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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Saturday, November 22, 2008

Day 5 - Aliwal North to East London

We were awake early, probably because the room was so hot, I made us a cup of coffee and we got all of our things packed into the three cases. Again we decided not to have breakfast, this time because Presley's was so disorganised it would have taken until about 0900!
We were actually out on the road by 0620 and it was a lovely fresh morning with a clear blue sky, also at that time there was no wind. The only downside to heading east at that time of the day is that you are riding towards the rising sun and it can be a bit uncomfortable, we were heading more to the south east so it was more off to my left.
The bike was performing fantastically well, it felt really smooth, responsive and powerful and by then I was starting to feel "bike-fit". The road is amazing, well maintained and wide with a yellow line shoulder and there was really very little traffic. I relaxed my shoulders, straightened my arms a bit and moved in closer to the tank and started to enjoy the twisty bits as we thundered down towards the coast.
The eastern cape is different; the country side gradually becomes more lush, more trees around the small towns and the roads but also you start seeing animals along the road verges and you have to be more aware. Cattle are fine because they don't generally run anywhere but sheep and goats can be a real menace.
We arrived in Queenstown feeling a bit peckish and I had enjoyed that ride so much that I was really glad we had not tried to do it the previous night. We rode through the town and found a fast food restaurant at the one-stop on the way out to Cathcart where we had a pretty good toasted sarmie and a cup of coffee.
Carrying on from Queenstown it started to get pretty windy and the road slightly busier, I could see ahead that there was a lot of heavy cloud over the coast, we had been incredibly lucky up until then but I thought that it would soon run out and we would be getting wet.
The rain held off and it wasn't long before we were cruising into the familiar outskirts of East London, one of our favourite towns. We joined our friends Arnold and Joy for lunch at "Le Petit" restaurant where I had a wonderful crocodile steak - great to be back in East London!
460kms

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Andrew and Janet, your ride diary is fine motivation for me to get my buggered leg working again, and it is improving.

Always knew that the members of the "X-Force" were more than Biker Scum, Day 5 and not a bar room brawl yet !!!

Christie said...

I don't know Dave - I think that there was almost a brawl when wine was not available - although maybe you are right, fighting over wine is not very 'biker scum' hey?

It sounds fab dad - where's the rest?