The Rally

The 2013 Bulldog Rally was an interesting experience.

I had never been to a rally before, so I was intrigued to see what actually went on, what kind of people attended and why did they attend these rallys.

Obviously the common thread was biking. However, a few there didn’t seem to see the necessity in actually riding their bike there. Even if East London was merely 80ks away!  Therefore, some bikes arrived on trailers. Others were just ‘forgotten’ at home and the car was used! What happened to the enjoyment and excitement of the ride there and back?

Another thing that stood out was the general age of the group. Most people were well over 40. This fact was confirmed by the ’70s music that often played across the campsite. In my youth (late ’70s), rallys were attended by young ‘holligans’, not by ‘old ooms’!)

One thing that hasn’t changed since the ’70s rallys is the drinking of large amounts of (mainly) beer. It carried on non-stop from morning to night. One obvoiusly well-to-do +60s gentleman, in all his biking ‘colours’ was leaning against the tent pole awaiting his turn to get a tatoo with ‘all sheets to the wind’. He had no idea what picture he was going to get tattooed with and how he’d look in the morning!

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the ability of some idiot to wreck good machinery. You guessed it! The cold-engine-full-throttle-backfiring guy! You think with bikes costing upwards of R100k guys would use their common sense. But no! At least one ‘biker’ had a genuine reason to use a trailer to take his beloved bike home!

The program that Saturday included drag racing, indoor rugby and sports. That night there was a burn-out demo, which was good, albeit late to start. This was followed by the prize giving, which went off well, with a lucky draw of R15000 being awarded. I won the ‘Longest Distance Covered’, as everyone seemed amazed that someone would ride that far (1541kms)! That was followed by live music from a band called Purr.

Sunday morning saw everyone packing up early to leave.

Generally the Bulldog Rally was well organised and enjoyable. Am I going to shoot off to the next local rally I can find? No, not likely, but maybe I’ll do the Bulldog next year, because its actually all about the ride there and back that counts! And that ride from here is long, hard – and fantastic!

St Lucia to Home

The trip from St Lucia to home was a well-known route to myself and had been covered many times in the past. This time, however, I would be following my wife’s little compact Opel Corsa home. It had had a leaking fuel filter on the way down, and although it had been repaired, it was best that I kept in contact. It would be slow!

View map

The road from St Lucia to Pongola is a pretty boring, and mostly straight, road. Even the pineapple-sellers have been banned from the road. The only wake-up calls are the huge trucks that thunder up and down the road, and the incessant coastal wind that threatens to deposit you in the drainage ditch at the side of the road! Otherwise its just boring. 188kms with little to keep a biker interested!

One gets glimpses of the huge Jozini Dam through the bush after about 140kms, but thats all! After Pongola it winds its way through a spreadout rural village, where speed must be reduced to 80km/hr, or sometimes even 60km/hr, before eventually leading into Piet Retief.

From there it is on to the small town of Amsterdam, where we stopped to have lunch. From there it became more scenic up to Badplaas. From there it was 130kms to home, via Nelspruit.

I arrived home at 4pm, after 597kms and 8hrs on the bike! So ended 3077kms of great riding over 10 days! What a break! Roll on next year! Where to? Maybe Lesotho?