03 – 09 April 2019
After a pleasant evening, and, as I didn’t manage to get any en-route, a good bottle of John’s value wine – his idea of what it’s worth spending on wine and mine differ, 🙂 but we have a good system; when I visit, he feeds me and I provide the wine that he wouldn’t dream of buying – and a good night’s sleep, I headed to ORT to catch a plane to Durban for Roisin’s big day!
So, I arrive at King Shaka’s, and am wandering towards international arrivals, where I am to meet Siobhán, Roisin’s Ma, when I see this lady looking at me looking at her. Then she asks if I am Seán. “You must be Nicole”, I reply. So the lift to the evenings entertainment is sorted. (Nicole is a friend of Roisin who works at the airport and attends her (many) fitness classes.) Siobhán is also a fitness fanatic, and so, since she had missed yesterday’s classes, we were going directly to a spinning class, led by the soon to be Dr Roisin.
Although I had resisted repeated exhortations to join in the class, when we got there I decided that a bit of exercise would be good for me after a week sitting on a motorbike. So I took the legs off my trousers – zipped – and climbed on a bike. No more to say!
The graduation was all we expected; boring! Three hours of watching happy ex-students graduating, mostly as masters and junior doctors, is exhausting. Roisin was 5th to graduate, and there were only about 250 after her!
Anyway it was a day that two very proud parents, and one significant other, will remember, and was an excellent excuse for a good night out to celebrate.
Even aged bikers clean up reasonably well!
I had planned to ride up Sani Pass as part of my SA tour, but in the absence of a bike,this obviously had to be shelved. The weather wasn’t cooperating either, so it was on a rather miserable Friday afternoon that we headed, by car, to Bushman’s Nek. It was a chilly weekend, but the tennis was, eh, …. almost recognisable as such, with the doctors being narrowly defeated by the civilians.
10 – 17 April 2019
After the relaxing hectic weekend, it was back to Bashewa to get back on the road.
I fruitlessly visited several embassies trying to get visas; organised new tyres; had my boots – properly this time – and tank bag repaired; got replacement mounting bits to for my wind shield; did a minor service; and several other things besides, before hitting the road again on Easter Saturday.
By this time, I had made a major revision to the route. The weather forecast ruled out a second attempt at Sani Pass, and time ruled out a trip south and west through SA, Namibia and Botswana. I also had to return to Harare to get the some of the visas I needed, so decided to head through Mozambique. After visiting Belfast of course!
Belfast-2-Belfast-By-Bike 