Day 1 – Wilderness Common to Oudtshoorn
Distance – 89 km
Climb – 1695 m
Time – 8 hr 34 min
Av Heart Rate – 122 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 176 bpm
This blog is coming to you from Oudtshoorn, home to every ostrich in creation, and in the Karoo, which is a desert apparently. Desert my arse. Having ridden the Karoo, we now know that ostriches have long necks so as to avoid drowning when it floods following hail storms and torrential downpours, but more of that later.
Old Legs Tour Wilderness Common to Cape Town In 2023 – Days 1 and 2
So as to share his sense of dread and misery at the prospect of 1700 meters of climb on his maiden outing, Andrew posted a doom and gloom weather forecast on the chat group, predicting severe thunderstorms resulting in heavy downpours of up to 100 mm, strong gusting winds up to 80 kph, excessive lightning and small hailstones 1 to 2 mm in size. The report went on to strongly suggest we remain indoors and away from metal objects. It especially warned against going fishing or playing golf as fishing rods and golf clubs were both excellent conductors of electricity. It never mentioned bicycles.
None of the weather phenomena above are pleasant on a bike so I chose to ignore Andrew’s doom and gloom predictions and went with my far more cheerful forecast from my cellphone weather app instead, which would have us enjoying a largely balmy day with 0 to 2 mm of precipitation and a favourable tailwind of 16 kph. Accordingly, I packed dry lube only. Linda and Jaime went a step further and opted out of packing raincoats. Silly girls.
The day’s hard toil started almost immediately with a brutal 2 kilometer climb out of Wilderness, complete with 18% gradients. Misery personified, Andrew took time out at the 1 kilometer peg to consider the remaining 88 kilometers. Luckily Adam was on hand to capture the moment. As is his want, Adam was towing a full-sized Zimbabwean flag behind him and never noticed the climb.
We rode into George on the beautiful Seven Passes Road through thick pristine rainforests and over hundred-year-old narrow bridges. I saw Knysna Loeries flashing crimson and green above me through the tall canopy.
It started spitting and drizzling on the outskirts of George. With the daunting Montague Pass disappearing up into the thick cloud above, we stopped to hurriedly put rain jackets on, apart from Jaime and Linda, who put their dustbin bags on. Silly girls.
The old Montague Pass is a dirt road and epically steep from the start, almost as epic as the lightning show that Andrew’s doom and gloom weather report had laid on for us. The lightning strikes were just above us, and just around us. They were frighteningly close. I took much comfort from the fact that I was on an all carbon frame and on rubber tyres, until Gary Prothero told me that neither counted for diddly squat in a lightning strike. He also pointed out to Adam that his flag pole in the back of his bike was longer than a golf club, and as long as a fishing rod. The fastest thing all the day was the speed with which Adam ripped his flagpole off his bike.
Exactly as per script, the excessive lightning was followed by small hailstones 1 to 2 mm in size, but they seemed larger as they clattered down on our bike helmets. Thank God for helmets. The rain was freezing cold and I was almost officially miserable, but thankfully we climbed out of the rain and the hail. The vegetation we were riding through was stunningly beautiful with proteas and fynbos, heathers and ericas, I especially liked the ericas, and pink March lilies. Please be impressed by above of all things botanical, apart from the plants whose names I didn’t know.
The next foul-weather curved-ball thrown at us was the road was closed to all traffic because of flood damage and wash aways. We were buggered. Our only option was to ride back down the mountain, through the hail and the lightning, and then ride to Oudtshoorn on the main road up and over the Outeniqua Pass instead, or we could sneak through the Road Closed Barriers and carry on up the Montague Pass regardless. Suffice to say riding up the Montague Pass in the driving rain, and through beautiful nothingness of the Karoo was easily one of my most epic days in the saddle, although I could have done without the subsequent hail storm and torrential flooding.
We ruminated on having done epic over hot coffee, cream scones and delightful hospitality in the village of Herold.
With no more endless mountains to climb, the remaining 50 kilometers to Oudtshoorn through the Karoo on quiet backroads seemed comfortably anticlimactic, the perfect end to an epic day. Wallace met massive flocks of ostriches and Angora goats for the first time and was very taken with them. The only black cloud on our horizon was a massively dark and ugly black cloud on the horizon.
I was riding with Andrew, Adam and Jaime when the hail storm hit. We heard the hail first, it sounded like furniture breaking. I was confused, but not for long. The first missiles that struck us, like the opening salvo in a snowball fight, were golf ball size, and came whizzing in almost horizontally. Then they got bigger. Because Andrew is good in a crisis, I followed his lead. He screamed like a girl and flung his bicycle in the bush and bolted for safety of Jenny’s car. I screamed like 2 girls and followed suit. By then the hail stones were grapefruit sized but with lumpy stalactites and stalagmites attached, designed to inflict maximum damage. Jenny, Andrew, Wallace and I whimpered in the car and reflected on global warming as the hailstones the size of icebergs crashed into the car, exploding against the windscreen. How the windscreen never shattered I have no idea. Jenny’s car is rather pockmarked this morning but that gives it character.
There is only so much room for ice in the heavens, and the hail storm abated. We started riding again, just in time to be hit another torrential downpour. By the time we eventually rode into Oudtshoorn like drowned rats, roads were closed off because the dry riverbeds that run through the town had burst their banks. I blame Andrew’s lack of training and the attendant bad karma entirely.
Our first Dick of the Day tribunal was almost as intense as the hailstorm. Alastair, Andrew and Adam all received nominations, unfairly in my book. Despite a pathetic but vigorous defense, Adam went on to win the coveted pink wig and glittery tutu for trying to kill us by routing us through the hailstorm.
