Day 351 / 116

Date: 29 March 2023
Sleeping location: Greyling family farm, 31.0149S 27.1843E, South Africa
Distance (km today/total/total Part 2): 57 / 21816 / 6979
Estimated climb (m today/total/total Part 2): 900 / 206900 / 88900
D:3
Day in three words: Whirlwind of welcome

Fitting the new kit, plus proofreading the previous day’s blog entries, plus general idlement meant I didn't leave until half 11, then I had to stop soon afterwards and readjust some of the new things and the troublesome cleat again. I was aiming to get to Queenstown, about 185km with a fair chunk of dirt road in the middle, over the next two days before giving myself another rest day, which I still needed to properly get my body over the efforts of Lesotho. I had eight days to cycle around 600km to Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth to meet my dad and the whole thing almost felt like a chore. I needed to get my mojo back; maybe another rest day would help, or I could deliberately ride up hills in a difficult gear and pay a load of children to follow me on horseback shouting "sweets sweets".

Thankfully the road was tarmac, new and extremely quiet and there was a feisty wind mostly on my side. I headed away from Lady Grey into a landscape of rocky scrubland, cliffs and low peaks. It was all beautiful but I was feeling a bit listless, after the beauty and excitement of Lesotho it was just a bit underwhelming. The landscape was almost totally empty, all the land was fenced off but it seemed pointless as nothing was going on in there. Maybe they're farming rocks and low bushes. There were a couple of long climbs but nothing too testing, though on the second one I make the mistake of saying I'd stop for lunch by the turnoff that I could see, and then realised that it was miles away and the hill just kept going, so I was staring at this sign thinking about my cheese and avocado sandwiches for about 15 minutes. At least there was a big concrete bus shelter for me to eat in when I finally arrived. 

Here I turned off onto a dirt road for next 80km. It was in ok shape but a bit rocky and bumpy, and I climbed for a bit up to a high grassy plateau with huge views of distant escarpments, low hills and barely a sign of human habitation. The wind was now coming hard from the right and constantly trying to push me off my carefully chosen path through the rocks. When the road began to descend it all got a bit choppy and loose and it required careful handling, and whilst I was weaving my way down five motorcyclists came the other way, followed by support vehicle. I guess they were on some kind of “adventure” holiday, but I found the addition of the support vehicle fairly lame. To be fair they did all wave at me.

This was a very and surprisingly empty land and late afternoon I found myself low on water - the two rivers I’d passed had been too dangerous to fill up from, and gross and brown anyway. In the middle of nowhere I saw a man walking down the road and asked where I could fill up, he said I could go to his parents' place a couple of km down the road, then said that they’d hosted cyclists in the past including a girl (Eelke) who I “knew” from exchanging messages with her via the cycling whatsapp group. Sure enough, a couple of km down the road was a farm with an open gate; I went in and was greeted by a dog then by a friendly man in his 60s. This was Johan, who pretty much immediately offered me a place to stay overnight. It wasn’t yet 4.30 and I still had 130km to go until Queenstown, so I said no thanks but could I please take some water. He then convinced me to take a quick rest and a cold drink, then Mitzi his wife appeared and started producing cakes and fruit and I got such a nice feeling from them that I changed my mind and said I’d love to stay over. We chatted over a cup of tea and I took an immediate liking to both of them - Johan was very smart and curious about the world and Mitzi was relentlessly positive and incredibly attentive to my needs, perceived or otherwise. 

 

At some point conversation turned to 3d pictures and Johan said he had something to show me. We went into a small room which was like a combination of a museum and a storage cupboard, in which he kept perhaps a hundred historical artefacts. On the wall was a family tree which he had managed to trace back to the 1740s. He then pulled out some 3d pictures from the Boer War* complete with the original viewing lenses, everything 125 years old and still working with amazing clarity**. He also showed me a 50+ year old lighter that still worked, the first ever commercially available laptop, original Voortrekker yokes…I could have fiddled around in there for hours.

Michael John, the son who I’d met on the road, returned for dinner and we had steaks from one of the farm’s cows with chips and eggs. It was extremely cow-y in a way that made me realise that most steaks we eat probably don’t taste like cow. I was plied with wine and as much bread (for chip sandwiches) as I could handle. This was a very different experience to being hosted by Grant - I felt like one of the family here. I stayed up a bit chatting with Johan before we went to bed ahead of an early start - me to make up the distance to Queenstown, him to go and get his lawnmower fixed. What an unexpected treat.

*I apologised on the UK's behalf

**When I texted Eelke her first question was “Did you see their family museum?”, and she also loved the 3d pictures