The Only Way Is Up, Baby

The Cape Peninsular (looking north)

The thing about going to work every day (so far as I can remember) is that you have to actually get there.  If you don't turn up then, generally speaking, you'll not get paid, get sacked, or have to produce a doctor's certificate or a baby.  So, however dark and cold the morning, whatever the weather and no matter what else (or who) you'd rather  be doing, you just kinda have to go.

Not so for us adventurers, who can easily miss a day or three if we feel like it.  If, for example, the rain is lashing against the windows and the sun barely rises before you do, your discerning motorcyclist may decide 'Sod that', snooze for another hour and linger over a cooked breakfast and the morning's newspapers.

Which is a fine approach for a day or three.

It's been raining heavily since Friday afternoon.  Each time I deliberate putting on my gear and riding out, another cloudburst dampened my spirits.  I return to my comfy chair by the window and a list of distractions:  I should set up a standing order to pay for internet time I'm getting through.  (And that's why the new website got finished.)

This morning, Monday, was no different, but with the forecast set foul for four more days I need to screw up my courage and unroll my waterproofs.  This is where being unemployed and master of your own destiny becomes harder.  It takes me an age to commit to the decision; an era to get all my kit packed up, and an eon to load the bike and set out.  Such prevarication doesn't help when you're trying make a dash for it between rain fronts.

Remarkably, the Buddha of bikers smiled on me.  Within a mile the heavy clouds had lightened and after five I seemed to have reached a different climate altogether - perhaps the hulk of Table Mountain had been causing the bad weather to precipitate?  I was headed down to Cape Point, and the coastal road was soon dry - making a lovely ride of it.  Hell, there was even a little bit of blue sky.  Clifton, Camps Bay, Llandudno... the beaches were clean and white, and the heavy swell sent frothing breakers in to improve the spectacle.

Hout Bay, Noordhoek and Chapmans Bay; soon I was picking up the signs for my destination and picking off the cars that meandered along the same route.  Park entrance fees paid, I reached the end of the peninsular and spent an hour admiring the wild surrounding.  There's good hiking hereabouts.  And greedy baboons, too - though the word got round that Ed's don't part easily with their flapjacks.

That'll be the end of that, then.

The Cape of Good Hope is somewhere I'm really pleased to have visited - a location kids can roughly point to on a globe, and a destination so dastardly folks built the Suez Canal to avoid it. This, symbolically, is as far south as I'm planning to go.  From here on, I guess it's something like The Long Way Up, as Ewan and Thingy might style it. 

Photo for posterity. I head back on slightly different roads: along the eastern side of the peninsular.  The names of Simon's Town and Fish Hoek I recalled passing on the way to the township last week.  I was making good time and called in at Kingtek Motorcycles, a workshop my friends Andrew and Cathy had recommended. (http://www.kingtek.co.za/)

With generous help and advice from the boss (himself a youngish chap, also called Andrew), I sourced a few spare parts, swapped in a new air filter and did a quick oil change too.  Andrew expertly popped my front tyre off and flipped the rubber round as requested (I need to even the wear and make it last a while longer).  Meeting a mechanical guru is important:  Andrew will be one of my remote advisers when I venture further north in to Africa - away from any BMW trained mechanics...  He seems like a really good guy to list on my call centre 'team'!

With cloud banks finally dropping a little rain, I took off for the highways and reached Stellenbosch for the night.  

I can't comment on the local wine (other than to say it is reputedly very good), but the steaks they serve here are excellent.  Fuel for adventurers who dare to call the weather's bluff.

Pretty precise, eh? 

Bright things are promised for tomorrow. Excellent.