Autumn festival…

CHRIS BENNETT looks back on a fine season.

A HAT tip this week to Wozani, and another to the town officers of Margate for the excellent Easter/Bikefest events.

I drove around the promenade in Margate fairly early one morning recently.

After dropping a friend at the Port Shepstone Hospital, hence the early morning, I had coffee, excellent coffee at M&B.

Strollers were promenading in the bright sunshine and the refurbished fishing pier, once again bringing much joy to the fishermen, was doing great stuff. All arms of the pier had fishermen angling their optimism into the magnificent swell. The Margate Pier is surely one of the finest on the coast, maybe even in the country.

I was somewhat taken aback when I read in last week’s Herald that there had been 20 000 motorbikes in town for the recent fishing and biking festivals. I find it hard to visualise so many, but from what I saw on the road and in the car parks over the holiday, bikers from all around the country seem to have adopted the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast as their own.

One local watering hole in Port Edward, a town of which I wrote last week, is called The Web - of intrigue maybe? The owners took part enthusiastically in the fishing competition with a stall near the boat club. This meant that there was little occasion for thirst, given the bar at the ski boat club and the always popular Bobbies’ restaurant. Visitors commented on the friendliness of South Coasters. I replied that that is one of the reasons we live here.

I have seldom seen a pub as interesting as The Web. It has a pleasant presence in its affable and friendly hosts, Denis and Rhone, both of whom are noted bookworms. The pub boasts a modest but interesting little collection of volumes, something rare these days anywhere, let alone in a pub!

During a conversation recently with bikers from the other side of the barrier of spears, they told me this was their first visit to the coast, or at least this part of it.

I pointed out that the South Coast, as we who live here know only too well, rejoices in the nickname of the Slow Coast.

The slowness is perhaps something of an illusion, but one of the reasons most of us can afford to indulge in such trivialities as the speed limit is that we don’t have any need to rush. Motorbikes always rush, of course. They have deadlines to meet, and occasionally they meet those lines dead.

I also pointed out that there were two things that newcomers to the Coast have to accustom themselves to: the pace of life and the lack of money.

It has always struck me that people in a hurry, whether they are motor bikers or taxi drivers, delivery drivers or bus drivers, are usually in a hurry because they are in pursuit of money. What else could it be? Hence my conclusion that the slowness is as illusory as the money.

I have a habit of obeying the speed limit; I realise that the limit is not arbitrary but is imposed in the interests of safety. In other words the design of the road means that travel will be safe at speeds up to and including the limit.

When I can I drive at about 90kmh, which is why I take the old road to Shelly Beach or Port Shepstone. My life is now dictated by less urgent needs, and the speed on the old road is dictated largely by topography.

I know I can’t win the argument, but I can’t lose it either.

CB