Long trips out of Harrismith started as walks.

Walks: Up Platberg, say.

Then Hikes: Like down Normandien Pass from Robbie Sharratt’s farm. Down the pass and along the railway line, through the rail tunnels to van Reenen.

Then Bicycle Rides: Like day trips to Swallow Bridge over the Wilge River downstream of town on the map below. And out to Oliviershoek Pass in mid-winter, sleeping the night on Jack Shannon’s farm Kindrochart.

This was the first bridge across the Wilge River, built in 1883 on the farm Reenens Hoop. First called Landdrost Bridge before swifts and swallows happily colonised it and gave it a new name.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Then Airplane Trips: The first aged seventeen on a Boeing 707 ‘passenger jet’ to New York. Then the furthest west to Orcas island on the US-Canada border in Washington state. The longest east to Lombok island in Indonesia, east of the famous “Wallace line”.

~~~oo0oo~~~