warm fire, a good meal and a comfortable bed for the night because it’s only 3pm and there is still daylight in which to cycle.

But it is not all grind and grime. The explosion of mountain-bike racing in South Africa is no doubt the precursor to what Kevin describes as a growth in ‘bikepacking’ – off-road touring by mountain bike. Through pioneering rides, such as the Ganna, Kevin introduces us to otherwise hidden treasures. He opens up parts of the country to the rest of us. While we share his battle to find a path through the


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Ngodwana Valley or his abortive trip up the Namahadi Pass, and may in time choose to avoid these, we are able to delight in his route through the Ndawana Valley to the Umzimvubu. There is a small community of mountain bikers out there, blazing trails. Their willingness to share their routes and experiences makes it easier for those who ride after them.

We can engage with this country superficially or we can endeavour to understand some of its complex, at times painful, but often rich and rewarding history. In his journeys through the country, Kevin engages with the landscape of Elandslaagte and various Anglo-Boer (or South African) War battle sites; he grapples with the genocide of the Bushmen; he quietly delights in unveiling the existence of the //Xegwi; his cry, ‘I am the ganna’ resonates through his account of his travels. In engaging with the country in the manner that he does, he gives truth to his statement to old man Dippenaar at the foot of the Normandien Pass, ‘I am a South African’.

This book successfully, albeit at times in an understated manner, gives insight into the intensity of specific moments and experiences during his journeys. However, it fails in that it does not give sufficient sense of the majesty of the mountains, of the vistas of valleys and hills that open up as one rides, of the vastness of the country. It does not do so simply because it cannot. To experience this, it is necessary to get out there and ride it.

As the Freedom Challenge may have provided the spark for Kevin to embark on a mountain-biking journey that culminated in this book, it is my sincere hope that this book provides the spark for at least some of its readers to get out maps, to plan routes and to start discovering for themselves the soul of mountain biking.

David WaddiloveFounder, Freedom ChallengeWellingtonOctober 2012


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Trail Head

Prologue

Trail Head

My bike journeys have taken me through 10 000km of the wildest and most remote parts of southern Africa. The bike trails were made up of exploratory single-day rides and multi-day expeditions, including a 1 800km ride along the length of the Drakensberg; the 2 300km Freedom Challenge from Pietermaritzburg to the Cape; and the Ganna, a 30-day ride following the mountains for some 3 500km from Beitbridge to Cape Point. I rode through days of rain, blizzards, snow and lightning, and dealt with dangers such as reptiles and wild animals, but the riding was mostly in glorious, bright, sunny South African weather.

My previous experience of bike touring was limited to a single trip in the south of France. In 2001 my wife, Lucille, and I borrowed two bikes and set off with a backpack, a map and a guide book. We took the train for 200km from Nice to Aix-en-Provence and then cycled back to Nice over four days. On a bike, you can smell the lavender fields as you cycle past them. The French are not renowned for their friendliness to English-speakers, but we found the locals to be warm enough. We ate with them in their restaurants and shopped in their markets. We stayed off the main tourist routes, taking in French life at bicycle pace.

While this is an ideal way to get to know a people and their country, it did not seem possible in South Africa, particularly as far as off-road trail riding was concerned. The apartheid walls had come down, but, although there were extensive hiking trails in wilderness areas that had been around since the 1970s, there were too many right-of-access issues over too many privately owned farms for trail riding over any kind of distance to be possible – but maybe not.


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In 2005 I entered the inaugural Sani2C, a 250km bike race over three days between Underberg and Scottburgh in KwaZulu-Natal, which required the organiser, Glenn Haw, to get permission from 200 landowners to string the race together. Then Brian O’Regan, my partner for my second Sani2C, told me about the Freedom Challenge, a new annual event that started in Pietermaritzburg and ended 2 300km later in Paarl. I was keen to explore more of the country by bike, to ride away from the throng and have time to stop and chat with locals, rather than simply hurtling towards a destination.

So, in April 2006, Lucille and I rode a section of the Freedom Trail from Prince Albert to Worcester, some 400km of riding over six days. It had the charm of small towns such as Prince Albert, Montagu and McGregor, the wide open spaces of the Karoo and a terrific sense of wilderness. We spent the days riding and the evenings devouring Karoo lamb, while drinking good red wine. We were well on our way to becoming dedicated bike tourers.

