Herds of motorbikes, devil chimneys, and the many roads to and from home
The boys were in a wooden cat box on the front passenger seat. Sean was about eight years old then, the most handsome ginger that ever lived. Chai was just five, a thoughtful chocolate Burmese with a nervous disposition who craved my protection.
The car, a 2005 Kia saloon that was to give me endless trouble in the three years to follow, was so thoroughly packed that I could barely see out of the rear window. Weighing it down further was a bright green 30kg plastic tub of kalamata olives that had been delivered to a hotel in the Dutoitskloof Pass. This would form the basis of my future olive tapenade at the tearoom we were about to take over in Cradock.
Back in the car after two studly young men have winched it onto the rear seat, I stroke the kitties' noses through the chicken mesh grille of the box and start the engine. Click, silence. Battery kaput. I need to get to Cradock before nightfall; I had lousy night vision, even then. (It's much worse now.)
I can still picture their astonished faces
The dudes who had been sent to help me looked at me the way men look at the sort of man who doesn't know about car engines, and sauntered off to fetch the sort of things that men who do know about car engines fetch when they need to help an idiot.
At which point I found myself idly turning the ignition. And the engine purred into life. I can still picture their astonished faces. Cheers, A-type dudes!
De Doorns and Touws River pass by unnoticed, and even my beloved Matjiesfontein swishes by, with no chance of that lamb curry I've ordered a hundred times, or those four lamb chops.
But at Laingsburg, 200km later, when I emerged from the Steers after a very late breakfast (because I was scared to stop before then in case the car wouldn't start), you know what happened.
I'd thought that two hours of driving would be enough to recharge the battery. It was noon. A yellow AA bakkie from Laingsburg took two hours to reach me. Laingsburg is 27km away. I finally departed, new battery having been installed, after 2pm.
Sandra Antrobus, who had everything to do with our move to Cradock, had said to me: Tony, be very careful, especially for the last part of the drive. It's in the final 20km of a journey that most accidents happen.
From Laingsburg, you stay on the N1 for the 199km to Beaufort West, then turn right at the BP garage for the 146km to Aberdeen, where normally I'd stop at the Camdeboo farmstall for a coffee. But I continued for the 55km to Graaff-Reinet, after which you course via three strikingly similar passes — it's hard to tell them apart until you know the route better — and then turn right onto the R61 via Wapadsberg towards Cradock, 93km on.
I looked to my left as the three seemingly identical koppies that guard the approach to Cradock drifted by. The 'Cradock 20' sign eyed me dolefully.
I wrote this a few days later for my then column in Weekend Argus, picking up the story around Aberdeen:
Eerie koppies with devil chimneys
'I drive madly, rashly, but with desperate concentration, because I have to make it on time and safely. I have never been more focused behind the wheel. I push speeds 20km/h faster than I have ever done. Best I don't name the speeds. The day slips by in a welter of tension and fretting, scenes of endless Karoo veld, eerie koppies with devil chimneys, aloe-clad hillsides and occasional sheep, cattle and stray vervet monkeys whipping past me on fast-forward.
'Wapadsberg behind me, the sun dipping low, I pass the 20km sign as I can see the mountains near Cradock. I remind myself that it is in the last stretch of a long journey that most accidents happen, as you start to relax and push through the last few kilometres. I relax a little, the road curves, and the car is off the road. Screeching, gravel churning. Cats yowling. I manage to find the tar again but now the car is careering wildly left and right as I try to regain control. The cat box turns on its side, things are falling on top of me out of the back seat, and I'm steering desperately with one hand while slowing and uprighting the cat box with the other, making soothing noises to the terrified felines.
'When calm returns, I call the cats each by name, listening for their distinctive voices. I hear both voices in reply, and soon Cradock arrives. The olives, like the cats and their stupid, rash owner, survive to tell the tale. This tale. Within days, some of the olives will be marinating in lemon zest and juice, olive oil, rosemary and garlic. For now, they're just home. And so are we.'
A decade later there would be different cats, soon to be in our car, but this time moving to Cape Town with us. Behind us there will be years of memories, journeys, braais, writers' festivals, and even a house named after me in Market Street. All of it impossible to imagine on that day in September 2014.
