The journey to Somerset East

Early early we were ready to go this morning. All packed up and off to Cradock first for a bit of essential shopping and then we hit the road out of Cradock, firstly to go and look for the Egg rock. Even at 40 mt high and made of Dolorite, we could not find it, only to find out later that it is on a well disguised road, with little , if any indication. We bank that one as a "non compliant". After this we get on the go to Somerset East, but no normal road again, this time it is the road via Mortimer to Somerset East. Obviously this is now all on gravel and mainly the D-roads. It is also beginning to rain very lightly, but the Randalls are not phased by this at all. We reached Mortimer all right and then we took another road on the map going past Bloemfontein. We thought this interesting and headed off on the D2503. We travelled on through mud and gravel and I opened many gates and went through and old pass, with beautiful hand packed road bases. Clearly in years gone by this was a frequently used pass, however with the new tar roads most of these roads are only used by local farmers, I would assume. We went past Bloemfontein, a Cattle and Hunting farm. It was like a picture from days gone by. It is a huge set up with an old homestead and beautiful surroundings, all in white and green.
And so we continued for the rest of the day over gravel pass, after gravel pass, amidst, yet again the most unbelievable scenery. The roads was a challenge in many places and there was mud and gates and hills and I expected a leopard to appear any moment from the mountains, but only sheep and cows and one black-backed jackal.
After we had been on this D road for an hour and a half, I saw a farm on the left and was sure that it was Glen Avon, which was sort of towards the end of the road, however there it was only Glen Craig, which was like a position I thought we had passed a long time ago, In my defense, I have to say that the map was last updated in 1999 and I am sure thing must have changed since then. It was a bit of a surprise and we quickly had to "regroup" and have something to eat and get out of the car an.d take a pic or two and settle back into the journey. The road had been rough and Dick was concentrating hard and breakfast a long time back.
Luckily the cloud had  started to lift and the rain was gone and in patches the sun was coming through. We arrived in Somerset East at about 4pm and went to the campsite where we had booked for 2 nights. We had sort of a feeling and Dick had said that this was the one place he was not sure about and low and behold, that was the case. The security guard on duty came to us and said that the ablutions were not of a desirable state and offered to get somebody to make them desirable,but once I had seen it, I just knew that now matter how much effort went into it, there was no way it was going to be desirable to me tonight. We called it off and booked into a Self catering place and are now warmly settled into Somerset Lodge and we are having a good bottle of wine and we are going to have a PIZZA tonight.
All in all a great day, travelling through this wonderful country of ours and seeing placed that the Politicians don't even know about, so surely low on the list of places to be screwed up. So stay off the high ways and enjoy the by ways!!