Heart and hearth...

CHRIS BENNETT returns from a month in the Fairest cape…

COMING home always seems to be the best part of a journey; to me, and I think to the majority of us.

I miss the ones that matter most: the Widow Christie and the bewitching Samantha; Leon, the diviner and his wife Karin, dog, fish and plant whisperer. There is nowhere quite like home.

Seeing so much of the coastline and the splendid ocean around Africa’s spectacular east and south coast made me very aware of how fortunate we are to live in this particular corner of the world. The weather is, usually, comfortable and the green valleys of banana and sugar reassuring, in that someone, somewhere is growing food. The dry scrubland of the Eastern Cape has its own beauty, but it is still dry scrubland.

Driving on the N2 from the Cape to Natal revealed some interesting road behaviour. By and large, all the drivers were courteous and considerate, which tended to increase my despair for our lot here on the South Coast.

The motorway from King William’s Town to East London is huge and wide; the planned N2 route from Southbroom to Mthatha, which is what the boffins have in mind as far as I can make out, makes even less sense when you see so little use of the route. Bypassing Mthatha would be a step in the right direction and cost a lot less. However, as we all seem to surmise, there are all sorts of wheels within wheels on this project.

Having travelled from the glorious vineyards of the Cape, the leafy lanes and avenues of the delicious Stellenbosch and up along the five hundred kilometres of the coast, with its magnificent barrier of rock all along the way, the Langkloof, there seems to be no great threat to mother earth. I can’t help wondering if the threat is not more to the human race than the planet. Everywhere things grow and thrive, except in the shanty towns sprawling across the land, with seemingly neither hope nor future.

The drive down to the Cape, via Kokstad, Matatiele, Elliot, Queenstown, Cradock and Graaf Reinet; Prince Alfred’s Pass, Knysna and the Wilderness, and finally the wonderful Sir Lowry’s Pass down into Somerset West, was pure pleasure. It may take a little longer and be a little further, but it is very beautiful – to my eyes anyway.

Coming home via the forlorn Grahamstown, nearing its last legs, King William’s Town, much changed since William IV expired and was followed on the throne by his niece, Victoria, and sleepy Gonubie, was a matter of travel rather than touring.

The sight of the rolling hills of sugar cane brought a bit of a lump to my throat as I neared Esinqoleni to turn right and take the peaceful little back road to Port Edward.

All was well at home, excepting that for the first time in forty-something years there was no wagging tail to greet us.

But that is another story.