Old Legs Tour to Cape Town – Ladismith to Bredasdorp

Day 3

7th March 2023 – Ladismith to Barrydale

Distance – 78 km
Climb – 708 m
Time – 5 hr 03 min
Av Heart Rate – 122 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 182 bpm

I am blogging to you from Barrydale, possibly the coolest town in South Africa.

The town is wall-to-wall quirky, full of little boutique hotels, restaurants and artsy gift shops. We didn’’t stay in any of them. Instead, we are staying at the Dungbeetle pub.

Our first floor backpackers room with 6 beds is up a flight of rickety wooden stairs directly above the Dungbeetle bar which is open from from 10.00 a.m. right through to 01.00 a.m. If Bear Grylls were to visit Barrydale, he would stay at the Dungbeetle.

Easily the nicest thing about Barrydale is that Adam was able to leave his fully-packed car outside on the street overnight, despite the fact that his electric windows are stuck in the fully down position after the electronics drowned in Sunday’s hailstorm. I want to live in Barrydale.

In yesterday’s blog I erroneously described the Klein Karoo as being possibly boring in places. Let me fix that right now. The section of the Route 62 that we rode from Ladismith down to Barrydale was absolutely glorious, thankfully with more downhills than up. Our horizons today were cluttered with rugged mountains, some of which we rode around instead of over. The Klein Karoo is properly big sky country. We also stopped at Ronnie’s Sex Shop for a drink and the obligatory team photo. Wallace was less than impressed with Ronnie’s and pissed on it.

3 days into this Tour and the hill detector on my bike is fully functioning, and the last 26 kilometers into Barrydale, packed with almost all the day’s climb, were longer than the first 50 kilometers.

Thankfully I was able to move the pink Dick of the Day wig and tutu on to Gary Prothero after he was captured on camera riding up a steep hill on his back wheel in blatant disregard of the Old Legs’s strict health and safety regulations. I say thankfully because it is bloody hot under that wig and people look at you funny, even in very cool Barrydale.

Andrew Chadwick was the deserved Hero of the Day for completing the longest ride of his career. Andrew is peaking nicely for the Argus. I hope to con him into joining us on our longer Tours in the future.

We are riding from Wilderness to Cape Town to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. Please follow the donate prompts on www.oldlegstour.com.

Until my next blog from Bredasdorp, enjoy and pedal if you can, but avoid wearing the pink wig
Eric Chicken Legs de Jong

* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons

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Day 4

8th March 2023 – Barrydale to Bredasdorp

Distance – 118 km
Climb – 708 m
Time – 8 hr 36 min
Av Heart Rate – 130 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 168 bpm

Wind is possibly the rudest 4 letter word in a cyclist’s vocabulary, especially when it is a headwind. Yesterday was all about the bloody wind. Yesterday’s 118 kilometers was more like 218 kilometers in terms of effort.

Our day got off to promising start when we rode the Tradouw Pass first up. The mountain pass would have been hugely more memorable hadn’t it not been followed by hours and hours of bloody wind, but it was, and my recollections of yesterday have been heavily redacted, leaving me with only vague recollections of massive, take-your-breath-away stonewalled canyons towering above us, with waterfalls plunging hundreds of meters to their deaths left, right and center. We rode the Tradouw Pass with a sense of wonderment. Nature sure does put on a good show in the Western Cape. I think I said wow over and over again.

I think we must have climbed, but it was one of those climbs that felt downhill all the way up, if that makes any sense.

And again, if the Tradouw Pass were in France, it would be world famous as a Tour climb.

There were also some vague recollections of riding through some postcard-pretty countryside after the Tradouw and either side of the little village of Suurbraak, before turning east towards Swellendam and into the teeth of the bloody wind.

I have no idea how fast the winds that hammered us were but I watched a flight of swallows in full flight standing still above me like they’d been paused. Our average speed on the bike bled off to almost negative, and the 10 kilometers into Swellendam took hours. I enjoyed some brief relief when I was able to draught behind a pedestrian for a few hundred meters, but then the bastard stopped walking, and it was back into the teeth of the wind.

We took refuge in a coffee shop in Swellendam for not nearly long enough. Left to me, I’d be blogging to you from that coffee shop. But Adam the cruel bastard forced me back onto my bike, crying, kicking and screaming.

After forever, we turned south towards Bredasdorp, hoping the head wind would become a kinder side wind, but if anything, it was worse, gusting ever more violently, threatening to blow you off the bike, off the road even.

Yesterday quickly denigrated into my worst day ever on the bike. I absolutely hated it. I got more and more pissed off with the bloody wind, and with life in general, and with cycling as a sport. If my bike was a horse, I would have happily shot it. At one stage I was reduced to a King Canute temper tantrum, swearing at the wind, telling it to sexually depart, but it didn’t. And apparently we have the prospect of more of the same tomorrow as we continue east to Hermanus. Alas.

Lying in my bed as I blog at 04.00, I am seriously thinking about taking up badminton as a sport instead, or better still, origami.

Moving on to more positive things, I saw a Bat-eared fox lying dead on the road yesterday, and a beautiful pair of Blue crane still alive in a field. The poor fox was most probably bludgeoned to death by a flying boulder, and if the crane were stupid enough to take off, they’ll be in Madagascar by now.

Come hell or high winds, the Old Legs Tour will blow into Hermanus tomorrow. Please be invited to join us at the Golf Club at 17.30 for drinks and to listen to my talk about our Old Legs adventures to date and forthcoming, and to marvel at Rob Skinner resplendent in his pink wig and tutu.