It’s the roads that take you there that make up half of the journey. Once you’re at your destination, the city or the town you’ve headed towards all day holds you in its thrall until it’s time to climb back into the car and head away again. But the roads, they don’t just take you to where you’re going. They take hold of you. They beguile while holding you safe as your mind wanders. They snake, they curve, they meander. Sometimes they aim arrow-like towards the mysterious blue mountains far away. Now and then they shimmer in magical mirages toying with your sense of wonder.

The first road of my sabbatical was a solo journey for me, an unusual event. I had in fact taken another solo trip earlier in the year, from Cradock to Hermanus, to be part of a panel discussion about food and cooking at their annual FynArts festival. The first day had been glorious, a sunny stride along the Garden Route to Plettenberg Bay to spend the night with Des Lindberg where we sat in rolling blackout darkness for two hours and talked and talked about life and ageing and, inevitably, the sorely missed Dawn Lindberg, née Silver, beneath framed paintings of her own and portraits of her. Then young Adam Lindberg, now an artist of impeccable and intricate work, arrived and helped me cook dinner when I got flustered about using a strange oven for the cumin-marinated deboned leg of Karoo lamb I had taken with me.

Des had been to FynArts the previous year and had told me about it, and I was to be in the same venue. But the second day’s journey was everything you don’t want a drive to be. The closer I got to Hermanus, the more miserable the weather, and the conditions in the town were icy, windy and depressing. The event was great fun, especially as I shared the stage with the delightful Rosemarie Saunders as well as young chef Simon Watt-Pringle, who is based at The Station in the town and was a great panellist. I did not get to taste his food, sadly. After the panel chat I was lucky enough to meet Hannah Baleta and Raymond Siebrits from Klein River Cheese in nearby Stanford, whose cheeses are superb.

After a late afternoon drinks party at the Marine Hotel, where I missed the presence of the late Liz McGrath, whom I could picture sitting on one of her wicker sofas back in the 90s, I ran madly through driving rain and cheek-lashing winds to find succour at the Ocean Basket across the road, where I indulged my sodden self in a kingklip and calamari combo and a bottle of white wine. Nothing like Ocean Basket to lift your damp spirits. Dining at OB is one of my favourite things. I love the homeliness of it all, the utter lack of pretentiousness.

But the weather had not improved by the next morning and I was glad to get out and hit the road again with a waterfall of relief pouring off me. Maybe I’ve been living in the simplicity of the wilds of the Karoo too long.

The second solo trip of my July sabbatical was from Cradock to Calvinia, traversing Route 63 via Graaff-Reinet, Murraysburg, Victoria West, Carnarvon and Williston. There was scarcely a truck anywhere, astonishingly, and often I felt I was alone on the long and lonely roads. I had a big bag of books in the boot, everything by Schreiner, Eve Palmer, Thomas Pakenham’s Boer War, Lawrence Green’s Karoo, for a brief stint of writing in the lovely old Karoo Boekehuis. I revel in this house, with its patch of quiver trees to captivate you at sunset.

Sunset casts a halo around the Karoo Boekehuis in Calvinia. I was mesmerised by the quiver trees. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

But the rolling blackout schedule wreaked havoc on my cooking plans, kicking in at 6pm and ending at 8, just when I needed to cook. There was no gas to cook on, it was chilly as hell outside, but I braved the cold to light a braai fire for two successive nights and cooked saddle chops from the excellent Calvinia Vleis butchery. Whisky passed too. What else to do in a grim deep Karoo winter far from home.

One morning I went to the Hantam Huis for breakfast where the “tortoise” (lamb’s liver wrapped in caul, usually called a skilpadjie) was wonderful. It did the soul good to see old faces, including dear Aletta Coetzee, who was a little girl the first time we stayed at the Hantam Huis in the early 90s. My lovely sister Pat and my boet (brother-in-law but he’s a true brother to me) Gerry came to visit and we went for dinner at the Blou Naartjie where the lamb pie was stupendously good.

On the drive back home I stopped just outside Graaff-Reinet to reminisce about fallen heroes at the rock 100 metres northeast of the spot where Boer Cmdt Gideon Scheepers was shot dead on 4 April, 1902. He wasn’t yet 24. The plaque on the rock bears the legend, ‘Hy leef in hierdie land nou ewig en altyd,” by DJ Opperman. (He lives in this land now and forever.) In a book in the Boekehuis library in Calvinia I had seen a photograph of the moment he was shot by British forces, his body arching backwards in the chair they had sat him in, so fierce was the force of the soldiers’ fire. En route home, I tried to imagine what the pro-Boer Olive Schreiner would have had to say about it. A lot, I imagine. (Though there’s no mention of him in her letters.)