Endurance sport has always held a fascination for me; I have my green number after ten Comrades Marathon finishes and have just completed my 23rd Dusi Canoe Marathon. So, what started as bike touring soon snowballed into expedition riding, where the rider is self-contained and carries all his own gear. For lovers of endurance sport, expedition riding is the ultimate: great distances, remoteness, challenging navigation and unpredictable weather. How you cope mentally and physically completes the challenge.

In recent years, we have come to understand that underpinning endurance sport, as popularised by Christopher McDougall in Born to Run, are the extraordinary capabilities that humans developed even before we were Homo sapiens. As Homo erectus, we ran down our prey, continuing for hour after hour until the animal exhausted itself, collapsed and could be killed. The expedition rider is the modern equivalent of the runner-hunter, covering great distances without stopping.

In mid-2006 I entered the Ride to Rhodes, a 500km route over six days between Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal and Rhodes in the Eastern Cape, which is the first leg of the Freedom Challenge. The following year I rode the full 2 300km Freedom Challenge in 23 days,


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Trail Head

much of it with Steve Thomas (a long-distance biker who has ridden both the United States and Europe end to end). We were the 24th and 25th to qualify for the Basotho blanket that is given to finishers. Only about 120 riders have been blanketed to date.

I had no plan for trail life after the Freedom Challenge, but David Waddilove, its founder, had said that the trail goes all the way to Kilimanjaro. I began to explore a route along the Drakensberg to connect with the Freedom Trail.

Lucille and I rode 250km of the Drakensberg, from Swinburne to Underberg, over four days and, in an abortive ride, from the Wolkberg in Limpopo Province to the Olifants River near Hoedspruit. We did more rides through the arid Limpopo and forested Mpumalanga, linking the misty Magoebaskloof near Tzaneen to the vlei paradise of Wakkerstroom. We also rode from Amajuba near Volksrust through a freezing Free State to Swinburne.

My riding, until then, had almost always been with other riders, but solo riding came to intrigue me. Expedition riding is about handling the many challenges thrown at you. Riding solo sharpens these challenges: success or failure is your doing alone. I also came to realise that people reach out to you along the way when you are by yourself. They open up in a way they would not if you had company. Where my riding was intended to connect in some way with an ancient, Homo erectus past, it was the generosity of the social creature Homo sapiens that humbled me. In 10 000km of riding in South Africa, I never felt threatened in any way, but I was often swamped by the kindness of strangers, both rich and poor.

In September 2008 I rode the Drakensberg from the gold-rush town of Haenertsburg in the Wolkberg to the sheep-farming district of Dordrecht in the Eastern Cape – a journey of 1 800km. I had travelled extensively throughout South Africa, but came to realise how little I actually knew about the country. Where historical accounts were available, they often made little or no sense. Invariably frustrated with secondary sources, I found myself scouring dusty shelves and reading source texts by the likes of Vasco da Gama and Jan van Riebeeck. So, to the physical and mental challenge of expedition riding, I added the


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intellectual pursuit of trying to better understand the South African story.

Ours is a history of discrimination, racism, colonialism and conquest that remains contested and poorly understood. Racial ideology, coupled with extreme forms of repression, has created a legacy that the new South Africa still struggles to overcome. The story that continues to dominate South Africa is in black and white. We see our past through a binary lens where whites are the conquerors and blacks are the conquered, which is to miss important dynamics.

Black pastoralists moved into the country more than 1 000 years ago and white settlers started coming after 1650, but what of the brown people who were here long before both blacks and whites?

Our country is so rich in Bushman paintings, and many people that I met while riding spoke about them. Lucille and I made return visits to take these in, visiting wonderful caves and rocky overhangs, sometimes with their own waterfalls, in sublime surroundings. These places often feel sacred – you just know that people have lived here for millennia.

I found myself intrigued by the story of the Bushmen and what happened to them, and the related story of the Khoi, the people living at the Cape when seafaring adventurers and settlers first arrived. Fortunately, when we look back into the past today, we can do so with the advantage of DNA studies, which have allowed us to arrive at a more complete understanding of the real dynamics of the South African story. While this is undoubtedly a story of conflict, with just about everybody fighting everybody else at one time or another, it is also a broader story of assimilation: the original inhabitants of the country find themselves well represented in the DNA of modern South Africans.

I met many interesting people on this journey, and have read up on even more fascinating South Africans, but there were others that I just missed. One was Kerrick Thusi, a Bushman who was born in a cave in northern Lesotho in the early 1900s and had seen cave art being made. Another was Zanele Makwanazi, who hailed from the Ndawana Valley, south of Underberg. Her grandmother created similar paintings in their rondavel when she was a child.


