Branded Blog

Last weekend, in another adventure format that has most of my friends responding eloquently “huh?” (ie. a motor-bike ride with my other half’s men’s group), I found myself on the back of the bike in a place called “Sewe Weeks Poort Pass”.

But let me back track first, and start at the beginning. A very good place to start, as some of you might have heard. We left Cape Town via the N1 at about 2pm in the sweltering heat of a typical November friday (not that November has been that typical this year, apparently, but the guys in Copenhagen are trying to sort that out I’m lead to believe), and headed East via Franschoek, up Franschoek Pass to Villiersdorp. Then a scenic dirt road through to Robertson, and just past Ashton to overnight at a little guest house where they have a big old farmhouse with meandering corridors, higgledy-piggeldy rooms built on and out, and free-range piggies. Needless to say the carnivores amongst us had much pork on the braai that night. Sorry for the piggies.

Leaving the farm the next morning after a huge breakfast (again, much pork) we doubled back to Montague, down the R62 to Barrydale for lunch at Country Pumpkin (where those of us without them got some of the last Route 62 riders wings to be handed out), stopping in the blazing heat for the obligatory photo at Ronnie’s Sex Shop (if you don’t know what I mean, where have you been?) and then on to Ladismith and up to Sewe Weeks Poort.

I had wondered why the place was called Sewe Weeks Poort, but as soon as we got there it was clear – take 1 x ox-wagon and I would have bet a damn side longer to get through this than seven weeks! Amazing, folded mountains that literally go up on every side as you meander through the winding dirt road passing over the river every few hundred metres. It’s one of those places where you can actually see the workings of the geological forces and and trace the motion of the rock before it set – quite impressive in the true sense of the word.

After taking photos from the back of the bike, stopping for a dip in the river clothes and all – it was that hot!- and trying to figure out why on earth you would want to drag your oxen, wagon and women through here at all, we eventually popped out onto a short drag of tar that deposited us squarely in Laingsburg, in the heart of the Karoo.

Now Laingsburg on a hot Saturday afternoon is not exactly a happening place. But it has that sleepy quaintness that hot, tired Karoo dorpies have and it being the first sign of rest & tea we’d seen for a while, was a most welcome sight.

We drove up and down the main road (takes about 45 seconds each way), and decided to try the Laingsburg Country Hotel for some respite. Having learnt over the years that you can seldom do better for home-made tea and cake than a Karoo dorpie, we entered the intriguing airconditioned silence of the hotel coffee shop / restaurant to be welcomed in by a lovely, demure Laingsburg lady and shown to a window seat overlooking the N1. Obviously. The hotel is on the main road. We ordered our teas and coffees and chose carefully the homebaked cheese cake and ample apple crumble which were, as expected, some of the best ever made. Myth of the Karoo bakers confirmed – best in the country. No contest.

And as we sat there thoroughly reveling in our quiet and delicious late afternoon tea-room rest-stop, a large double-barreled (yes, I know there are better, more accurate and technical descriptors, but tough) many-wheeled truck that was heading north on the great economic pilgrimage that so many trucks make up through the Karoo slowed, and pulled into the petrol station on the opposite side of the road. As it slowed and I read the branding on the side of the truck, I laughed out loud in delight.

Sometimes, despite my protestations to the contrary (cf. blog #1) encountering advertising when you least expect it really is a pleasure. And here it seemed to me a perfect reflection of how wonderful South African culture, humour and tongue-in-cheek self deprecation can be.

Also a brand I can’t pretend to be a card-carrying convert of, but having grown up in a Free State town where the local franchise was one of the few legitimate choices for a teenage night out with friends, I will always retain a soft spot for it despite the terror it inspires in me these days!

Here was an iconic South African family brand smiling at itself and us, in an iconic South African family town – alike and different to so many hundreds of others scattered around SA – and calling on some of the most celebrated and desecrated cues and clues from global popular culture to do so.

Beef me up, Skattie.

Perfect.

I smiled all the way back to CT – 3 hours flat on the bike, stops and all. Say no more.