We are riding to Cape Town to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. The money raised will save lives and change lives. Please follow the donate prompts below.
Please follow our progress through the Karoo on Facebook and on www.oldlegstour.com but be warned, we ride slow like paint dries. Please join us at the Hermanus Golf Club on Thursday the 9th for some much needed refreshments and an Old Legs presentation. Until my next blog, enjoy, ride if you can but always wear a helmet, especially when it is hailing – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)
Day 2
6th March 2023 – From Oudtshoorn to Ladismith
Distance – 103 km
Climb – 1276 m
Time – 9 hr 34 min
Av Heart Rate – 126 bpm.
Max Heart Rate – 190 bpm.
I have just brushed my teeth with Travel Wash a concentrated, non-bio, bleach free detergent safe to use on all fabrics, including baby clothes, wool and delicates and good for removing the most stubborn of stains. It tastes like shit but the first I noticed it wasn’t toothpaste was when my mouth started lathering alarmingly. In my defense, should this offense ever come up in a Dick of the Day tribunal, Travel Wash also comes in a tube and I was rather knackered at the time. NB That defense failed me miserably when I was unfairly awarded Dick of the Day for frivolous offenses.
We are just 2 days into our mini-Tour and I am shattered. Already we have taken disorganized to new levels and the inside of our car looks worse than the inside of my kitbag,which is bad. I have no idea how we are able to do this sort of shit for 35 days across half of Africa.
We rode Route 62 yesterday, through a section of the Klein Karoo between Oudtshoorn to Ladismith. The Klein Karoo is like the Groot Karoo but just smaller, although it doesn’t seem smaller after 2 days of riding through it. We rode through the small town of Calitzdorp and up a monster of a mountain pass called the Huis River Pass.
To drive the Klein Karoo in a car could be fall asleep boring, but at 20 kph on a bicycle, it is beautiful and anything but boring, for the first few hours, after which it can become boring, because the Klein Karoo certainly does go on, and on, and on.
The Karoo was very wet by Karoo standards so at least there was some vegetation to look at, lush and green, again by Karoo standards, but with not a tree to be seen for hundreds of kilometers, just the same low-slung bushes and clumps of grass, over and over again.
I saw a herd of eland, some springbok, put up a pair of raucous Southern Black Korhaans and almost saw many meerkats, but didn’t.
There are any number of quirky little roadside stalls to further break the monotony, offering pancakes and bobotie, and sometimes free parking. And more of the same in the little town of Calitzdorp.
We stopped for lunch in The Smallest Bar on Route 62. The Bar took quirky to next level. I would have loved to have enjoyed more than a few cold beers in it, but with half the ride still in front of me, couldn’t. Alas.
Calitzdorp would have been more enjoyable had the streets not been teeming with street people who had all been enjoying the booze I hadn’t, with many of them loud and in your face, begging. Alas.
I enjoyed a 200 gram burger with delicious blue cheese sauce for lunch, but stopped enjoying it as soon as we hit the Huis River Pass. The 200 grams quickly became a 400 gram lump in my tummy.
If it was in France, the Huis River Pass would be a world famous bike climb. With 700 meters elevation and 10 kilometers of non-stop up, it is a brute, and certainly takes your breath away.
We shared the Huis River Pass with a peloton of road bike riders, part of an organized tour group also on their way to Cape Town. They came whizzing past us on their sleek low-slung machines and shaved legs, all very serious, head down and in a hurry.
The tour leader was a delightful German chap called Jens who took time out to talk shit with me on the climb. He told me he was riding Route 62 for the 70th time. It showed. He was super strong.
After a brief stop at the top of the pass, the road bike racers raced off in their tight peloton, also headed for a night stop in Ladismith. Looking to draught, Adam jumped on the back of their bunch. He could easily have stayed with them all the way to town, but never felt the love, so pulled out. I don’t think it helped that he was wearing the Dick of The Day tutu at the time.
I love this part of South Africa. It feels like we’re riding through a Henry Charles Bosman story. The people who live here don’t just live here, they belong. We’re are staying in a little cottage on a grape farm just outside Ladismith. Our hosts are Afrikaans and are old fashioned hospitable. I am sure they would give me the khaki shirts off their backs if I asked. Their ancestors are buried in neatly kept graves next to our cottage. The oldest dates back to 1856.
We are riding to Cape Town to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners, most of whom no longer have homes or gardens, or even family around them to bury them. Please help us help them by following the donate prompts on www.oldlegstour.com.
In closing, please join me in wishing my beloved and long suffering wife Jenny the happiest of birthdays. Because I love her much, I bought her a new riding helmet to wear as protection the next time we ride through a hailstorm.
I rode with a huge sad on my heart for much of the day after hearing of the untimely passing of Ryan ‘LaFarge’ Collet. Ryan was a fellow Herd member and such a nice guy. Much love to Jenny and the kids
Until my next blog from Barrydale, enjoy and pedal up mountains if you can, but not after beef burgers – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
If you are already a ZANE donor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you are not a donor but would like to be, please follow the link below and know that every donation, however big or small, goes directly to where it is most needed. If you would like to help but can’t donate, please join the ZANE family and ‘like’ or ‘share’ our posts or write us a Google review – every positive step helps spread the word about the life changing work ZANE does.
Thank you – Nicky Passaportis ZANE Australia
Please donate to support pensioners struggling to survive in Zimbabwe
Any assistance is greatly appreciated and goes a long way to giving our pensioners a better quality of life and lift the pressure of money worries which is very debilitating emotionally.
(Donations made to ZANE in Australia, are tax-deductible)