Westward to P.E. …(and parts in between…)

Our helmet communication systems  were working a treat. Besides listening to music and the Garmin Chick, I had not had an opportunity to test it with another Blue-tooth unit, and was therefore grateful for this opportunity today. We chatted non-stop for almost 7 hours on our units and agreed that they were the best we had experienced so far…

Jock and I... Farm Stall above the confluence of the Kap and Fish Rivers, Eastern Cape...

We stopped at a little farm stall, just after crossing the Fish River

High above the Kap River, it's confluence with the Fish River in the background...

and it’s

wide flood plain, and gulped down a bottle of homemade Pineapple juice. The owner, who lived on the farm which the stall was situated on, practically insisted that we ride down the gravel road to his house, and wander about to look at the spectacular views from his garden. How could we refuse this kind offer ?? We had the rest of our lives ahead us, after all…. Time was surely NOT a factor…?? We parked near his back door and walked out to the edge of the garden and looked down onto the Kap River far below us. It entered the Fish River in the distance, and this little interlude was well worth the few minutes we spent there, marveling at the mountains around us, and the steep valleys below… More of God’s Country…

Traffic was light, and to make up some time, we cruised down the coast at a steady clip and made it to Port Alfred in good time… And yes, hard as it is to believe, Jock had a friend who lived there….!!

The Triumph and a Norton... A new lease of life for both...

Dave Hawkins and his charming wife Dalene, live in a beautiful

Dave Hawkins watches as Jock attempts a tango with his bike....

house on the edge of the golf course, where he (in his “spare time”) lovingly restores vintage cars and their two-wheeled counterparts… When we arrived, he was pottering about with the latest addition to his already considerable collection, a 1938 MG Roadster…. It had been stripped down to the chassis, and was now in the “building-back-up phase”… In a garage nearby, he showed us two motorcycles, a Triumph and a Norton, which he was also in the process of restoring…   Back in the kitchen, Dalene had rustled up a light lunch for us, and we sat at the kitchen counter discussing biking trips that Dave and Dalene had undertaken on their BMW 1200 LT, a big beast of a bike that sat behind the MG, waiting patiently for it’s next outing… Dave is a leading member of the Historical Society (which Jock refers to as the Hysterical Society…) and is a registered guide who often leads interested parties on tours of the various historical sites in this part of the world, where the 1820 Settlers first set foot on African soil… This area is steeped in history, and had it not been for my time constraints, I would have loved to spend more time here… Maybe on the way back, Dave…..!!!

Then it was onto the gravel… We followed the road which heads north off the R72 just after the exit from Port Alfred. We had intended to ride through the Kariega Coservancy area, but while we were messing about with some filming (Jock doing the honours while we barreled along at speeds in excess of 60km/h…), we missed the turnoff just before Southwell, and continued straight on, the sand road following the course of the Kariega River until it crossed the Cowie River some 40 kilometres later… The last section was tarred and wound down to the Cowie River and then back up the slopes of the mountains until it met up with the R67 and a short distance later, theN2, just outside Grahamstown. It was great riding this section, and despite that I had some misgivings when Jock advised that we had some gravel roads to ride, the bike and I handled it with ease….

Gravel to Grahamstown....

Rear View Mirror... Jock catches me coming up at speed...

The road in the background crosses the Cowie River in the valley below...

Where the heck are we...!! Jock consults his GPS....

Mountain Rest Stop...

We stopped a guy who was out taking a walk and he kindly took a few photos of us… Then it was in to Grahamstown, where we stopped at the 1820 Settlers Monument to look down into the town…. Jock pointed out St. Andrews to me, and I thought of Jonathan More, Nick’s eldest son, who was down there somewhere, following in the family tradition…. We parked the bikes and wandered about inside, Jock lying down on the floor in the main foyer to take a few photos of me… He seemed completely oblivious of the people walking around him, giving him the “Bloody Tourists” look…..

Run, Forrest....!!!!! The Rise of the Statue....!!! Coming soon to a theatre near you...!!!

Satisfied that we had demonstrated that we were “Men of Culture”, we got back on the bikes and went “heavy” on the throttle, zooming down the N2, and stopping at Colchester for some “Motion Lotion”….. That’s petrol, Dudes !!!!!

The sun was sinking fast in the western sky as we thundered into Port Elizabeth, Jock and I kept up the chatter on our Intercom systems, with him relating the story of the guy who invented the “Doll-osse” which lined the breakwater on the entry into the city…. The huge concrete “bollards” for want of a better word, protect the highway from the big storms which blow off the ocean from time to time. The patent for them is owned by the South African Railways, or Spoornet as it is known today, as the guy who invented them had been working for them at the time.  (Forgotten his name… Sorry, Jock !) He received an ex-gratia payment from his employers, of about Stg 10 000.00….

I thought back to my previous visit here, on my first “Big Ride” and the afternoon that Hendrik Verwey and I fished off these very same structures… It was more like casting, than fishing, as we seemed to spend more time tying on bait and lobbing it out to sea than anything else…but I do remember catching a small Hammerhead Shark, and Hendrik reeling a few other inedible fish…

We finally arrived at the house of Jock’s good friend, Rob Gush. He and I had been communicating via email for almost two years, and had yet to meet face to face… He hugged both Jock and I happily and within minutes we had been introduced to his wife Margie and their daughter Dianne. and then set about swapping biker’s yarns, in the age old tradition…

Big Rob Gush... Face to face after two years of electronic communication...

Rob had recently done his Achilles tendon a serious damage,and was hobbling about with the occasional grunt of pain…. So, realizing that a game of basketball was out the question, we settled down and had a beer instead… We’re a pragmatic lot, us Bikers…

© GBWT 2010