Have Classic car, will travel

19 October 2014 - 02:03 By Patrick Coyne
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PARKING OFF: The Windy Corner lookout point on Van Reenen's pass Picture: PATRICK COYNE
PARKING OFF: The Windy Corner lookout point on Van Reenen's pass Picture: PATRICK COYNE

Patrick Coyne plays pass the mountain pass in a 1960 Rover saloon

When my wife and I told our friends we planned to tackle 50 South African mountain passes in our 1960 Rover P4-100 saloon, they gave us deadpan looks. One of them advised that our first stop should be an "AA-recommended psychiatrist".

After all, no sane person takes a 40-year-old car on such a trip. But this 8100km journey turned out to be the most memorable and rewarding trip of our lives.

Why mountain passes? I had always had a fascination for mountains and the grandeur of their scenery. Then, the routes that the early road-makers had built over those mountains - each one had its own story of endeavour and perseverance.

But why in an old car? You could do the trip in a modern car - and we had one. But that would have been too easy. I suppose there was just a tiny bit of Voortrekker-type pioneering in our thinking.

Looking back, there are so many mind-pictures that stand out. The beautiful passes of the Western and Eastern Cape, such as Bain's Kloof, Du Toit's Kloof, Hex River, Sir Lowry's, Franschhoek, each had its own charm.

Then, the quaint, age-old passes of the Garden Route, the Little Karoo, the Swartberg Range and the Great Karoo, such as Tradouw, Garcia's, Outeniqua, Montagu, Homtini, Phantom and the greatest of them all, the Swartberg Pass, all had their own fascinating history to tell, plus, there were those superb old poorts - winding ways through the mountains - Meiringspoort, Schoemanspoort and Seven Weeks Poort, the last today exactly as it was when it was built in 1862.

Venturing northwards into the Eastern Cape, we hit the worst and most dangerous of them all for an ordinary saloon car, the Potriver/Naude's Nek Pass. This takes you 90km from Maclear to Rhodes over rough gravel mixed with sharp rocks and ridges of naked stone, tortuous, narrow, and very steep in places.

Naude's Nek is a stiff climb up the Drakensberg escarpment to its highest point, 2492m above sea level (only 381m lower than the mighty Sani Pass itself). We were approaching the summit, climbing cautiously in first gear, when we saw a signboard instructing us sternly to "Reduce Speed!" This gave us a good laugh because the road was steep and narrow, ahead it looked even steeper and narrower, and if we had reduced speed any further we would probably have come to a dead stop.

Into Natal and the Free State, we negotiated the border passes of Oliviershoek and Van Reenen's, before tackling what is now the highest tarred road in Southern Africa, Witsieshoek, 2560m above sea level.

This is a must for any collector of mountain passes. Halfway up, we stopped for a picnic at the side of the road, at the breathtaking altitude of 2286m - where we sat in absolute silence, gazing at the glorious view. Truly a day to remember.

Then it was into Mpumalanga and Northern Province, where we finished off our trip climbing such famous passes as Long Tom, Abel Erasmus and Magoebaskloof.

The Rover fulfilled our hopes as regards safety and reliability, never once coming to an involuntary stop. I had to check and top-up the radiator daily, but the engine always soldiered on, even at high altitudes. To be excruciatingly honest, towards the end of the trip I noticed an intermittent engine misfire at speed.

This had been a strenuous tour for an elderly lady that had already covered 192000km, with much hill-climbing in lower gears at high revs, so I was not surprised later to find that the engine had a burnt No.6 exhaust valve. The engine has since been completely overhauled and is now as good as new.

We were so impressed by this trip that we decided to do some research into the history of each pass, to try to find out why it was built, how it got its name, and what difficulties the pioneers had in building it. I was lucky in being able to talk to some civil engineers who had done the designing and building of some of our more modern passes. They told me about the problems they had encountered and I learnt a little bit about the craft of pass-building.

This resulted in what turned out to be our most ambitious and difficult project until then - writing and publishing a book about our trip, titled rather grandiosely A Guide to South Africa's Mountain Passes and Poorts. It took 10 years, but it was worth it because now we have an easily-accessible treasure-chest of memories of our best travel experience of all. - ©Patrick Coyne

'A Guide to South Africa's Mountain Passes and Poorts' is available at Exclusive Books or e-mail voicepi@mweb.co.za.

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