Two wheels, no shortcuts.
Nick has spent two decades exploring South Africa on two wheels — with a loaded rolltop kit bag behind him he followed the kind of routes that separate a holiday from an adventure. His travels range across the length and breadth of the country, from remote back roads to routes most riders never find, though it's the drylands of the Karoo, Bushman land and the Kalahari that keeps pulling him back.
Often accompanied by rally like route notes, as well as the bikes and gear that got him there. Nick recounts the moments — good and bad — that only happen when you're exposed to the elements on two wheels.
Part 2 — Modderrivier to Dewetsdorp (Northern Cape, Free State and Lesotho — written for BIKE SA in 2019) In last month’s article, Nick and Bruce took two days to get to the start of the Northern Cape Battlefields route at Modderrivier. En route they rode through the vast Karoo plains between Klaarstroom and the […]
Part 1 — Bot River to Modderrivier (Karoo and Northern Cape — written for BIKE SA in 2019) Having visited the Northern Cape’s Second Boer War battlefields with my late stepfather, Harvey Tyson, some years back, I thought it a fitting tribute to him on the anniversary of his death, to not only re-enact the […]
(Ceres/Klein/Great Karoo — written for BIKE SA in 2016) Every year or so, my loyal SpaceRiders’ client, veteran speedway rider and all-round biker, Adam Schwindt and I set off on an adventure motorcycling trip together. But, having heard he was not that well earlier in the year, I was surprised when he contacted me to […]
(Overberg plus Klein/Groot/Tankwa Karoo – written for BIKE SA in 2019) The trip had been planned long ago. Annette’s nephew, Grant Theron, a South African advertising executive long in exile overseas, away from the ravages of murder, mayhem, a captured state, spineless governance and truckloads of hate speech in SA — not to mention far […]
(Various regions – written for BIKE SA in 2017) It’s been exactly ten years since my first article was published in Bike SA, and what an adventure it’s been! In that time I’ve ridden some 100, 000 km on SA’s and Lesotho’s dirt tracks on a great variety of motorcycles, but primarily on my faithful […]
(Overberg — written for BIKE SA in 2018) As a tourist to the Cape, if you were eating lunch at the Two Oceans Restaurant at the southernmost promontory of the Cape Peninsula, you could be forgiven for thinking you were at the southern tip of Africa. But, like many early seafarers you would be wrong […]
(Klein/Great Karoo and ‘Bushmanland’— written for BIKE SA in 2010) Dreaming up an excuse for another back roads excursion, I settled on a roundabout dirt track excursion through the Great Karoo to Verneuk Pan — about as far away as you can get from anywhere in SA — to celebrate the Winter Equinox: the longest, […]
(Cape to Cairo bikers for the J9 foundation — written for Offroad & Adventure in 2015) It’s a dreary Tuesday when the news comes in. My life-partner, Annette, the editor of our local newspaper, the Theewaterskloof Gazette, is privy to all local happenings in the Overberg and its surrounds and she copies me in on […]
(Klein-Karoo and southern Eastern Cape – written in 2015 for Offroad & Adventure) The 1.5-metre Cape Cobra made its way across the dirt track in front of me and there was seemingly no way I could miss out on my projected collision course with the serpent. Sounds kind of biblical, I know, but I really […]
(Klein-Karoo – written for BIKE SA in 2013) “Nick, can you do this for us?” Simon asked in a cryptic email headed “Harley rider opportunity”. Reading a little further I discovered that Kiehl’s hair and skin care products were organising a Liferide — yes, I was confused by the title, too — on Harleys from […]