Day 25 of 35 days in quarantine - and an old Freedom Road rally

Well here we are only (hopefully) ten days to go and since I last posted the wine's finished, the beer's finished, there's only half the whisky left and so we'll start scratching through the left overs. Otherwise we are both well and keeping our spirits up. (Excuse the pun!)

There's not much to report, I spend a lot of time on my computer and we binge watch Netflix and YouTube. I have thousands of photographs which I am sorting through, many of them are club photos which I am putting together and copying for the club before we go, that is keeping me busy. Almost ninety folders to be copied onto a stick which I will hand over to Gerrie.

Last Wednesday I went through to the mall near Vredenburg to do a bit of shopping at Pick 'n Pay, I went on the bike and it was wonderful! It's only roughly 20km round trip, I did extend it a bit on the way back but although I didn't see any Police checks I was hesitant to take chances. I blew the cobwebs out of the zorst on the way back and I really did not want to get off the bike, I so badly wanted to go shopping in Stellenbosch or Worcester or somewhere like that. I'm going again this Wednesday and I'm definitely going to extend the ride a bit. Lovely stuff, normally I hate going shopping!

As I said I have been sorting photos and here is a shout out to Jim and Daphne Barker who I know read this blog, they live in England but have been visiting South Africa almost annually for ages, they were here a couple of months ago and we chatted about the old rallies we attended together. They used to ride a lovely British Racing Green Triumph which he kept here.

Way back in 2007 we attended the Freedom Road rally in Stilbaai together, that was my first one but I went to quite a few after that including some in Struisbaai. We rode together, Jim and Daphne and I along with my old riding buddy Frank, they have all since stopped riding but those were the days. I particularly remember that Friday, fueling up at Ashton and then hitting the wonderful 46km stretch of the R60 to Swellendam on the N2. We blitzed along that winding, undulating piece of biker heaven, Jim and Daphne two up and loaded with kit could certainly ride. I had to slow him down as we neared Swellendam, warning him about the ever present traffic cops, it was an exhilarating ride and I felt the adrenaline rush subsiding as we waited for the others.

Braai time in the campsite after the tents had been set up, here's Jim and Daphne with another well known character from those days of weskus biking; Des whose introduction was "Hi my name's Des, what do you think of me so far?" That evening he announced that he was going to be the Naked Chef and dropped his rods but was prevented from going any further!

 

Jim and Frank go way back, long time friends

 Because the Freedom Road rally was under the auspices of the Christian Motorcycle Association there was no bar tent on site so a lot of the partying took place in various establishments around the town, we would then visit the bottle stores to take our preferred beverage into the campsite for the evening braai.

We had great times at those rallies and it was the memorable characters who took part that will keep those memories fresh. Thank you for the memories.