Biking to the Flowers of Namaqualand, South Africa

On September 8, while on holiday in South Africa, we loaded our bike and headed down the road...

On the road again

The Free State countryside was still brown after a severe winter but beautiful all the same

Our first overnight stop was Victoria West, 626km from home.   Victoria West, a small town in the heart of the Karoo,  is known for being the birthplace and hometown of famous Springbok Rugby player Francois du Toit Roux.  He was nicknamed Mannetjies (which means small man in Afrikaans) by a domestic worker.  You can read more about our National South African hero here. After we'd unloaded the bike luggage into our comfortable accommodation for the night, Grant and I walked downtown to visit the Mannetjies Roux Museum. I convinced Grant to pose in the cut-out in the museum.

Here I am as Mannetjies (Roux), while Grant is Frik (du Preez) one of the other Springbok players of the same era 

The sleepy town of Victoria West

In Marquard earlier that week, I'd visited Sanet, my hairdresser and friend of two decades .  She cut the mop of hair that had grown over the past three months, coloured it and generally made me feel brandnew again! I was the only  appointment she had that day as she was on her way to visit her fiance, Chris who has a law practice in Victoria West. We told her that we would see them on our travels. Which is what we did...

Eating out at a true-blue Karoo restaurant which served lamb (roasted, grilled, fried and stewed),  venison carpaccio, curried tripe and more. From left Chris, Sanet, me and Grant

Loaded and ready to ride on the second day of our trip across the Cape

The next morning it was time to move on. We loaded the bike and headed for the next stop, Clanwilliam approximately 700kms away.  To be continued...