Iteris

The next morning we packed up all our kit, loaded up the trailer and panniers, and pulled the fully laden bike onto the road. pessimist that I am, I sat astride the stretch tandem with growing foreboding and waited to be scraped along the road. Surprisingly when we started peddling we..wobbled and stopped. Twice more we tried to the same effect, eventually a very kind gentlemen gave us a push and we were off down the hill, crazily gaining speed. As Amelia and I hurtled down the rode, the tandem trembling under the strain of stuff and howling wind, we were getting ever closer to a corner. This would not have been quite so alarming had the corner not had a barrier on it, over which gaped a seemingly bottomless drop. There was only one sensible option open to us, so we panicked, then we managed to skid a tandem before jumping clear and watching it slowly collapse on the side of the road. Hearts pounding we stared dumbstruck at the gear we were supposedly meant to pull all the way to Bluf. We wheeled the bike back up the hill and left it at the site while we went down and fetched the trailer. It was so heavy that we had to flag down a passing mini bus and got it hitched up the hill. Sitting down in the shade we had a discussion and were lucky enough to get our kit shifted half the distance to the next campsite and so we set off on our cycle, with no trailer or panniers, it was great.
Meeting up with our stuff again, we were again faced with the problem of how to shift it to the camp site. For the second time that day we were lucky and managed to find someone to take it all the way to the camp site we had planned to stay at.
During that day we stopped to ask directions at someone’s house and we were greeted with a friendliness I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. They insisted we come in for a drink. I have to be honest and say that what struck me most was the amazing beard the man had managed to grow as well as his black vest and very small black boxer briefs which is all he appeared to be wearing, perfectly decent in themselves but together it appeared as though he were wearing a one piece outfit.
That evening was a very sombre one. We had realised that we weren’t able to carry the gear and I can honestly say that I was thinking the whole trip would have to be abandoned