Back on my bicycle, the once-tarred road returned to gravel after the mine at Letseng-le-Terae.

Although there was a long, fairly flat stretch straight afterwards, I sensed that I would be doing a lot of downhill riding very soon.

After all, I had passed the point where no piece of road was at higher altitude in the whole of Southern Africa, and the highest diamond mine in the world.

I decided to readjust the brakes on my back wheel. If I was to do lots of freewheeling, it wouldn’t really matter if the wheel danced around and touched the sides of my wheel
In fact it would help!

After doing so I pedalled on and, guess what? The wheel had stopped its dancing act!

Sure enough, the downhill of all downhills awaited me. I gunned down it praying that I had enough “ammo” in the form of brake padding to slow down at each bend.

These mountain passes are like staircases!

The day was getting late and cold and the faster I free-wheeled, the colder I became.

Eventually I reached the bottom, where the tar started once again.

My wrists looked forward to taking a break from the pounding they always get on such downhills. It seemed like another world at the bottom. The last of the afternoon sunlight was still shining in a valley below.

It was also a world in which people lived, grew crops and kept animals, unlike the vast mountain wilderness through which I had passed.

Two men on the side of the road were busy loading branches of scrub on to the back of a donkey.

On a slope above me, a field of wheat shone like gold.

A little shop behind a security fence at the entrance to a little town called Mapholaneng looked inviting.

I weaved into the yard, laid my bike down against a staircase and went inside in search of something savoury, like a packet of chips and something wet and sweet, like a cooldrink, like the Coke motor cyclist brothers and brother-in-law Dries, Dirk and Danie had given me back on the Moteng Pass.

Image: Duncan Guy, CC-BY-SA

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Have you ever had a wipe-out on a bicycle?