NEW DT OCT 21

Lindley Road
Unfortunately she had to spend the rest of the trip in the backup
vehicle.
Lucly the Africa Twin adv
sport is tubeless.
Checking the tyre pressure
From Lindley we took more backroads to Rosendal where we
had lunch at Op die Dam restaurant. If you’ve never been to
Rosendal, I suggest you put it on your list. It’s a charming town
and the city dwellers are only now discovering it. I suspect it
will soon trend and then become the kind of tourist trap that we
bikers prefer to avoid. But that is still a couple of years away, so
make sure to visit.
Between Rosendal and Clocolan disaster struck. The Provincial
Roads Department only grades the dirt roads in the area once
every six years after the local farmers threaten court action.
There was no way we could have known that their threats paid
off and the roads were graded, enthusiastically by the look of
things, the day before we arrived. What was supposed to be
easy riding on neglected roads, was now nail-biting riding on
loose gravel as deep as the sands of the Kalahari. I was in front,
with my wife Sonja riding pillion and there was no chance to stop
and warn the others. Gunning it was the only option. The group
followed and even managed to pick up the pace as they realised
sand was easier at speed.
My remarks about tyre pressures did come back to bite me in
the butt when I struck or loose rock and ended up fixing a tyre
while the others made their way to Clocolan to refuel.
From there we made our way to St. Augustines, tired, dirty, but
happy. A bonfire, cold beers and braaivleis awaited. We declared
day one done at around 9 in the evening.
Everybody was looking forward to day two, the day of the Orange
Routes with the first stretch taking us up a hardly ever used
mountain pass, across the plateau and down the other side on
the way to a farm named Sumatra. The early settlers obviously
had a sense of humour or they named it in honour of the island
on which they sat out the Anglo Boer as prisoners of war. Before
we could leave, we had to fix our second flat of the trip, a tubed
tyre this time. We wasted little time dispensing with the job.
The lodging for the night