Schreiner’s spirit is never far when you’re driving along endless Karoo roads. I wondered whether she was guiding me weeks later as we headed towards Clarens. We sure needed a protective hand. We had been warned. Tony, you must not go via Hobhouse and Ladybrand. The road is terrible. You must promise me you will go via Bloemfontein. That’s Sandra speaking. Sandra Antrobus, Makhulu to her staff at Cradock’s Victoria Manor and Tuishuise, Aunty Sandra to younger locals. But I didn’t listen. I vowed to apologise to her on our return.

We had left Cradock early and everything was hunky dory as we ventured through Hofmeyr, Steynsburg and the neatly laid-out Burgersdorp, then on via the eyesore that is Aliwal North to Rouxville, where you take a right towards Wepener, Hobhouse and finally Ladybrand. Finally. To say that there are a lot of potholes along the stretch from Wepener to Ladybrand is a gross understatement. There’s more pothole than road, and for “pothole” read “crater” in many instances. On some stretches the tar has worn away completely and you’re virtually on gravel. Those are the good parts. The average speed limit was 20kph.

People like to say the Eastern Cape has the worst roads in the country. Nah. The southern Free State roads are a fright. We feel now that we can never take that route again, and there was more to come on the stretch from Ficksburg to Fouriesburg.

We had booked, for our return trip, at a little BnB in Ladybrand, and paid in full in advance. So we would have to come this way again, though on our return we would heed Sandra’s advice and go via Bloemfontein and down via Noupoort and Middelburg.

But first, onward to Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal via Oliviershoek Pass and the Sterkfontein Dam. Parts of the winding pass road have collapsed and there are little detours around them, but only in two or three places. The rest of the road is fine.

Our first destination was Rawdons Hotel near Nottingham Road and Balgowan and the weather was sunny enough to sit outside for lunch. I decided to start a Durban curry quest. I would eat only Durban curry on this visit, and compare them.

Rawdons’ winning Durban lamb curry. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Lamb curry with a crunchy poppadom is a local tradition in the Midlands, and it did not disappoint. We sat at a sunny table, which was not conducive to photographing the dish, but after this long, cold Karoo winter it was glorious to feel the warm sun on your skin again. KZN truly is another country in this sense, only a day’s drive but a world away from our local temperatures. When locals say they’re “freezing” they mean the temperature has dipped below 20℃. So please excuse the quality of the picture of my curry but the sun won this round.

When I turned the menu over I was amazed to see my own story on a previous visit to Rawdons printed on it from edge to edge, complete with my photographs. I later found it framed in a hallway too. You can read it here. I told our waitress, quite chuffed. “Are you sure?” she replied. That’s me back in my box.

Grilled trout at Rawdons. This is trout country. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

For dinner in the Rawdons Pub that night I ordered the local trout, grilled, which was decent, though I wished I had chosen their famous Pickled Pig Pie, which I have had before and is everything you want in a tipsy pork pie.

Rotunda Farm Stall outside Hilton offered the perfect country breakfast and we browsed in the shop for local cheeses and preserves. It was properly chilly in the morning and the cold felt out of place. We sat beside a blazing fire feeling more like we were in the Karoo than in KwaZulu-Natal.

Lamb curry was on the menu again a few nights later at Crossways, the local institution beloved of generations of pub crawlers who fondly call it Crossies. We’ve been there many times over the past four decades. Its dining room is cavernous and offers reliable fare. The on-the-bone curry was great, but not as good as the Rawdons incarnation.

On our last night, family took us to Garlingtons, a restaurant on an estate of the same name. Estates are a big thing in KZN where you can retire in Howick (“where all the old people live”, someone told us) at any number of estates called the Ambers and live in little boxes identical to those of all your neighbours. Garlingtons was different and the restaurant very stylish yet somehow homely too.

There was Durban curry yet again, and it was pretty good, but Rawdons won the challenge hands down.

The lamb curry at Garlingtons. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

To ensure future Durban curries, we headed to Liberty Mall in Pietermaritzburg to stock up on a truly hot masala mix and sundry other spices to keep us warm and spicy.

The road home meant that stretch again, from Clarens and then on to the Fouriesburg-Ficksburg road, with its insane number of potholes and much zig-zagging to skirt them. By the time we reached Ladybrand the potholes were few and far between. Except in the town. I’ve never seen more potholed streets anywhere. Our guest house was a drab affair but clean, and they directed us to a restaurant and bar called Cranberry’s a few streets away. Not too bad as small-town restaurants go. Quite busy and buzzy and clearly popular with locals. Great plates of steaming hot food coming out of the kitchen constantly, and generous in portions. I ordered a lamb shank this time (we were well out of KZN by now and the further away you go, the worse the curry), and I wasn’t disappointed.

A tender lamb shank at Cranberry’s in Ladybrand. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The roads from here on were wide, long and free of potholes. To pass the time, I rehearsed the apology I would be giving Sandra. The country somehow seemed smaller by the time we finally got home. Suddenly, Cradock felt like the centre of everywhere. It was good to be home. DM