Sean and Chai lived happy Karoo lives for years after that, first in the Schreiner Tearoom in Market Street and then in our home, until the time came for them to leave us, first Sean, and then Chai the following year. Chai had gone blind, first in one eye and then the other, because of over-breeding of these beautiful cats by humans more interested in their potential in competitions than their welfare and health. Chai, I decided as a consequence, would be my last Burmese.
Oblivious of our strange human ways, the pair of them, and now our girls Sky and Bo, saw us go off many times in the big grumbling beast, to places their kitty minds couldn't imagine. With every trip, we got to know the Karoo and its long roads better.
Who knows how many trips there have been to Cape Town and back, often using a different route for the return journey. Often, we'd stop overnight at Matjiesfontein en route there. That had us in the city by lunch time, but on other occasions we'd leave Cape Town after lunch to arrive in Matjiesfontein for the night, then have the six-hour drive home the next day.
At successive Karoo Writers Festivals in Cradock, people such as Lisba Vosloo, a filmmaker and fellow Schreinerphile, would urge me to try Route 62 next time. Only slightly longer than the N1 route, I was told, but hardly any trucks and very scenic. Once we'd done that, it soon became my favourite, unless time was a factor, in which case the N1 it would be. It's not so much that Route 62 is much longer, it's just more conducive to distractions and lingering too long at stops along the way.
Route 62 — 'I'm back in the Karoo'
Route 62 is the best route by far if you want to reach Cradock from the Western Cape. These days, we leave the city on the N1. When you get to Worcester, you cruise along, at 100km an hour for fear of a traffic fine, until you're at the last robot before you've passed the town. Here you turn right and weave your way to the road to Robertson, where you stop at The Four Cousins for breakfast or coffee and a snack. The Four Cousins has a lovely wine and spirits shop. They even have sturdy little metal barrels of beer. And live chickens.
Driving on for about 15km you come to Ashton, and only 6km further on you're in Montagu, and for the first time you feel, 'I'm back in the Karoo.' Montagu is quite possibly the prettiest town in the country, so perfectly beautiful that you wish you could live there. Which you may not be able to do unless you're one of those blessed (or cursed) with too much money.
Everything is green as you leave Montagu and head towards Barrydale, and even as you approach this sought-after town it's all very 'Western Cape' and postcard-worthy. You order a melktert milkshake at Diesel & Crème and only four spoonfuls in you realise that there's enough ice cream in it to ground a Zeppelin and you'll need a six-month diet to survive it.
Even as you drive out of Barrydale towards Ronnie's Sex Shop, the terrain has changed to something distinctly more Karoo-like. Not the skeleton-dry aridity of the far Northern Cape — the least attractive region of the Karoo — but a gentler, prettier sort of dryness. The kind of Karoo that makes sheep happy and cattle listless.
There are always macho motorbikes parked in the gravel lot outside Ronnie's. Those five bikes that roared past you 15 minutes earlier are now still and quiet, their owners ordering the food and drinks that bikers order when you're not looking in your rear view mirror while you move over to let them pass. But I'll come back to this…
The Huisrivier Pass once you've driven through placid Ladismith is a granite spectacle. The towering Huisrivier mountains, a spur of the Swartberg, distract your eye from the winding road with its retaining walls and cutaways for viewing the glory all around.
Suddenly the pass is behind you and Calitzdorp is ahead. A bottle of port (yes, I call it that, sue me) from De Krans or Bo-Plaas is worth a diversion in winter, and once you pull out of town it's only 54km to Oudtshoorn where, I must be honest, we never stop other than for petrol or some chops and salads from the Spar on the main drag through town.
This is because of our love for De Rust, only 35km away, sitting snugly against the mountains just before you would drive into achingly beautiful Meiringspoort which has seared itself into my soul. Continue that way and you reach Klaarstroom and then, turning left, Prince Albert via a long and verdant valley. After Meiringspoort you have two ways of returning to the N1, in fact — straight on to Beaufort West or left to Prince Albert and on to the N1 at Prince Albert Road. These are options to consider if you like mixing and matching your routes.
