A trail called freedom

We reached the mountain top in the Malutis as it began to snow. The icy wind bit into our cheeks.

The weather was closing in fast. We had to find an abandoned police station. A jeep track from it would take us down the other side. Two of us were severely stressed; one on the verge of tears, the other shaking uncontrollably from the cold.

A Basuto man on horseback appeared and offered to show the way. A volunteer, Jan Marie Naude, had been waiting for several hours at the former police station. She was leaving in her 4x4 when the first of our party stopped her. A minute later and she would have been gone. The two stressed cyclists jumped in the back of the bakkie. We raced off the mountain, moving from sleet to gently falling snow.

The Coetzee family, who farm here, took us in and gave us coffee and rusks. Gert Coetzee said they get some weird people here. We were the weirdest. “There are three things we don’t do. We don’t ride bicycles, we don’t make snowmen and we don’t go to Switzerland on holiday.”

We still had to traverse the country’s highest pass, Naude’s Nek, 500m above us. But the storm was raging so we aborted, taking refuge on Naude’s farm, Vredenrus. But reaching warmth and safety raised concerns for another biker, AndrÃ