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As I progressed on my journey, I picked up a set of fellow travellers who helped to shape my understanding of South Africa’s story. Da Gama and Van Riebeeck, whose journals give a compelling insight into their life and times, were soon joined by early researchers and adventurers such as William Burchell, who gave his name to a zebra and a coucal and wandered hither and thither in an ox wagon, and François Le Vaillant, an eccentric French ornithologist. Their accounts are so vivid that you almost feel like you are in the ox wagon with them, bumping along on their early journeys. I also enjoyed coming across the back-of-beyond spots described by these pioneers. One is the Dwyka River in the Karoo, which was visited by John Barrow in 1797.

From more recent times, I have drawn on Deneys Reitz’s Commando and Thomas Pakenham’s The Boer War as well as T. V. Bulpin and Lawrence Green. I have also read the work of scholars who have tried to understand and explain the South African story. These include George Stow, Nigel Penn, Jeff Peires, Noël Mostert, Patricia Vinnicombe, David Lewis-Williams, Christopher Ehret, Garth Sampson, Garth Wright, Aaron Mazel, Himla Soodyall, Frans Prins and Richard Elphick.

This, then, is not only a story about a very long bike journey through this rainbow nation of ours, but a foray into the histories and cultures that have made South Africa what it is today.


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worcester

Prince Albert to Worcester, 2006

Vleiland

anysberg

Montagu

Floriskraaldam

Langeberg

Swartberg

BrandvleidamMcGregor

Prince albert

n1

Groot Swartberg Nature Reserve

Gamkapoort Nature Reserve

BeitbridgeMusina

Ohrigstad

haenertsberg

Penge

Mankele

Badplaas

Lothairamster-dam

LunebergWakkerstroom

Memel

Misty Mountain

N1

ganna 2011

spine 2010

Freedom Challenge 2007

N4NeLsPruit

Kaapsehoop

N3

swinburnegeluksburg

BergvilleWhite Mountain

donnybrookNtsikeniMasakala

Malekhonyane

rhodesBarkly east

rossouwdordrecht

Molteno

hofmeyr

Western Cape

sterkstroom

tarkstad

Mortimer

MatatieleVuvu

underberg

Lotheni Pieter-Maritz-Burg

durBaN

N10

jOhaNNesBurg

BLOeMFONteiN

POrt eLizaBeth

KiMBerLey

original for maps.indd 1 2012/12/12 8:04 AM


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ChaPter 1

Trance Karoo

Prince Albert to Worcester via Anysberg, Montagu and McGregor, April 2006, six days, 400km.

we arrived aT klein Spreeufontein by following the Freedom Trail, which takes mountain bikers along a 2 300km trail on back roads and tracks from Pietermaritzburg to Paarl. My wife, Lucille, and I were tackling a relatively modest section of 400km from Prince Albert to Worcester, where we planned to get the Shosholoza Meyl train back to our point of departure.

Klein Spreeufontein is a good place to think about floods. It appears as an oasis from kilometres away; it is an outpost of trees, water and habitation in the desolate nothingness that defines the Karoo. When we got there, it was deserted. Once prosperous with a large dam, several buildings and even its own petrol pump, the farm of Klein Spreeufontein had been abandoned. Its mud-based buildings were being reclaimed by their harsh, unforgiving surroundings.

In the Karoo, you are sometimes surrounded by large, imposing mountains, but Klein Spreeufontein sits on the top of this part of the world. There is no catchment area to speak of, yet a flood had come through here. It had torn apart the dam wall, with a phalanx of rocks and bricks encased in wired cages as its base, as though it wasn’t even there.

Driving down from Johannesburg the day before, we overnighted at the delightful Meltonwold near Victoria West, which lost 79 of its citizens in a massive flood in 1909. This may seem like a long time ago,


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but we were warned by our hosts that the area had suffered a flood only a month or two previously. It was hard to work out where a flood could have come from. There were small dry water courses, and our accommodation backed up against a kopje, yet a metre and a half of water had flowed through the room we were going to sleep in. The walls still had to be painted and the damage to the wooden floorboards was clearly evident.

We walked around the farm trying to understand how this might have happened. The barman eventually enlightened us – over 100mm of water had fallen in an hour, in a hailstorm. The hail and leaves clogged the drainage system behind the main house where guests stay. When the flash flood rose above window height, the staff decided to open them rather than have the windows break under the pressure of the mounting water.

