Home » Zimbabwe » Jane Furse to East London, South Africa (September 30th 2002)

“We are the Pilgrims, master, 
We shall go always a little farther. 
It may be beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, 
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.” 
- James Elroy Flecker. ‘The Golden Road to Samarkand’

Jane Furse to East London, South Africa (September 30th 2002)

Roundtheworldbybike
2005-11-18 11:36:46

Displayed times (last time: )

in Glasgow. Scotland are leading England 1-0 in the World Cup final (I did say ‘imagine’!) and you ask “excuse me, chaps, would you mind awfully if I change the channel to watch a spot of cricket…” So I rode on out of town and not until the next morning did the newspapers tell me ‘Leeds United 1- Man Utd 0’. Oh boy did I fly up the hills that day!

It is sometimes difficult to judge when it is time to take a break from your wanderings, call time on the adventures and put your feet up for a while. The alarming realization that I am verging on needing a ponytail in my hair is a certain sign that that time has arrived.

I turn down offers of accommodation from three luxury hotels in order to make a detour to my final challenge: riding over the highest road in Africa. Foolhardy? I agree. But as Eddy Mercx said “there are no laws that govern the will”. Sometimes the heart has it’s reasons that the head knows nothing of. Lesotho is a land of open spaces and vast, silent mountains. The hills never stop and the gradients are anything up to 35%- so steep that even pushing the bike frequently rendered me into a red, sweaty, collapsed bundle beside the road. If anything the descents were worse: lethally steep hairpin bends which rapidly resulted in a hole wearing through the sole of my left shoe! The climbs were so absurdly painful that there was no point in getting upset or hoping for flat stretches. So I just resigned myself to enjoying myself amid some of my favourite African landscapes. Hour after hour of extraordinary mountain passes. The only interruption to the ‘Ode to Joy’ was my rasping, ragged breathing and the sounds of my own encouragement, “come on, Al, come on, Al…. just a little farther, Al, just a little farther…” Every pedal stroke improved the view but diminished how much I cared for it.

The people of Lesotho were friendly yet bemused as I rode by. Shepherds swathed in blankets to fight the cold, Wellington boots and comical conical straw hats. At 3000m above sea level the nights are cold. So I was relieved not to have to use my tent- an electricity station, a mountain shepherd’s rough stone shelter and the back-room of a particularly dodgy, unappealing shebeen (drinking den) made fine alternatives.

Climbing to the highest road in Africa epitomised why I undertook this journey- the search for a challenge, a slow sunset silhouetting all before me, fold after fold of wild, empty mountains and, lastly, it was nearly dark, it was very cold, I was hungry, racing along alone with absolutely no idea where I would sleep, where I would find something to eat or who I would meet next. If this year needs a defining snapshot, that would be it.

I decided to push on up to the famous Sani Pass, the Lesotho border post balanced right on the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment high above South Africa. On a track of shattered rock, eerie outlines of fires from scattered shepherds huts, manic barking from their huge hounds I pushed hard beneath a cold full moon up to the pass. Annoyed by my idiocy yet thrilled to have made it, I looked down through a misty, numb exhaustion to the faint lights of South Africa and knew that after beating the highest road in Africa it should all be downhill from here.

ˇ Many thanks to the Coffee Shack, Coffee Bay and Buccaneers, Cintsa for their fabulous hospitality.

ˇ I now have a mobile phone! Contact me on +27 (0)84 3371659