Day 20 & 21 - Almost there...
The last two days have been really quiet, so I decided to blog them as one. On both days we decided to double up to make our goal of reaching Paarl by Monday. We are now silidly in the Western Cape - everything is green! The days have been glorious easy riding, we just seem to take evrything in our stride, and all focus is just to get us to the foot of the kloof that we need to climb before getting to Paarl.
It is quite amazing how the ride can be so different everyday. We climbed up the path under the power lines that Epic riders know so well - its hard to believe I actually rode most of that during the Epic - today I walked (stumbled) up, then it was into rolling wheat fields. At this time of the year they are bright green, and look like a well manicured lawn - such a change from the brown of the previous 3 weeks.
I stopped for lunch today on top of some remote hill, and was joined by Earle and Andy. Once we were settled, Andy hauled out his phone to check messages. After leaving a message for one of his mates, a car drives past with none other than the mate in question in it. Freaky! They drove past, then came back a few minutes later with wierd outfits, and waving banners. Earle and I were crying with laughter - Andy was over the moon.
We have got so used to being pampered (if that's what you can call it) by our hosts, that we had a bit of a disappointment at the McGregor stop. They treated us more like clients, than guests, food wasn't really enough, and they couldn't even organise us cereals for breakfast, as "We only do breakfast at 9am". But, every cloud has a silver lining. Andy called ahead to Kasra, which was our next stop, and arranged breakfast with them at 10am. When we arrived we were treated like kings. A full spread was laid out for us, and our food reserves were stocked up again - definitely made up for McGregor.
So we're at Dwarsberg now trying to work out how to rig bikes to our backpacks - tomorrow it the big day!
It is quite amazing how the ride can be so different everyday. We climbed up the path under the power lines that Epic riders know so well - its hard to believe I actually rode most of that during the Epic - today I walked (stumbled) up, then it was into rolling wheat fields. At this time of the year they are bright green, and look like a well manicured lawn - such a change from the brown of the previous 3 weeks.
I stopped for lunch today on top of some remote hill, and was joined by Earle and Andy. Once we were settled, Andy hauled out his phone to check messages. After leaving a message for one of his mates, a car drives past with none other than the mate in question in it. Freaky! They drove past, then came back a few minutes later with wierd outfits, and waving banners. Earle and I were crying with laughter - Andy was over the moon.
We have got so used to being pampered (if that's what you can call it) by our hosts, that we had a bit of a disappointment at the McGregor stop. They treated us more like clients, than guests, food wasn't really enough, and they couldn't even organise us cereals for breakfast, as "We only do breakfast at 9am". But, every cloud has a silver lining. Andy called ahead to Kasra, which was our next stop, and arranged breakfast with them at 10am. When we arrived we were treated like kings. A full spread was laid out for us, and our food reserves were stocked up again - definitely made up for McGregor.
So we're at Dwarsberg now trying to work out how to rig bikes to our backpacks - tomorrow it the big day!
posted by Andre at 3:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home