Day 349 / 114

Date: 27 March 2023
Sleeping location: Grant’s house/shop, Lady Grey, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 99 / 21759 / 6922
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 1200 / 206000 / 88000
Walking some time after: dinosaurs
Day in three words: The big anticlimax

I slept deeply, which turned out to be a problem as an army of mosquitoes absolutely decimated me in the night; I had about 50 (no joke) bites and they were the really annoying big red itchy type as well. At least I now weighed about 500g less because of all the blood they’d taken.  

On the way out of Quthing/Kool Thing I took a minor detour back up a very steep hill to go see some dinosaur footprints. These were 200m years old, had been preserved in fossilised mud and belonged to a herbivore (Anomoepus) and a carnivore (Grallator) both around 3m long. They were discovered when building the road in 60s, which explains why the road is so mad steep now - it had to go straight rather than curving through the prints. This was the perfect diversion really, interesting, cheap and I was in and out within 15 mins. 

The rest of the day had a real "after the lord mayor's show" vibe to it - I had come through Lesotho and was ready for a celebration and a good rest, but I had almost 100 relatively boring km to get to Lady Grey where I had a warmshowers host lined up. On the way out of Lesotho I had the unfamiliar sight of a low hill crest with nothing behind it but blue sky, no huge mountains or cliffs, no epic views. The border with SA was the Tele River and whilst crossing the bridge I saw a man wading across it to avoid the controls. This probably took longer than it did for me to zoom through both lots of passport control and ride across the official bridge. 

This part of South Africa had a real “badlands” feel to it, all crumbly rock and dry grass, empty but at the same time full of scruffy houses. There was little wind and felt really hot in the sun. There were lots of climbs and descents but they were at gentle gradients and my Lesotho-hardened legs made light work of them. The town of Sterkspruit, about halfway, was way too intense, too many people and cars and queues, noises and shouts and music playing everywhere. I missed the peace and simplicity of the mountains, where the only thing breaking the silence was the wind and the plaintive cry of "sweets, sweets". I quickly bought lunch here then rode on and ate it in a dilapidated bus shelter in a place called, improbably, Blue Gums. 

Lady Grey was a pretty little town set in an amphitheatre of cliffs. I hadn’t had any message from my host Grant for more than a week, including provision of his address, but I had deduced that he ran a bike touring shop and there was only one of those in town (and indeed, in South Africa), so I headed there after picking up a bottle of wine and a couple of beers as a gift. Grant was expecting me and didn’t seem to realise that I’d essentially had to Sherlock Holmes my way there. He then directed me to the lawn to set up my tent, showed me to the semi-functional kitchen and functional shower and left me be - definitely in the “hands off” category of warmshowers hosts. He also didn’t really drink, so I “had” to chin both beers* before heading out for an early dinner as I had two zoom calls booked in that evening. Two glasses of wine followed here, and they don’t go easy on the portion sizes, then I opened the wine on the first zoom call “for a glass”; three hours later I had accidentally drunk 80% of the bottle and managed to get pretty drunk on my own. A bit tragic but I guess I deserved a celebration.

*I didn’t have access to a fridge and they were rapidly warming, so it was IMPERATIVE