We reached the mountain top in the Malutis as it began to snow. The icy wind bit into our cheeks. The weather was closing in fast. We had to find an abandoned police station. A jeep track from it would take us down the other side. Two of us were severely stressed; one on the verge of tears, the other shaking uncontrollably from the cold.
A Basuto man on horseback appeared and offered to show the way. A volunteer, Jan Marie Naude, had been waiting for several hours at the former police station. She was leaving in her 4×4 when the first of our party stopped her. A minute later and she would have been gone. The two stressed cyclists jumped in the back of the bakkie. We raced off the mountain, moving from sleet to gently falling snow.
The Coetzee family, who farm here, took us in and gave us coffee and rusks. Gert Coetzee said they get some weird people here. We were the weirdest. "There are three things we don't do. We don't ride bicycles, we don't make snowmen and we don't go to Switzerland on holiday."
We still had to traverse the country's highest pass, Naude's Nek, 500m above us. But the storm was raging so we aborted, taking refuge on Naude's farm, Vredenrus. But reaching warmth and safety raised concerns for another biker, André Britz. He was ahead, but had not yet reached the next stop, Rhodes.
News came in later from Britz. He was safe. He had tried to ascend the 900m Lehana's Pass, taking three hours. He retreated quickly from the white-out conditions. On a second route, he found two shepherds who warned him to get off the mountain as soon as possible. He aborted a second time, taking refuge at Mount Fletcher, the nearest town. A lift brought him to join the rest of us later that afternoon.
Britz, who is blogging his trip at andrebritz.blogspot.com, spent two nights (before he sought refuge at nightfall) with four young shepherds in their mountain hut.
He sold a car to buy his bike; his hosts are dirt poor. They live in mountain shelters made of rock and sleep together for warmth. They own their clothes and a blanket each, and not much else, if you don't count their 220 sheep, which are worth about R550 each.
He was keen to be on his way in the morning, but they first took him to see Bushman paintings. When Britz moved closer for a better look, he was gently restrained. The shepherds are the guardians of these paintings.
Pietermaritzburg
The police station is about 500km from where our journey began six days earlier, in Pietermaritzburg. We cycled through the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, through sugar and timber plantations, to the southern Drakens-berg. We crossed the Umkomaas, the Umzimkulu and the Umzimvubu rivers. We marvelled at magnificent churches — cathedrals really — at Centacow and Mariazell.
We traversed the valley that is the genesis of one of the most famous sentences in South African literature. Alan Paton describes these hills as "lovely beyond any singing of it". His description held true for our entire journey.
As we cycled through the Bisley reserve, just a few kilometres from the KwaZulu-Natal capital, we heard a fish eagle cry, heralding what was to come.
We traversed a vast space, each vista as majestic as the last.
We were hosted on a farm, in a rural township, in a community-run lodge, at a mission and at a school. Where cyclists do not reach the overnight stations, they are taken in by a farmer, a shopkeeper, a school principal or shepherds. They tell stories of being humbled by the generosity of their hosts.
Ntsikeni
Within 2km of our destination on the second night, our group got lost. The mist descended and we could not see Ntsikeni, the peak that dominates the area.
Then there was a drunken voice calling out in Zulu and this fellow appeared from the darkness. We could carry on being lost or follow this inebriated soul. We followed, with him shouting curses at unseen people, his sentences beginning or ending with "fug off". But he took us to exactly where we wanted to be, Ntsikeni Lodge.
The lodge is set in as magnificent an area as I have seen. The area is home to wattled crane, but breeding has been less than successful as grass fires have prevented eggs from hatching. Now, under a new conservator, recruited locally, cattle grazing is permitted so long as there are no fires.
Leaving the reserve the next morning, someone said, "Look what's coming down the hill." It was a pair of wattled crane, coming to get a closer look at us. They are surprisingly tall. "Six foot," said the farmer from Umzimkulu.
Matatiele We were on a formal trail, the Freedom Trail, although you won't see any signs that tell you this. Quite often, there were no tracks at all. Typically, we cycled on dirt roads, followed footpaths from the dirt road and then animal tracks as we lost sign of anyone ever having been here before.
We followed our maps to the other side of the escarpment where, for instance, there would be a single, unused kraal with a jeep track leading to it.
Our route was not linked by roads. Even using dirt roads from one outpost to the next can mean a journey of hundreds of kilometres. It was also often of no use asking locals for directions, because they had never used our route.
We were following a trail run in 2003, from Cape Town to Pietermaritzburg, by environmental lawyer David Waddilove. He sought the shortest distance, but used only by-ways, dirt roads, jeep tracks and footpaths connecting the remotest and most pristine parts of the country on a 2 300km continuous trail, which also tracks two of the country's longest mountain ranges, the Drakensberg and the Swartberg. It passes through a number of dorps, but in all only 60km is on tar.
