NIPPLES 2

“Can you feel them?” Asks the medium.
“Feel… who?” asks the caretaker.
“They’re happy. They’re eating and dancing,” says the medium.
The caretaker is at a loss for words.

---

 
I’m a little cynical about quaintly-English-named places in South Africa (SA). Melton Wold (two words) will surprise, pleasantly.
 
Clive, Mandy and Paul (Tiger 800, Ducati Scrambler and BMW R1200 RT, respectively) scour Kimberley, locate a repair shop, and sit in on the surgery while the doctors attend to the BMW front rim. Bruce, Andrew, Chris and yours truly (KTM 1290, Tiger 900, Tiger 900, Bandit) make our leisurely way to Melton Wold.
 
With the exception of the bottom left chunk of the country, appropriately named the Western Cape, those parts of SA that do receive rain, receive it in summer. Last summer (2020-21), an easterly cyclone blew onshore into neighbouring Mocambique, causing devastation in that impoverished country, before blowing westward and bringing exceptional summer rainfall to the northern part of SA.
 
Only now will we come to realise how limited the area watered by the northern rains was.
 
Kimberley is on the savanna between the Kalahari Desert and the Karoo, the South African Outback. The route to Melton Wold via Victoria West rolls through mile after mile of rolling grassland, a blanket of bleached khaki dotted with olive green fluffballs. It forms a background ideal for animals’ or soldiers’ camouflage.
 
Remarkably abruptly, the knolls of the Karoo come into sight. We do within five minutes what NASA has been striving to do for decades: cross from Earth to Mars. For that is what the Karoo looks like in the cold, dry winter. One minute you’re riding through flat grassland. The next, you’ve suddenly burst into the Great Karoo.
 
What marks the Karoo is those knolls. Wherever you are in the Karoo, you ride on a mile-or-so radius of flat ground, bordered by hills and mountains. I’ve seen the Karoo quite green in spring, but now it’s as dry as a bone. The olive green bushes are less prominent here than in the grassland. While we in the north enjoyed a green, wet summer, here they haven’t seen rain for seven long, biblical-sounding years. Worse yet, no snow. SA weather forecasts in the interior in winter almost routinely start by mentioning snow on the Drakensberg (Dragon’s Back Mountains). The melting snows irrigate parts of the Karoo. Now, for some reason, there’s been no snow. Hard to understand, since last year’s winter, 2019-2020, was a cold one.
 

Exiting the savanna, we ride surrounded by the bleached-khaki knolls of the Karoo that tell of the drought that defied the summer rains further north.  


Today the Karoo isn’t warm, but nor is it seriously cold. With my seemingly-deficient temperature regulation, I do feel what cold there is, but few of the other riders complain.

 
We bypass Orania ("Awrunya"), or Orange, a bizarre town founded by sad white diehards who rejected black majority rule and established a whites-only national redoubt of sorts. I haven’t been there but it’s the butt of many a joke, largely along the lines of your uncle and your cousin being the same person.  

The next stop is the Van der Kloof (“Fun der Kloorf”) Dam, an attractive sight and a photo op, but a dam lacking any water.




Van der Kloof Dam: Cold, and even drier than it looks in the pics. 


Nearby Philipstown serves as a pit stop before riding on to De Aar (rhyming with The Car). De Aar, meaning The Artery, is bang in the middle of the country. Trains make their way from dispatch points all around the country to De Aar, and from De Aar to destination points all around the country. In the good old bad old days, as conscript soldiers on our way to the border of South West Africa (Namibia to you) and Angola to fight communism, terrorism and Satanism, our troop train stopped at De Aar, where the women’s association handed us welcome paper cups of coffee and home-baked rusks, or dunking biscuits.
 
Once-quaint Victoria West is dilapidated, its once-proud Victorian style frontages going to ruin. Peasants squat in the buildings. Nothing worth stopping for here.
 
Exiting Victoria West, we enter the home straight to Melton Wold. This guest farm and hotel defy the deterioration that has characterised SA since 1994 (Enough politics – Ed). Two kilometres of dirt highway lead to the elegant farmhouse-cum-hotel with its yellowwood finishes. 



