Day 345 / 110

Date: 23 March 2023
Sleeping location: By stream 29.8646S,28.9448E, Lesotho
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 66 / 21383 / 6546
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 2100 / 198600 / 80600
Cows: calm
Day in three words: Dirt road disinformation

I’d set my alarm for 5.45 to get a jump on the day but the family rooster had set itself for 4.30, so I was up and away early, even after spending some time patching the two new holes in my shorts with tape. I said goodbye to Jobo’s lovely family and set off. Again it was a beautiful cool, calm clear morning. 

The road loosely followed the Orange River, but as said river is in a big canyon most of the time the road was up and down over the hills to stick near it. The morning was therefore a series of 200m climbs to work the legs, then 200m descents to work the forearms and core. The road surface was worse than yesterday but not too bad, aside from the occasional chaotic washed out section, and it was very quiet in terms of both traffic and people. The occasional sight of minibus taxis was a relief as it showed that the road was still passable. The views were the similar rugged green and brown peaks, pink and white flowers and yellow wheat fields, with occasional flashes of the river far below. It wasn't as beautiful as yesterday, by which I mean it was extremely beautiful rather than staggeringly beautiful. Best of all - there were few kids, few of the kids shouted for "some sweets", and those kids didn't usually run after me when I pretended not to hear them. Sometimes I played little games with them, saying "some sweets" back to them with a wave and a smile, like I think it's a greeting. Once I gave a kid a stone and said "sweet" with a gormless smile on my face and he seemed to accept this without question. 

I had my morning snack break in a big village with a airfield running right through the middle of it - I suppose you've got to take the flat land wherever you find it in this country, which is not often. People are nice when you stop and interact with them, in a kind of quiet understated way. Immediately after this the beauty levels ramped way back up again as I had a steep descent along the edge of, then down to the bottom of, then up out the other side of, a dramatic red stone gorge. After this the road ran alongside the Orange River again, which was now in a gorge of its own with huge red cliffs of its own. This section had some seriously steep gradients with very bad road conditions and I had to do quite a bit of walking both up and downhill. The views meant I wasn't too unhappy about this though. The final descent down to a smaller river took me down to a lowly 1700m, and from there I had to go up 1250m over the treacherous Matebang Pass. 

This started with a gentle climb up a beautiful calm river valley. Pretty quickly the occasional vehicles disappeared and the road became a glorified donkey track, which was an unpleasant surprise after I’d been told that the road was passable the previous day. I climbed gradually, very gradually, up the river valley high above the river, with lots of hike a bike due to rocky sections, sandy sections, fords, grass, huge washed out gulleys, etc. It was very quiet and beautiful though. Late in the day it became clear I wouldn't make it over the summit, so I filled up my water in what I thought was the last village then continued upwards looking for a place to wild camp. 

Actually there was another small village higher up that I went through right before sunset - I thought about asking to camp here but thought I could find a better spot, and indeed shortly afterwards I found an absolutely gorgeous one next to a fast flowing stream below two huge mountains. It had short grass and a level (but rather pitched) surface because it was clearly used as a path for crossing the stream, but I figured nobody would come over this late. Wrong - in the gloaming two cow shepherds (is there a name for that? Cowherds?) came past with their herd once I'd already pitched my tent and unloaded Maggie. Thankfully the cows moved calmly past my stuff and didn't try to eat anything, although a few of them did sniff Maggie's wheel. 

One of the cowherds was called Patrick and spoke decent English and he said he thought my tent was in a place where the rain would run through it, but I disagreed and said that it looked like it might not even rain. He said I could come back to his house in the previous village "when it all goes wrong" and that he would be back in the morning to check that I was ok. I am developing a theory that mountain dwelling people are very hospitable because to not look after someone in harsh terrain could literally kill them. Shortly after Patrick left it rained quite a lot actually, but I had enough time to get into the tent, a nicely timed window in the rain in which to cook my dinner (pasta, soya mince and the rest of the Gouda), and remained dry, so I think we'll call that a draw in the prediction stakes.