Distance – 109 km
Elevation gain – 1207 m
Time – 8 hr 36 min
Av heart rate -120 bpm
Max heart rate – 191 bpm
This blog is coming to you from the middle of nowhere in the Zimbabwe lowveld, just a few kilometers from the Mozambique border. I’ve just endured the first day of the Blue Cross, but only just. Today was absolutely brutal, as evidenced by my 2nd highest heart rate ever.
It was as a tough a day as ever I’ve enjoyed on a bike, although the use of the word enjoyed was debatable at times. But tough days are good, they are the difference between epic and ordinary. As Dave Whitehead taught me when I first started riding, all good rides should hurt a bit, or a lot.
This is my 7th Blue Cross. Thank God I have a shocking memory, otherwise I would have strenuously avoided today.
The upside to a shocking memory is you are allowed to see beautiful scenery for the first time, even though you’ve seen it before. The downside is you forget about horrible hills and roads until it is too late to avoid them. Alas
To get to our start point in Mahenya we dropped down from the highveld through msasa trees already in all their autumnal splendour, even though it’s actually spring. I am sure the msasas have turned early because of the generational drought we are currently enjoying. Down below, the lowveld is all baobabs and mopanes, fever trees in dry riverbeds and other trees whose names escape me plus ugly thorn scrub. Every now and then there are welcome flashes of colour courtesy of aloes and Sabi Stars in the rocky outcrops. We saw elephant pooh on the road and broken branches, but no elephants.
Once you get into the communal lands, it is all empty fields, full of rocks and hungry goats, some fields already ploughed and prepared for the coming season by some poor bloody optimist farmer, with the emphasis on poor. The people who live in this area are so poor they dream about one day being rich like church mouse. They have nothing. But somehow they are still happy, all smiles, all laughter, and all very polite, especially the children. We could take a leaf out of their book.
The kids take every opportunity to practice their English vocabulary, blurted out in one go – “Hallo, How are you? What is your name? Where are you going? I am fine, thank you. And have you got any sweets?” My answers got shorter as the day wore on. It is hard to be chatty when you are completely knackered on a bike halfway up a horrible hill.
I must have looked very tatty at one of my frequent stops at the top of a hill because a bunch of kids came and serenaded me to make me feel better. And it worked. In the hope that she’d stop shouting at me out the window to pedal faster damn it, I told Jenny about the healing powers, but she flat out refuses to serenade me.
Our route twisted and bumped its way north along the Mozambique border, with an emphasis on bumped. The roads were very gnarly and rocky and a bugger to pedal. Riding is all about momentum, and momentum is impossible when you are bumping over rocks the size of melons.
Because Jenny and I have a history of blundering into Mozambique, for this Blue Cross we invested in cutting edge technology in the form of two Garmins and Gaia GPS loaded on our phones. Jenny though, has little faith in technology, and resorted to following car tracks instead and was able to blunder off track in the general direction of God only knows where. But luckily she was found by Graham Botton, who was also lost.
We are a riding group of 13 riders. It is a very stop-start elastic peloton, stretching and bunching, but mostly stretching. I’m riding with many old friends, including Mike Scott from the 2020 Lockdown Tour around Zimbabwe. The Blue Cross was part of our route. Mike had also deleted the hills from his memory banks.
When eventually we struggled into our campsite on the soccer field at Musekevanhu School, we were delighted to find SPCA Mutare had laid on hot bucket showers and long drops for us. A hot shower at the end of a long day in the saddle is the best muti.
Tomorrow we ride into Chipinge, up and over a mountain called Sally. I remember it as being a nice ride, which does not bode well. Alas.
Until my next blog, enjoy and pedal if you can – Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
The Blue Cross – Day Two
Distance – 60.37 km
Elevation gain – 1331 m
Time – 6 hr 34 min
Av heart rate -116 bpm
Max heart rate – 164 bpm
Today was all about a mountain called Sally -750 m of climb in the first 17 kilometers – the rudest awakening imaginable.
The first 4 kilometers were the worst, lousy with melon-sized boulders and double digit gradients, and also the next 13 kilometers. The only nice bit was right at the very top .
Even though I attended Allan Wilson, I am very crap at technical. I see rocks clearly and then I hit them. On the bad bits, my average speed bled off to 3 km per hour. It is almost impossible to stay upright on a bike. And so it came to pass, often. A storekeeper watched me wobble up a particularly gnarly section of road towards his store. Situated on the crappiest stretch of road imaginable, suitable only for Honda Fit drivers and mad cyclists, his wasn’t the busiest store, so he could afford the time to watch me. I could hear him wincing from a hundred meters. He looked most concerned. When eventually I got to him, he asked where I was going. When I told him my plan was to ride through to Nyanga, he very kindly called on God to bless my ride and also me. I hope God was listening.
Mike Scott saw leopard pug marks in the road halfway up the hill. I am glad he only told me when we reached the summit, after I’d finishing flopping around like a shot giraffe.
I have recently acquired a vicious arthritic cramp in my left hand, some times my right. It is so painful. My fingers spasm and do their own thing, some scrunched up, others dead straighten, leaving my hand looking like a witches claw straight out of a Hansel and Gretel story. And while that is going on, it is bloody sore and makes steering the bike, using the brakes all the more interesting, especially on the technical sections. I think from here on I will charge bored shopkeepers a fee to watch me.
At the top of Sally, Stu Chalmers told me and Mike Scott a bald- faced lie. Knowing full well that we were suffering severe memory lapse, he told us that the rest of the ride was easy-peasy, mostly downhill, and an absolute joy to ride.
We dropped down through a magnificent forest of massively tall msasa trees and other trees also massively tall, and it was breathtaking, but not for long. After some few kilometers, it started harshly undulating, and even more harshly uptulating, which as per the concise Alistair Watermeyer dictionary means short, cruel and viciously steep climbs to be avoided at all costs when cycling.
And it was like that all the rest of the way into Chipinge.
Alas. I had already congratulated my legs and the rest of me on a job well done at the top of Sally. The last 40 kilometers dragged on for ever. Two young kids aged maybe 5 or 6 took pity on me and pushed me up a hill. I was Uber miserable when we finally arrived at our night stop, Fiddlers Green, but not for long.
Cold beers and hot showers can fix the biggest miserable.
Fiddlers Green is such a beautiful setting, a massive stone under thatch clubhouse looking out over immaculate polo grounds in front, and forever views of the mountains behind. And to watch a young farming community getting busy and breathing life back into the place and the district is such good muti for sore legs and hearts and bodes so well for the future.
A lovely lady called Antoinette, ably assisted by Gwen and Marena laid on the best dinner ever and I am absolutely replete. To the point where I’m actually looking forward to tomorrow’s 80 kilometer and 2000 meter climb into Chimanimani. Thank God for severe memory lapse.
Until my next blog, Viva The SPCA Blue Cross, Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
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