As we were having breakfast at 4:30 am, in
walked Brad vd Westhuizen. He broke away
from his group, he needed time alone.
That’s the Freedom for you.
Prince Albert is about 170km away and it’s
the only stretch in the Freedom that is flat (only 800m of ascent). As we rode out of Willowmore, Leon, riding at
the back, got pulled over by the local police for suspicious behaviour…
Brackenfellar! It was good to know that
the police are very diligent in this part of the country.
We were making very good time early on and
started thinking of maybe pushing thru to Gamkaskloof. We started off a bit too late in the morning,
but the seeds were planted. There was no
headwind in the day, so we motored, only stopping every now and then to lube
our chains and eat something. I rode
some time with Scotty and got all his background. It turns out that I’ve met quite a lot of his
family and friends. Small world.
There are only 7 farm houses on this
stretch. And to keep us from getting too
bored, a bit of sand or corrugation is chucked in every now and then. At Rondawel we met the newest arrival of
Karien, only 1 week old. The tame Black
Backed Jackal was however nowhere to be seen.
The road after Rondawel is a little more up
and down. At some stage I stopped to
lube my chain. Because I was the
stronger rider during that stretch, I told the other to keep going, I’ll catch
up later. When I got to the top of the
hill, I couldn’t see the other riders, so I gunned it. At the top of the next hill, I still couldn’t
see them. So I decided that I’ll take it
a bit easier – they’ll have to stop sometime.
About 20 min later, I heard some giggling going on behind me, and there
were the 3 buggers. They played hide and
seek with me…
We kept the pace up a bit and took turns at
the front. All to make up time to push
thru to Gamkaskloof. The headwind picked
up a bit, and made us work hard when up front.
The people to take their turn at the front did not include our
Scotty. With about 10km to go, we
mentioned it to our Scotty. He promptly
took his turn up front and sprinted off into the sunset… Bike ethics!
In the last part of section Leon got a rear
tyre puncture. I took a nap whilst he
was fixing it, and got woken up by a baboon, like the normal one walking on
four legs. I’m not sure who got the
biggest fright, but boy that baboon disappeared in a dust cloud. And obviously nobody saw it! More banter followed. A little later on I broke a spoke in the rear
tyre. Were these omens for us having to
stay over at Prince Albert?
We lost some time with the above
mechanicals and only got in at 4pm. I
still had to replace the spoke and needed some proper bike tools to remove the
cassette. I had to do the fix at
Dennehof, because there are no tools at Gamkaskloof. You sleep there in a caravan. In the end we decided to stay and enjoy the hospitality
of Lindsey and Ria, and the 300g percale duvets…
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