Travels in the Free State and KZN, May 2025 (Part 1)

In May 2025 we went on a holiday trip to the Free State and KZN, the first time we had been outside Gauteng for ten years. In 2015 we went to the Northern and Western Cape, which you can read about here, if you are interested. This is a kind of travelogue, people and places we saw in our travels.

This time our journey was initially sparked off by family concerns. A cousin of mine, Peter Walters (alias Peter Badcock-Walters) died a year ago, and we went to Clarens in the Free State to have a memorial gathering on the anniversary of his death. Its a route we have taken a few times before -- from Kilner Park in the Great City of Tshwane we head south-east down the R50 to Delmas, which the road by-passes, and from there to Devon, Balfour, Villiers, Frankfort, Bethlehem and finally to Clarens.

Sibusiso Gama - a kind young man

But, we find, the Province of Mpumalanga doesn't do road signs. The turn-off to Devon is not marked, and we can't remember it from the last time we passed this way 12 years ago. I tried to check the Google maps on my cell phone, but didn't know how to work it properly and trying to type something in while bouncing along avoiding potholes was too difficult. So we continued on to Leandra, formerly known as Leslie and now called something else, and took the road to Devon from there. A few kilometres on, we hit an enormous pothole. Val was driving, and with a 26-wheeler truck coming the other way, there was nowhere to swerve to, and bang there was a flat tyre. We stopped at the first place where it was possible to get off the road, and had to remove all the luggage to get at the spare wheel, and fumble under the passenger seat to find the jack, and we had just started to jack up the car when a very kind young man, Sibusiso Gama, stopped to help us. One thing we have found is that if you have car trouble, people are generally kind and stop to help. The road from Balfour to Villiers had many more potholes, and we very drove slowly as another flat tyre would mean we'd be stuck.

Villiers looked a bit like a ghost town, since the highway now by-passes it, but the volume of traffic can barely manage the toll plaza, and the single-lane bridge into Villiers would never cope. The Vaal River at Villiers looked pretty, so we took some photos. 

The Vaal River at Villiers

We made it to Clarens without any further problems. Peter Walters and his wife Toni ran a guest house, Clarens Country House which they had converted from an old sheep shearing shed. Peter & Toni's son Craig returned from Greece to help Toni run the guest house after Peter's death, and their other son, Ross, came up from KwaZulu-Natal with his wife Susie and son Tom for the gathering.

The next morning we drove back to Bethlehem to get the flat tyre seen to. It turned out that there was nothing wrong with the tyre, but they couldn't mend the wheel, and got a second-hand one from somewhere, and as a result we now have two mismatched front wheels. Farming communities are very good at fixing things.

More friends arrived and on the Saturday morning we all went to have breakfast at a cafe on a farm surrounded by herb gardens, and all meals served with their homemade cheese.

Susie, Ross, Craig & Toni Walters, Steve & Val Hayes

 

At the memorial gathering itself, Peter's friends came, and there were about 30 people there. Several shared their memories of Pete. He was an artist and book illustrator. He did the illustrations for an edition of the work of Herman Charles Bosman, He was also an educational reformer, and gave a lot of time to educational reform in South Africa. We concluded with the shortest and simplest form of the Orthodox Memorial Service (with the blessing of our parish priest, Fr Danil). This is usually done on the anniversary of a person's death, or the closest Saturday to it.

Craig Walters presents Tom with his granddad's kilt

This was followed by a buffet supper at which Craig passed on to young Tom his grandfather's kilt in the MacFarlane tartan (Peter's and my great-grandmother was Ellen MacFarlane (1858-1933), from Glasgow). 

On Sunday morning we sang the Hours and Obednitsa with Toni and Craig, and Craig, who had heard Orthodox services in Greek, quite enjoyed hearing it in English. These are the services used in the Orthodox Church when there is no priest present, and the Obetnitsa, or Typika, is like the Divine Liturgy, but with the priest's parts left out. 

On Monday 12 May we left Clarens for KwaZulu-Natal. Last time we passed this way the Oliviershoek Pass over the Drakensberg was said to be impassible, so we had avoided it. This time we were just told it was bad, with detours and wash-aways, but it was much better than we expected, and we enjoyed the autumn colours of the trees along the route, especially in Winterton. We avoided the toll roads as far as possible, driving through Estcourt, Mooi River and Nottingham Road. Beyond Balgowan we saw a sign saying that Granny Mouse's Country House was open for lunch, so we went in. I expected a thatched cottage surrounded by hollyhocks with a few tables and maybe tea and cream scones. It turned out to be a rather large hotel, with a very expensive, though tasty, curry lunch. It cost over R600 for the two of us.

Jacelyn & Hannes Zwart, Gary & Cheryldene van Schoor

On leaving there we stopped to take photos of the Lidgeton Falls on Lions River, then bypassed Pietermaritzburg, and visited another cousin, Cheryldene van Schoor (nee Bradbury). I had not met her before, and had last seen her father, Michael Bradbury, when I was 7 and he was 12, in Ingogo, so it was good to meet his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren!

Our common ancestors were John and Adelaide Cottam, from Manchester in the UK, They came to Durban in 1863, with John Bagot Cottam as accounted to the Natal Cotton Plantation Company, which didn't succeed in growing much cotton. Manchester at that time depended on its cotton miles, and the cotton supply had probably dried us as a result of the American Civil War, which was probably what brought J.B. Cottam to Natal.

We went on to Pinetown, and drove past Mariannhill through an endless traffic jam going down the hill to Nagina, where we stayed with an old friend, Theophilus Ngubane. Forty-five years ago we had worked together in the Anglican Diocese of Zululand, training self-supporting priests and deacons. We sat around talking until 1:00am catching up on news from the past.

Addington Beach, Durban. 13 May 2025

The next morning Theo insisted that the first thing we must do in Durban after not having been there for a long time was go to the beach, and so he took us on a tour through some of the southern suburbs. Seeing it in daylight we were immediately struck by the proliferation of yellow flowers at the side of the road. We had never seen such flowers in Durban before (our last visit was in 2012). They grew on quite tall plants. But about a month ago we were struck by similar plants in the Great City of Tshwane, but there the flowers had been orange.

Addington Beach, replanted with coastal bush

Theo took us to Addington Beach, which had been done up since we had last seen it, and one noticeable improvement was that someone, presumably the eThekwini Municipality had restored the indigenous coastal bush along the edge of the beach, which helped to stop beach erosion. This also gave the feel that you used to get along the coast of walking the narrow path through the bush, and encountering the beach and the sea. Another interesting observation was that I follow a couple of Facebook groups where people post historical pictures of old Durban, and there are usually numerous comments from white racists about how nice and clean Durban and its beaches were in the "good" old days of apartheid, and how filthy and rubbish clogged the place is now. But we could see no sign of the alleged filth and rubbish, and it all looked clean and well maintained to us.

Steve Hayes, John Aitchison, Theophilus Ngubane

Theo took us to the King Shaka Ocean World, which again was new to us. We had lunch at Macdonalds, where they no longer had printed menus. and you were expected to order through a phone app. None of us had the app, or any room on our phones for it, so the black waitress pressed buttons on a big screen, and was a bit taken aback to discover that Theo was buying lunch for his white friends. 

We went on for afternoon tea at the Windermere Centre, where we had afternoon tea with another old friend, John Aitchison, who had been at university with Steve in Pietermaritzburg, and we has worked together on Theological Education by Extension (TEE).

(continued in Part 2)