Nature's Revenge on the Road Invaders

Don’t get me wrong – when I need to go to the airport, or to do my shopping, or go to work, or go anywhere in a hurry, I love tarred roads. I grew up in the sticks with an 8 mile drive to school on a dirt road – dust in winter, mud in summer. I like tarred roads.
But driving around the Eastern Cape, I was so taken with the small roads, the windy roads, the muddy and bumpy roads. If something man-made can be called organic, the roads we travelled on from Maclear through to Lady Grey are organic. They followed the contours of the hills. They splashed through rivers through fords and not over bridges, they crawled up the hills and eased along the flatter bits of land, holding the rain water and joining the dirt with the water to make sticky mud. The roads were affected by the weather and the underlying soil – we saw yellow roads, pink roads and yellow roads. We drove along rocky roads and sandy roads, and roads that suddenly changed from one to the other. Yes – organic roads that belonged to the landscape.
But from Lady Grey to Ladybrand, and then from Ladybrand to Clarens, we drove on tarred roads. They were Regional roads, and as such, not too big or well maintained. But they seemed to be invaders, aliens in the landscape. Whether they went straighter than the S roads (District Roads in KZN, but Streek roads in the Free State) because the land was flatter, or whether they had been tidied up and made straighter when they were tarred, they still seemed to dominate the landscape and to invade it.
We said a couple times that this was a bit dull – and then as we crossed into the Free State, nature got its revenge on the road. Potholes! Hundreds of them! We couldn’t drive straight along our side of our road – we had to twist and turn and dodge the holes and the oncoming cars which were doing the same. The rain filled the holes and water seemed to bubble up and erode the tar even further. The road was like a patchwork of tar and holes. Nature was taking its toll on the invader – gradually breaking it up.
We also drove through rain most of the way – the road was very wet and we thought there must have been a storm ahead, and with the mud on the truck, we thought it would be a good thing to catch up and get some mud washed off. When we got to Hobhouse and stopped for lunch (in the only coffee shop there was) they told us it had rained for 3 days and they had had 100mm of rain.
The Coffee Shop was quaint – it was in a leather workshop and the old couple who own it had retired to Hobhouse from Johannesburg. She took me into the house to use the loo, and followed us around the workshop showing us everything her husband and other craftspeople had made in great detail!
The road was bounded by little towns we had heard of but never visited before = Zastron, Wepener, Clocolan (on the other side of Ladybrand), Marquard and 2 we couldn’t find – Hammonia and Hibernia (the Garmin couldn’t find them and as there are no labels on the S roads in Free State, we went round in circles for a bit.)
The Lesotho mountains loomed on the west of us, and when we got to Fouriesburg, we took the road down to the Caledon Gate into Lesotho, we went down it and took some photos with Pete’s new camera – an amazing panorama!
We stayed near Ladybrand at St Augustine’s Priory - formerly an Anglican Priory but now a B and B and Conference Centre. There is a Cave church, used by the Anglican brothers in the 19th Century, but now being claimed as Mantsope’s Cave by AMAFA. It was interesting to see how the sandstone shelter had been enclosed with stone to make a cave with an altar and candle niches. The B and B is lavishly designed with top of the range curtains and bedding. Well worth a stop over if you are in the area.
Clarens was our next overnight. We have only been there before on a weekday – quiet and sleepy. On a weekend it is full of people in their SUVs, trailing from one artsy-craftsy shop to the next, or driving up the main street and then back down again in their convertibles. Much nicer on a weekday. But we stayed in a delightful B and B down near the river, where we had a great walk.
The drive home today took us down the last 2 passes – Lichen’s Pass in the Golden Gate National Park and the Oliviershoek Pass down to Bergville (the armpit of the Drakensberg) It brought our total number of passes to 11.
And then on the real invader – the N3 – 3 lanes each side, high speed traffic. It doesn’t just invade – it dominates, it conquers. But if I have to get to Pretoria in a day, I’ll choose it – tolls and all. But for peace and a feeling of being part of the landscape, give me a dirt road. Going nowhere slowly – a dream holiday.