On day five, we came down a ridge to the Tinana mission. A lunch of roast chicken and sandwiches with boiled eggs, chips and Coke awaited us.
We had followed tracks made by the wheel-less sledges that the locals use. Waddilove said we could have taken a more direct route. All I could see was bush and sheer cliff faces. He calls this most direct route "the line of desire".
I realised that afternoon — as we navigated yet another area that had no footpaths and, in this case, huge dongas as well — that Waddi-love has connected 2 300km of the country on a line of desire.
There are already accommodation options every 50km or so for much of the trail. In some cases, locals have been trained as guides.
Poverty relief money is available from the government to establish route markings.
In time, the trail could make the same kind of impact, relatively speaking, as, for instance, the Appalachian Trail in the United States.
Matatiele, for one, sees big potential in the Freedom Trail. We were hosted on arrival at a mayoral function. The next morning, there were more official cars than cyclists to escort us through the town, past lines of schoolchildren on both sides of the road.
Malekhalonyane
Our route is so remote that Eskom, noted for reaching far-flung parts, does not come here. The impressive mission at Mariazell — home to a 500-pupil high school that produces star grades, including in maths and science — runs its own hydroelectric power station.
We were hosted at a community-run lodge in the Malekhalonyane reserve. Food is traditional. "Whatever you do, don't change the menu," the cyclists tell our hosts.
Blackfontein
Journeys like this are remarkable for what you see and who you meet.
Florence Morrison runs the Black Fountain trading store. She is situated at the top of the escarpment, about 10km from Lesotho. By her own estimation, her shop only serves five households. It is said that shepherds come from Lesotho, but the 79-year-old says not.
"This lot steal cattle from that lot. That lot steal from this lot. The defence force came to stop the stealing. The police have a border post here now, so no one crosses the border."
Personal stories in these areas can take on biblical proportions. Morrison came here in 1994 with her husband and 40 cattle, attracted by the sweet grass.
"We were new and didn't know you have to have a shed for the cattle," she says. In the heavy snows of 1995, they watched as their cattle died in front of their eyes. As many as nine a day. "It was such good, fresh meat and we couldn't even give it away," she says.
The shock of losing their herd killed her husband, Morrison tells us. She started again with a single calf, which she kept alive through hand rearing.
Rhodes
Waddilove woke us, flinging open the door of our cottage at Vredenrus. "Here's the weather report." It was a beautiful, clear day. We would cycle the snow-clad mountains to Rhodes in bright sunshine. We stopped briefly after our last climb to throw snowballs at one another.
As a sojourner in the United Kingdom more than two decades back, I was struck by the system of public footpaths that connect the country. We had then begun to open trails in nature areas, but the idea of connecting the breadth of country on a continuous trail seemed unlikely in the fortress-type conditions of apartheid South Africa.
Even in the new South Africa the idea is challenging. So many private, communal, corporate and public entities have to, in some way, agree to participate. Just getting permissions could take years.
But Waddilove has done it, building a database of more than 200 people along the route who all contribute. It is an enormous achievement, but you won't find him shouting from the rooftops. He is unassuming and speaks little of himself.
The new South Africa bristles with creative energy. New ideas, great ideas. And I can't think of a finer idea than creating a continuous trail from one end of the country to the other.
Biker's Iditarod
The Freedom Challenge has been an annual event since 2004. Mountain bikers leave the day after the Comrades marathon for Paarl. Founder David Waddilove is one of 11 people who have cycled the full distance.
Five people, including Waddi-love, have run Comrades, cycled to Paarl and paddled the four-day Berg river canoe marathon.
This year, six people signed up for the full monty, the cycle to Paarl, and a further six of us for a wussy, 500km version to Rhodes.
When we arrived at Rhodes, two competitors, Cornell van der Westhuizen and Ben Swanepoel, were already 500km ahead of us.
Competitors pick up maps and supplies at support stations set about 100km apart. Here they eat, shower and sleep. They get no other support.
Averaging 140km a day (about 14 to 16 hours), Van der Westhuizen and Swanepoel took 16 days to get to Paarl, eclipsing the previous record of 19 days.
If this seems extreme, it is meant to be. Waddilove has modelled the challenge on arguably the world's foremost endurance race, the Iditarod, which pitches man and dogs against the Arctic.
"If the event ever gets popular, there could be a plagiarism objection," he said, smiling.
But the annual dash by bike to the Cape is not the real point of the trail. "David had this dream of creating a trail across the country," said his brother, Ian, who cycled to Rhodes. The race to the Cape is simply a means to publicise the trail. For more info, go to www.freedomchallenge.org.za. — Kevin Davie
