Day one – Port Elizabeth to Groblershoop
We left home at about 8 and dropped two unhappy kits off at their cat "hotel". We decided to take the Cradock road and made a stop at Nanaga before heading off past Paterson and over the Olifantskop pass. There was very little traffic on the road except for trucks. We had our coffee stop at a roadside pull off. Somehow we forgot about Middleton, where we usually stop! Then it was on to Cradock which we passed through without stopping. We did take a back road to get past trucks we had followed into town. We passed the trucks but were shocked by the condition of the road, having to negotiate potholes and loose gravel. After leaving Cradock we carried on to Fish River station for a lunch stop, finding a lovely spot under enormous blue gums. This peaceful place was the site of an engagement in the Anglo Boer War between a Boer commando and Col G F Gorringe's flying column on 23 and 24 February 1901. Then we continued past Middleburg and turned off at Charlton Heights onto the road to Hanover. Despite all the rain in the north, much of the veld here was still very dry and just before De Aar we drove through an enormous swarm of locusts. It was like a dark cloud and we drove through it for about a kilometer. It made us think of the biblical plagues and we wondered if Herholdt (the farmer near Deelfontein from our previous trip) was making any progress with his spraying. These were on the wing and spraying could only be effective on hoppers still on the ground. There was very little traffic on the De Aar road and we pushed on to Britstown and then turned onto the Prieska road at about 16h00. We had been thinking of overnighting in Prieska, but it was quite early when we got there so decided to head on to Groblershoop. The drive was fairly uneventful and Marianne shared the driving. There was one scare when we had to stop where it it looked as if a truck was being recovered, but the road was soon cleared. We could not decide if it was an accident or a breakdown. We got to Groblershoop just before dark and went to the campsite at Kheis River Lodge where we had previously spent the night on our first Troopy trip to Namibia. It was quite a sight to see the wide and fast flowing Orange when we crossed the bridge. The campsite was a bit changed by the Orange River floods a few weeks before – our old site down by the river was still too muddy to use. But we found a very comfortable site and enjoyed one of Marianne’s pre made meals. We had done well covering just over 800 kms.

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