Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: mud

  • Getting Around in the 70’s

    Getting Around in the 70’s

    School holidays. We have to DO something or we’ll go crazy! We craved adventure.

    Ma, we want to go and climb Mt aux Sources.
    How are you going to get there?
    We’ll hitch-hike.
    Over my dead body! or words to that effect. NO, I think she might have meant, but we couldn’t be sure, as she said dead body, she didn’t say no.

    So two days later we get home – me, Claudio Bellato and Carlos da Silva – drenched, muddy and weary, having reached Witsieshoek, but not the mountain, as the heavens had opened up, torrential rain turning the roads into quagmires. So the mountaineering goal of the expedition had been thwarted, but the main goal – having fun – had not!

    Where have you been?!
    To Mt aux Sources, like I said.
    How did you get there?
    We hitch-hiked, like I said.

    One of our lifts back was with one of the Trading Greys, dunno who exactly.
    The rain bucketed down and I learnt a lot about driving in slick mud by watching him continuously turn into the skid on the muddy Witsieshoek road, an experienced hand at negotiating muddy roads.

    My companions on this adventure, Claudio and Carlos, loved it as much as I did.

    The images show that same road in sunny weather years later. Then it was wet and gravel, not dry and tarred. Both taken where the road runs under the overhang of a sandstone cave.

    witsieshoek

    As always, Mother Mary couldn’t stay cross with me for long.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • I’m fifteen?

    I’m fifteen?

    The mighty Vulgar river had risen! It was flowing way higher than usual, and had overflown its banks. We needed to get onto it!
    So Pierre and I dusted off the open blue and red fibreglass canoe my folks had bought us and headed off downstream early one summer morning from below the weir in the Harrismith park.
    By the time we started, the river had dropped a lot. Still flowing well, but below the heights of the previous days. This left a muddy verge metres high where the banks were vertical, and up to 100m wide where the banks were sloped and the river was wide.
    When we got to Swiss Valley past the confluence of the Nuwejaar spruit, we had a wide wet floodplain to slip and slide across before we reached dry land, leaving us muddy from head to toe. Dragging the boat along, we headed for the farmhouse where Lel Venning looked at us in astonishment. I don’t think she even recognised us.
    “No, You Haven’t! You can’t fool me! APRIL FOOL!” she exclaimed when we said we’d paddled out from town.
    Pierre and I looked at each other and he said “Happy birthday!”
    ~~oo0oo~~