Day 10: Romansfontein to Hofmeyr
I woke with a throbbing headache and feeling like crap despite a good night of sleep. The food the evening before had been too nice and I’d over indulged on the carbs, finishing off with chocolate cake and custard. I’d been walking a tightrope all week with the carbs, just managing to stay low enough for my preferred low carb diet. Now I’d blown it, and my knee’s were sore too, adding insult to injury. The downside of a special diet is that at some point you’ll crash and burn if you can’t stick with it. On the Freedom Challenge there’s only one diet, the eat whatever you’re served diet.
Again my hosts were up early to make me a wonderful breakfast, which I quickly ate before heading out into the cold. Rather than take the chance of getting lost leaving the farm I backtracked to the road and followed the easier route around. The extra 3km is nothing compared to the potential problems of a wrong turn leaving Romansfontein in the dark.
At day break I was at the infamous gate that marks the start of the Aasvoelsberg portage.
Once again I messed up the nav by starting to contour to the left too early. Unlucky for me the narrative matches the landscape on the alternative route for a little thus giving no clue that I’d taken a wrong turn. Once again I spent an hour walking around in circles looking for the track that wasn’t there until I worked out what I’d done wrong, of all my nav errors this was the most innocent and doubly frustrating because of it.
Once off the mountain it was a good dirt road all the way to Hofmeyr and should have only been taken 3 hours to do the 50km. The combination of a serious headwind, sore knees and zero energy meant 3 hours later I still had 20km to go. The only saving grace was the joy of once again cycling in the Karoo. One of those places that when your dog runs away from you, you can see it for 3 days.
With 20km to go and an ETA long after lunch it was obvious that to push on from Hofmeyer would give me a very late and painful arrival in Elandsberg(if at all) and maybe screw my knee’s up. I had two main goals for FC: 1. finish within the 26 day deadline, 2. go home injury free. I swallowed my pride and let race office know I’d like to use the emergency stop in town. The rest as they say, is history.
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Day 11: Hofmeyr – Newlands
The afternoon off had done wonders for my moral but my knee’s were still far from 100%. So I decided to take it nice and slow on the cold Karoo morning.
The Elandsberg portage went smooth, the tiger line for the second half wasn’t the best line but I’d lost the path. Not the end of the world. I arrived in Elandsberg in time for an early lunch and left as quick as possible because the pet meerkat kept trying to hump my shoes while I was eating, in the process digging its nails in my sore ankles that were now dry and flakey from the frostbite a week earlier. I took a slow and beautiful ride to Newlands and decided to stay there to rest my knee’s again. Once upon a time I thought 70km was an awfully long day of cycling. Now I was considering 70km of dirt road plus a portage as a rest day, perspective is an amusing thing.
The advantage of two support stations in one day is two boxes, which meant two cards and two whiskeys 🙂
More excellent food and great company before an early night. I planned another early start to try and catch up some time. I felt Batch 2+3 snapping at my heels and half expected Martin Dreyer to pass in the night.
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Day 12: Newlands – Jackhalsfontein – Gegun
The exit in the dark went fairly well, I only briefly took the left turn that Pierre had warned me not to and was soon on track. The 28km to Rockdale took much longer than I hoped, but my knee’s were slowly warming up “I’ll keep them”. Starting the Schurfteberg I was about an hour behind my plan for the day, when I rolled into Jackhalsfontein before lunch I was 1.5 hours ahead, things were picking up. I decided I was going to gun it to Gegun, 90 something kilometres away.
“Ohh, I wasn’t expecting anyone today” The lady was very apologetic while I ripped open my box, in a hurry to grab my maps, have a quick snack and move on. I mentioned that batch 2-3 were only a couple of hours behind me and that Martin would probably pass soon to. The mild panic in her eyes was obvious. I was feeling quite hungry and had a craving for vegetables so the offer of lunch brought me to a grinding halt. Ten minutes later a nice veggie omelette with bacon was disappearing into my face, washed down with Freedom trail coffee, the 5 star touring was still in full swing. Within 30 minutes of arriving I was on the road again, on a mission to not let Batch 2 catch me that day. It felt weird to just lunch at run, but I guess I needed to get more used to the idea than the hosts. At all the lunch stops and even the evening stops to be honest I would have like to hang around longer for a good chat with all these super hospitable farmers and hear more about what they are doing and learn more about their choice to live in the middle of a desert.
For the first hour I had a cracking tailwind and my legs were on fire. “Make hay while the sun shines”. I ran out of steam about ten minutes after the wind direction changed , the thought of another 70km to go a little worrying.
The ride up to the Struishoek portage seemed to take forever, just steep enough to be a pain, just enough gates to stop me getting into a rhythm. The gates are a tedious business when riding alone. Stop, work out how the damn thing opens, open it, push the bike through, close it, move on, five minutes later repeat. I quickly adopted a 15 second rule, if I didn’t think I’d have it open within 15 seconds I just lifted my bike over and climbed or jumped over.
I couldn’t understand where the Struishoek portage was supposed to come from, I was fairly sure I was getting to the top of the valley and couldn’t see any mountains.
“Beyond the pedestrian gate, the track disappears but follow the white rocks through the veld and down into a gulley. The path becomes clearer as it starts to drop down on the left of a dry stream bed which runs down the valley.”
“Ooh, a portage downhill, thats new”. With a little rolling of ankles, knocking of knee’s and untangling my wheels from the bushes I made it off Struishoek before dark, much to my relief.
Then it was a quick blast along the road towards Pearston then I turned back into the wind towards Gegun. Wind, dark, cold, corregations and uncooperative legs meant the last 8km were a miserable and slow business that took more than an hour. But I eventually arrived to the ghost house that is Gegun.
The house was deserted, only a small light on in the living room.”Is this the place? ” the last thing I wanted was to get shot for trespassing. After hunting around for a key or open door I spotted the FC boxes through the kitchen window….and relax. An hour later I was in bed, once again with a full belly and content feeling I was another 140 bone crunching kilometres closer to my blanket. Batch 2-3 had stayed at Jackhalsfontein, and I’d stayed ahead of Martin Dreyer for one more day. I’d been trail breaker for the last nine days and that would soon be over.
My toughest day on the Freedom Challenge was done, only 12 toughest days to go.