But it's rare that we go that way, as, after leaving De Rust, we need to turn right towards Willowmore and then on to Aberdeen. This is where we connect with the other route, via Beaufort West, so the rest of this route home is identical to the shorter route.
But don't just drive by Williston if you come this way. It's small but pretty, with interesting little shops selling all sorts, a café or two, and even one of the Karoo's Royal Hotels. Unlike the much trendier Barrydale, it is unspoilt and very much the kind of dorp found in an earlier version of the Karoo.
Once, we stayed at The Willow, an historical guest house filled with memories of apartheid. It's the strangest place, a curiosity which, I thought then and think now, is an ideal way to give a tourist some kind of idea what it was like to live during the dark decades of oppression. I see online that it is still operating.
But thoughts quickly brighten when we're back on the maddeningly straight road to Aberdeen. On this stretch, pull into the eccentricity that is Oppi-Vlak padstal, where animals cluck, quack and grunt and the gifts and souvenirs are abundant.
And here we are in Aberdeen again, where the R61 from Beaufort West connects with the N9 from George and Willowmore. I'm picturing the white Kia roaring by en route to the 'Cradock 20' sign, and wary silence in the cat box.
A scenic wonder often overlooked
Reaching Cradock from Cape Town via the N2 is by far the longest route, but it does have the Garden Route and that excellent drive through Tsitsikamma forest before you wave at Jeffrey's Bay as you cruise by towards Port Elizabeth, as it was still called when first we traversed the N2 to Cape Town or back from it.
You can count on a yawn-inducing 10 hours of driving all the way to Cradock, and really, it's too much for me in one day, so we always stop overnight. Often it's been with friends Ann and Retief Kotze in Sedgefield, reminiscing about past family times together, or with Des Lindberg in Plettenberg Bay, where conversation is full of old stories of music, theatre and life, and most recently at The Plettenberg in that resort town.
If heading to Cradock via PE/Gqeberha from Cape Town, another possibility presents itself. Just 11km after Swellendam, turn left onto the R324 towards the Langeberg range to drive — via the long and narrow Suurbraak village — through the magnificent Tradouw Pass, a scenic wonder often overlooked.
Only 46km from Swellendam you reach Barrydale, presenting an alternative if you want to leave Cape Town on the N2 instead of the N1 towards Worcester, Ashton and Montagu. We once drove from Arniston, our favourite coastal village, via Swellendam and then hopped over the mountain to Barrydale to make our way to Cradock on the R62.
It's amazing how you can mix up your routes when, one day, you turn off the main drag and see what lies ahead.
Locals love to stop at Nanaga
But let's turn back to the N2. Let's say we have reached PE whichever route we've taken, and we depart the city and pull onto the 'Grahamstown road' as I tend to think of it (from my old days of attending festivals there), but instead of veering left onto the road to that cathedral city we stay on the N10 towards Cradock.
I soon learnt that locals love to stop at Nanaga, the huge farmstall complex on an island between these intersectional routes. Then, it's dreary Paterson (no reason to stop that I know of), and even drearier Cookhouse. There's pretty scenery along this route but not much to pull over for.
Unless.
Once, on the road from Cradock and Cookhouse via Olifantskop Pass and Paterson beyond, I spied a motorbike far in front of me. As I got closer, it cloned itself. There were two, three, then five, seven, 10… a herd of 12 motorbikes, and not going very fast either. I needed to overtake. But they'd left hardly any gaps between them. Collectively, they equalled three long trucks. I had scant option but to remain stuck behind them and get to my destination late.
Maybe they'd all pull over. But there was no Ronnie's Sex Shop or Diesel & Crème on this route to beckon them in and fatten them up. Then I spotted a line of white cars with blue lights just off the road ahead, and we were all flagged down. Lots of cops, many cars, and 12 bikes.
When a traffic officer reached us, I answered his questions, showed him my driver's licence, and said, 'Officer, please help me out. You see those 12 bikes? I've been stuck behind them for 20km. Any chance I could go ahead of them?'
Leave it with me, he said, walking into the middle of the road, holding his hands up to the bikes that were now revving mightily, and waving me to sail ahead, leaving them trembling in my wake. Hah!
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