A free-spirited Karoo bicycle ride on a road to nowhere takes an unexpected turn for Helen Fraser – and a brush with some small-town policemen investigating a missing person case…
A road to nowhere. Tell me those four words don’t elicit a rush of giddy joy. On a road to nowhere, I would ramble or ride; alone, unfettered and with no destination, shedding my burdens like a snake sloughs its skin.
My favourite such stretch is a corrugated dirt road threading out from Prince Albert, pitched on the vast Karoo plain and sternly watched over by the Swartberg. My husband Hamish and I visit Prince Albert annually, renting a cottage on an olive farm.
Initially, I ventured out on foot. Later, I took my sturdy all-road bike, named Cleo, along that road. Fitted with a bell and a side mirror, Cleo is a suburban aunty, like me.
I remember the first time I set out. The wideness of land and sky elicited sighs of gratitude. I was startled to find myself singing.
I had no idea that Koos Kombuis’s “Lisa se Klavier” had been napping in my subconscious, waiting for this moment. The only line I could remember – “En die hele wêreld word stil…” – rose to an awful cacophony that sent a flock of sheep racing for the refuge of the zinc afdakkie shading a water trough.
They turned en masse to consider me, sheepishly. What strange, warbling creature was this?
But on my most recent excursion, events were shadowed by insecurities I thought I’d left behind in the city…
As I prepared to leave the cottage aboard Cleo, Hamish decided he would drive to the local coffee shop for espresso and Wi-Fi. We hid the cottage keys in the old pepper tree shading the door before going our separate ways.
It was a still Karoo morning, with the promise of heat mirages later. I bounced down the rough road, passing the slumbering bush pub. From there, it was out onto the plain, where gravel meets the taut fencing of sheep and game farms.
And then everything changed.
In the distance, they resembled large stones. But these gradually took on human shape: two men sitting by the roadside. They had matted hair and beards, clothes ragged and stiff with dust. They watched me approach.
I wish it weren’t so, but my Spidey Sense registered alarm. Call it the residue of living in South Africa with all its divisions and realities. Now, alone on a road to nowhere, I became acutely aware of my vulnerability.
They were unmoved by my greeting. When I glanced back in my side mirror, the two were still watching me.
I couldn’t shake the thought that I’d have to return this way. I was spooked. I stopped at what felt like a safe distance.
There was only one option: summon an escort. Fishing out my cellphone, I called Hamish.
The reception was poor, but eventually I reached him. I quickly explained my dilemma. “Drive until you find me,” I said as the connection cut.
I felt a sense of shame. But years of urban living had primed me to be wary. And in my head, I heard my children saying, “Please be careful.” I had to honour my promise.
Eventually, my water bottle empty, I stopped on a rise to wait for Hamish. The smell of baked earth rose from the pores of the land.
At last came the telltale dust plume and the sun glinting off a windscreen. But the car disappeared into a drift.
No! Hamish! Come back!
The dust settled slowly as my escort headed back to town.
There was nothing else for it. I’d have to go it alone. Adrenaline carried me until I reached the bush pub. I was drenched and parched.
The men were gone. I kept a vigilant look out on the way back but it seemed they’d melted back into the landscape like the heat mirages.
Closer to town, I noticed a police van rumbling slowly down the road towards me, but thought little of it. Eager to get home and chastise Hamish for abandoning me, I took a left at the intersection. The van followed and, unexpectedly, drew up alongside me.
Surely, I wasn’t going to be booked for failing to stop or use a hand signal! The passenger window descended to reveal two policemen.
They were looking at me intently. “Het u nou net uitgery?” asked the sergeant. The two-way radio crackled loudly.
I had the first inkling something was amiss – and it wasn’t my road etiquette.
“Is daar ’n probleem, meneer?”
“Daar’s ’n man by die polisiestasie. Ons dink dis jou man.”
I blanched. What on earth had Hamish been up to? Bolted without paying the bill? Assaulted the barista? Neither was likely.
“He came in to report his wife as a missing person,” said the sergeant, switching language to emphasize the emergency.
Missing? Which wife? Not me!
But the image that Hamish had shared with them was unmistakable. Me and Cleo.
He’d taken that picture the previous year. I was wearing the same lurid turquoise cycling top.
I tried to make light of my explanation.
“Hy’t nie ver genoeg gery nie,” I joked in an aggrieved wife tone. “Ek het vir hom gesê hy moet ry totdat hy my kry.”
They were unmoved. The driver craned to get another look at me.
And I read the rebuke in his eyes. Silly old woman. Going out on her own.
He got on the radio.
“Ons het haar gekry,” he said tersely, and put the van into gear.
Pedalling back to the cottage, the nervous rush quickly subsided. Suddenly it all seemed very funny. I was imagining that photo of me and Cleo plastered up in the local copshop, the library, the PEP store, on the refuse bins and in the bush pub, and, worse, the headline in the local rag: “Ouma goes AWOL on road to nowhere.”
When Hamish arrived at the cottage, I went out to meet him. I’d thought of hamming it up, pretending to be a hitchhiker.
But when I saw his face, I thought better of it. He looked stricken.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said as I opened the door. “I didn’t think you’d ridden that far. When I couldn’t find you, I imagined you lying in the veld somewhere. And I didn’t know which of the kids I should call first.”
Ouch, ouch – and ouch!
Inside, I put the kettle on. (My late father called tea the answer to world tension. He was right.)
As the water boiled, I mused. Was this the end of my wanderings? Why had I been so spooked?
It struck me later that among my holiday reading was Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews.
It traces the “walking history” of 10 renowned women through the ages, from Dorothy Wordsworth to Cheryl Strayed. I’d gobbled it up.
But the darker leitmotif in almost all the women’s accounts came in the form of stranger danger; the lone man lurking at the forest edge, on the trail at night, along a lonely byway.
I am now a (willing) prisoner to a phone app that tells my family where I am, 24/7. It’s worth it, just for the thrill of “riding out”.
We’re visiting the Karoo cottage again soon. Cleo has been serviced by Abdurrahman at our local bike shop in Cape Town, her tyres polished to a sooty lustre.
Abdurrahman’s last words as he helped me lift Cleo onto the bike rack were: “Be safe out there.”
The lesson has been learnt. Hamish and I will make very firm contingency plans to ensure I am not tempted to go AWOL again. My son has given me pepper spray.
But the biggest deterrent? I’m preparing to spice up my on-the-road song list.
Don’t tell the sheep, but I’ve been mastering Salmadaireachd, or Gaelic psalm singing.
What a treat they’re in for!