Melton Wold Guest Farm.

We are shown our ample, comfortable rooms. Unsurprisingly, we congregate in the bar. Barman Kevin, now in his seventies, was born in the African state of Zambia, spent some time living in Oz, then gravitated to SA where he ran a restaurant. When the restaurant ceased operating, he and his wife became the barman & barmaid, cum caretaker, cum chef, cum postal service operators, cum groundskeepers, cum accountants, cum supervisors of the quaint guest farm. Another round is ordered, and as the glasses arrive, in march Clive, Mandy and Paul. The BMW is back in action and the three took a short route to catch up with us.

 In the dining room, Kevin’s missus tells us of the farm’s history. It’s a story of British colonial elegance, culminating in the farmer’s wife running off with a British soldier.
 
It’s also a story of dinner dances. Shortly after assuming their positions in the hotel, a guest called Kevin’s wife to the dining room and its adjacent dance hall. The guest, a self-proclaimed seer, reportedly asked Kevin’s wife, “Can you feel them?”  He apparently detected the happy days the farmhouse had hosted. 

I’m not saying I believe it, and I’m not saying I don’t. What I am saying, though, is that given the bar’s proximity to the dance hall and dining room, perhaps we may debate what kind of spirits were dominant.
 
You never know, it might be fun to meet your own personal spook, and these stories do enrich the trip.
 
              
The next am's departure from Melton Wold happens in two phases. The adventure bikes depart early, to pick up some gravel trails. We tarmac jockeys are the second detachment.
 
At first I feel can’t help being a little envious of the adventure bike riders. On the other hand I’m in my favourite piece of real estate, the Great Karoo. My favourite is about to become even favouriter. There are many routes in the Karoo and I’m about to experience new-to-me ones.  
 
While the Great Karoo is bordered by its greener, touristy sister, the Little Karoo, home of many a wine farm, the Great Karoo is a world of its own. Horizon to horizon, tar ribbon, thankfully well maintained, traverses SA’s own Big Sky Country. The roads tend to be straight for long stretches, but interspersed at various points with mountain passes sent straight from heaven as a reward for those who were good in previous incarnation.
 
Bruce leads the road pack on his KTM 1290. Ostensibly an adventure bike, his has the mag wheel option and he elects to ride on tar, as would I with mags. Wire wheels are more suitable for dirt. Mags may be low on maintenance but are more at home on tarmac.  
 
I’m in the middle, on the Bandit. Paul brings up the rear on the freshly-repaired 1200 RT. It isn’t Paul’s bike. He owns a 1250 GS. He is delivering the RT, the pleasurable way, for a friend who had the good sense to quit Johannesburg for beautiful Sedgefield on the aptly-named Garden Route, the band of coast hugging the southern part of the Cape.
 
The day’s route will take us to Sutherland, a world centre of astronomy. The South African Large Telescope (SALT) peers into the night sky through Sutherland’s Karoo-clear air, while the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) currently under construction will pick up light that doesn’t exist and sounds that can’t be heard.  Sutherland is as cold as a witch’s tits, but it’s “the” place to stargaze.
 
To get to Sutherland you sling through a series of mountain passes. Mountain passes that wash away my adventure-bike envy and have me busy doing the twists and turns that bring out the frustrated stunt pilot in every sport-touring rider.  
 
But mountain passes are hard work. More specifically, relaxing is hard work. Especially when you’re as out of practice, as I am.
 
Want to know more about them? Stay tuned for our next exciting episode. Learn how the Bandit shapes up in some of the best passes you’ll ever ride.
 
Regards
Stan L
South Africa

"How it shapes up "
Lighter, lower centre of gravity, big torque @ low rpm, flickable, good brakes, best "bang for bucks" . Winner.

We appear to have gone from stiff nipples to just plain " nipples "..............we can only hope the next installment doesn't descend into the realm of " droopy " nipples .   
Looks like an interesting area you're touring , great report .

I shoulda said "how I shape up)