It was another lovely sunny Karoo morning and the early morning chilliness was soon gone. Marianne went to explore the Travelling Tortoise's more formal accommodation while I was packing up. She was most impressed by a chalet that she called the "Hobbit House". We had a fairly short way to go so decided to do a bit more exploring. We would not make it home in time for David anyway. First we took the Hoekplaas gravel shortcut to Uniondale, finding a fabulous stop for morning coffee in a stream bed flowing out of Mannetjiesberg. We have often seen this sign and wondered about the road. In Uniondale we filled up at the Agri and then drove to the old Boer War fort. The signage is not very good so we went via the watermill, which is still operating as a restaurant, but eventually we found the route up. Marianne had told me that she had taken a bus up to the fort and this easily graded road proved it was possible. The view from the fort is superb and the description informed us that there were in fact four forts and they had actually been attacked by Scheeper's commando in 1902. We had not realized this and decided to try and find the other one on the koppie. We found it just beyond the new Telcom tower. There were lovely flowers in the veld around the forts. After going through the Uniondale Poort we decided that the Prince Alfred's Pass would also be fun to do again. This is another one of Thomas Bain's passes and considered to be one of his masterpieces. It is a lovely pass to drive through and mostly downhill from the Avontuur side. We stopped at De Vlugt, which has developed considerably since I was last there, and enjoyed pies and our own coffee at the Plaaskind Padstal. Then it was on to the N2, which we joined at the Wittedrif River. Now it was a straight run home, until I thought it might be a good idea to explore the old Bloukrans pass. This has been closed for many years, but was in quite good condition as for as the Bloukrans River bridge. Then it got a little ragged, with rocks on the road, vegetation built up on the road and fallen trees that had to be negotiated. But we were overtaken by a red Nissan car, presumably local. The road was blocked by dumped rubble at the end of the pass, but the Cruiser handled it easily. It could have been nasty though and I should have checked before driving over it. We now realized that the locals were using another "local" track to avoid this rubble heap! Now it was just a case of sitting back and letting the Cruiser's long white bonnet find it's way home. We collected the cats at 17:30. They were very happy to see us. Another Troopy adventure had come to an end! We had seen vast numbers of flowers and driven 29 passes and poorts in 3828 kilometres.

Geschreven door Leartravels