SA Tour Day 1-3

On Nov 5, 2020

Morning Campers,
I know many of you are not Facebooker’s so this blog is for you. Technology can sometimes be a bugger, like the amazing weather app that gave us a clear sunny day to start our SA old legs tour and then delivered 2 hours of pouring rain… soaking us to the skin and lowering morale quite considerably. It was however just great to finally be on our way, day 1 of 26. Our send off was fantastic and many many thanks to Daniel of the Zimbabwe Pensioner’s support Fund (ZPSF) for personally delivering us a bundle of caps to donate to supporters along the way, thank you Hannes and Linda Botha too. Badger Fivaz’s 🦡 friends Pat and Glen came to make sure that he really was going away for a month so they could get some peace from hearing about this long awaited tour. Badger arrived with a state of the art Pyga bicycle ( same brand as Deidres) which he had borrowed literally the day before having worn his own bike out in training ! Well the difference was amazing, all 74 years of him shot off over the horizon and he had a glorious day despite the rain.

Dave arrived with the Dick of the Day award, by being late because ….”loading the bikes in the rain was messing up his hair” apparently. Deidre was clearly flustered by the kick off and arrived un-colour co-ordinated the purple shoes 👠 weren’t fully in sync.

It was glorious to be on the way and get the first 76 km and 1400 m of climbing done.

Daunting that night was the ogre of Day 2 the Hela Hela pass starting with a 600 m climb over 5 km some 20% gradient.
It went surprisingly well until the land-cruiser laden with trailer and Matambo decided it was too steep and surrendered. David had to make an emergency dismount to hold it and help Matambo to get it in to low range. This in itself was a problem because once the car was going again the slope was such that David couldn’t get his bike going 😂. Well we all made it to the top with great pride and lunging lungs. We ended the day with 80 km and a total of 1950 meters of climbing ….. a new record for us all! 😓

That was supposedly the end of my tour and I bid the team farewell from Himeville to return to Durban for a consult. David suggested it was the best hospital pass ever ….. design the tour …. make it hard as hell and then get out of town 😂

The great news is though, I am back ! I’m not sure the team is that pleased 😂 as I gently crack the whip and goad them on, several times they have asked for the Doctors rooms number to fast track my departure 😂

In the meantime they have added another 1500 meters ( one section a 13 km climb 😅) to their tally today while I have been waffling around in Durban. Thankfully I may be allowed as much as a week more with the team before I will finally have to retreat back to Durban for the chop and then I hope that they miss me lots 🤣

It’s bucketing right now, thankfully Gareth Sivright of Glengarry chalets upgraded the chaps from camping to luxurious chalets as a donation to the Old Legs tour, what wonderful people out here in the Drakensberg thank – you. Gareth we are all really really appreciating being indoors tonight 😂.

Ryan is constantly chuckling at the goings on and has got some amazing pictures to post, see the attached and follow on Facebook if you can.

Day 4 Tomorrow 109 km Giants Castle to Bergville another 1500 m to grind and no doubt much much more humour and appreciation of being able to do this in the name of the old folks in Zim and enjoy the truly magnificent Drakensberg views. Sometimes it must be said though that the views fall in to no priority when sucking air and trying to stay upright on the steepest climbs 😂

Thank you all for your support and kind messages.

Yours back in the saddle C J

Chris Bradshaw

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