Not too many kilometres into the nothingness that surrounds Meltonwold is the complete skeleton of a Bradysaurus. It lies exposed, so visitors can see the whole beast, almost exactly as it was when it died an aeon ago. It is easy to imagine it being caught by a flood, covered in soil and left to fossilise. We had asked to see the graves of the Van Wyks, one of the founding families at Meltonwold. Those of the more recent owners can be visited, but in just 150 years all trace of the founding Van Wyks has gone. Incomprehensibly though, you can still visit the Bradysaurus 250 million years later. I took some satisfaction, for reasons I can’t explain, in passing a little earlier a living contemporary of the Bradysaurus, a tortoise, whose forbears poked around these parts when the fossil was still alive.

Prince AlbertWe cycled 43km from a very dry Prince Albert with the majestic Swartberg, the country’s second longest mountain range, for company at our side. Cars can drive on this dirt road, and we saw one, but there is no point, really. The road runs straight into a dam and there is no bridge, no pont and no way of getting to the road on the other side – unless you know about Fox the ferryman. We knew about Fox because David Waddilove, the founder of the Freedom Trail, had arranged for


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Trance Karoo

him to pick us up. We waited at the water’s edge with nothing but the intense silence of the Karoo surrounding us. After a while, an inflatable boat appeared in the distance. ‘I’m Fox,’ said the ferryman, offering a handshake.

We balanced our two bikes in the middle of the boat and pushed it into the just-deep-enough water. Before starting the engine, Fox started pumping, explaining that the inflatable had a slow leak. We were warned that about halfway across he might need to pump the boat up again.

Fox Ledeboer, a refugee from KwaZulu-Natal, where he completed 18 Dusi’s, now lords over this domain. He is the only resident in a 40km radius and shopping, at Ladismith, is a 250km round trip. He operates the Gamkapoort Dam, is an honorary nature conservator and helps hikers who use the Gamkapoort to get into Die Hel.

This is the Gamkaskloof, to give it its official name, a place of myths and legends where a tight-knit community thrived for decades in the valley without road access. Many of Die Hel’s stories have improved with retelling, although some are hard to believe. There is a story, for example, that residents carried a car into the valley before the mountain road was built. The remains of the car can still be viewed by any disbelieving visitors.

Vleiland We slept our first night at Hartland, a farm near Vleiland, a hamlet on the other side of the Bosluiskloof Pass, which is an 8km climb, ascending about 700m. River Rosenthor, a matured hippie who retired to this farm to grow lavender, explains that a farm dam is like your bank balance – you watch it getting lower and lower while you wait for rain. ‘Just one good rain is enough to fill it to last the whole season until the next rains come,’ he said.

Vleiland is big enough to have a store, but not a soul was stirring as we cycled through it on our second morning. We crossed the Buffels River, which was flowing, and then branched off on a road that took us past Rietpoort se Leegte (Rietpoort’s emptiness) and through the Volstruisnek into the top section of the Anysberg Nature Reserve. We


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had been on roads little travelled, but when we climbed over locked gates with our bikes, we were on a road seemingly never travelled.

On the edge of Anysberg we met Pieter Fourie, a farmer who has somehow survived here for 25 years. If Rosenthor’s dam is his bank balance, Fourie’s water supply, which comes from a borehole, is his artery. There had been floods further north, such as those at Meltonwold earlier in the year, but precious little rain had fallen here. There were stories of springs that had run for generations drying up.

I found myself staring at Fourie, uncomprehendingly. How could he survive in such a harsh environment? We told him we were cycling through the Karoo for six days. He stared back at us, uncomprehendingly. We asked him if we were on the right road and he assured us we were not. ‘The gates further along are locked,’ he said. We cross-checked our maps and showed them to him. He agreed that we were, in fact, on the correct road.

We learned over the days that asking locals for directions is generally not a good idea. Even though we might have been heading for a farm just on the other side of the mountain, the chances were that they had not heard of it. If they knew of a track leading across the mountain, they would probably not have tried it themselves. More often than not, they assured us that our intended route was incorrect. So, we had to trust our maps and our sense of direction on this route seldom travelled.

The section from Fourie’s farm proved to be the hardest of the trail with long stretches of sand that was too soft to cycle, alternating with rock-strewn sections that were equally hazardous.

AnysbergTen hours of exposure to the harsh Karoo had passed by the time we put Klein Spreeufontein behind us and made it to a farming homestead, which now serves as the headquarters of the Anysberg Nature Reserve. Our spirits were low. We were tired, dirty, hungry and had no food and no water. The place was deserted. A sign on a door said ‘Fietsryers. Julle is in Gecko. Totsiens. Waddilove.’ (Bike riders. You are in Gecko. Goodbye. Waddilove.)

David Waddilove, a 40-year-old environmental lawyer from Cape


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Town, is the reason we were there. Three years ago, Waddilove left Cape Town the day after running the 56km Two Oceans Marathon and ran to KwaZulu-Natal, where he completed the 90km Comrades Marathon. Sticking to the back routes, it took him 70 days to complete the 2 300km run, covering roughly the equivalent of a marathon a day.

He then decided that the run would be too hard to stage annually, but that it had the makings of a great mountain-biking trail. The following year, Waddilove and two others ran the Comrades and then left Pietermaritzburg the next day by mountain bike for Paarl, where they completed the four-day Berg River Canoe Marathon to Velddrif. This all seems more than a little extreme, but probably not more so than cycling the 3 500km Tour de France.

The result of Waddilove’s epic journey is an annual race, the Freedom Challenge, along a defined route with places to stay. These include B&Bs, lodges, hotels, farmhouses and even a cave. Riders compete in the annual race, but they are also able to ride it socially on sections of the whole. On our five-night trip we stayed in three national monuments, including a historical farmhouse, a wine estate and a nature reserve.

Our host at Anysberg, where we stayed in Gecko, which was once a worker’s cottage, was Makie Fullard, the only woman resident there. She appeared in a bakkie, like an angel, with a hot cooked meal of roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables. She then proceeded to fill our larder with juice, tea, coffee, milk, baked beans, sweet corn, rusks, cereal, chocolate bars, cheese, ham, bread and jelly with custard. We ate, showered, ate some more, and slept.

Anysberg is as dry as the Karoo gets. There was no sign of rain or water. It would be ridiculous to ask if the area had ever had floods, but I found myself asking this of Willem Fullard, Makie’s partner. He answered as though the question was entirely reasonable, pointing in three opposing directions just beyond the mountains that surrounded us. ‘Laingsburg, Montagu and Ladismith have all had floods, but not here.’

I was impressed with the game we had seen, mostly springbok, but also the odd klipspringer, two of which came really close, as well as gemsbok and, in a ravine, a giant female kudu.


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MontaguOn the third day, we reached Montagu. Our hosts, Peter and Deon, fussed about us as though we were the only people in the Karoo. We were ferried to and fro from the hot springs and had places pointed out where floods had wreaked havoc. They had a big one in 1981, and the official history of Montagu seemed more than a little peeved that its 13 deaths were eclipsed by the 81 who drowned in nearby Laingsburg. There were stories of whole families making it to the safety of the roof of their home, only to have a huge tree wash all of them to their deaths.

I must make it clear that this is not a once-in-a-generation event. We drove past a house, a national monument, which was nearly wiped out in 2003. Flash floods are not uncommon. I ventured to Deon and Peter that the memories of the Karoo that I would take away with me would not be drought or dryness, but floods. Deon, who could be tight-head prop for the Boks if he didn’t prefer to be a cook, agreed. ‘It’s really terrifying here during the flood season. I find myself looking in the sky at the clouds to see if a flood could happen.’

By morning, just before we left, I had built up enough courage to ask when it was flood season. ‘Now,’ he said.

McGregorThe next three days brought us slowly back to reality as we got used to habitation after the emptiness of the Karoo. In McGregor, we met John Hargreaves, a one-man band or garagiste, who makes his own certified wine.

Nor far from Worcester, we were hosted by Albertus de Wet, a fifth-generation wine farmer who runs Le Grand Chasseur. De Wet opened his wine cellar to us. We tasted his fine wines and learned that the vast spread is run by no more than a handful of people and a computer.

We somehow found the old wagon route over the mountains to the farm of Kasra where Elsa Crohn and Alda Botha had a table set for lunch – a splendid repast with a neck of lamb at its centre. Two huge jugs of fresh lemonade were dispatched before we did the only sensible thing we could do: pass out in the shade on the lawn.

Elsa has watched riders of the Freedom Challenge pass through


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this lawn for two years. ‘The race leader, a dominee, was four days ahead when he got here,’ she said of the previous year. ‘They arrive at all times, eat a whole farm, sleep for three hours and then they’re gone. The dominee didn’t even have a proper bike [it was an entry-level machine] and he cycled in velskoens.’

We had been lucky. We had no mechanical problems, no injuries, just two punctures and one half-fall. We had no headwinds and had enough liquid, four litres each, to last between refills. Temperatures had been kind – no more than in the mid-30s when they can rise to the 40s. There had also been no floods.


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