bikepacking – The Cape Record

Chapter 28 – More Difficulties

February 11, 2025August 4, 2025 clairepatriciaLeave a comment

We were called at 5 and at 6.15 we left Kapiri M’poshi, with pleasant memories of a comfortable jolly little hotel. We were in good spirits and felt very fit. At last, the poisoning caused by the mixture of artemisinin and the drug I had taken at Nairobi seemed to have been expelled from my system and for the first time I felt something like my own old self. The sun shining in a cloudless sky may have had something to do with our improved spirits: anyway, we felt thoroughly cheerful as our good Wolseley sailed over the excellent road towards the South. Our host had told us that the road was good as far as Broken Hill but had warned us to be careful of a dangerous bridge which lay in wait round a corner at the end of a long straight. But he had not specified exactly how far this bridge was from Kapiri M’poshi, so that each time the road curved we slowed down cautiously. We crossed several bridges over streams and at last concluded that me must have meant one of these, though we had not seen any particular danger in any of them. The rain of the day before seemed to have bound the road surface into a solid hard surface and we were sailing gaily along at about 50 miles an hour when the road took a gentle left-hand curve. As the road straightened, we saw what was undoubtedly the dangerous bridge before us, and a nasty looking affair it was. The road sloped steeply down to a river and crossed it by a wide plank bridge with no guard rail of any sort, and the road itself was deep in slimy mud, for the sun’s rays had not reached it owing to the shade cast by the forest bounding the road. Humfrey braked and the tail of the car slid round: he released the brakes to straighten the car, but it was obvious that we were travelling far too fast to cross the bridge with any degree of safety. He braked again and made a lovely snap change down to third while the tail of the car was sliding: an instant later he managed to get down to second gear and this helped to steady the wildly skidding car and to slow it down. The bridge was horribly near, and we were by no means facing straight for it as the tail of the car swung from side to side on the slimy treacherous surface. At least, just at the last moment when I was beginning to visualise a real whole-hearted smash, Humfrey got the car under control and we dashed across the wood planks. I had a glimpse of racing water twenty feet below: then we were across and rushing up the opposite slope which was equally slippery. We had no trouble in climbing it because the impetus of our comparatively high speed, probably about 30 mph, carried us some distance up it and the engine was well able to cope with the remainder. When we reached the top, we looked at each other and laughed. I said, “Well done, Humfrey” and he replied “Nasty, wasn’t it?” It was at a more sedate gait that we continued our journey but we ran into Broken Hill without further incident, having taken an hour and 13 minutes for the 39 miles. A lot better then yesterday!

Broken Hill was a delightful surprise. I had heard of it as a mining centre and had conceived in my mind’s eye a composite picture made up, shall we say, of the Rhondde Valley and one of those ghastly mining villages of the worst part of Yorkshire. Instead, we found a pleasant smiling township with wide streets and broad expanses of green grass around which were, sparsely scattered, the fine residences of the local gentry with the delightful airy spaciousness of a country where land is cheap and where buildings do not have to be crammed tightly against each other.

We had decided to breakfast here – we had only had a cup of tea before leaving Kapiri M’poshi – and while breakfasting, to have our car thoroughly greased and checked over. We found an excellent garage and set them to work while we sought the hotel. The large panelled dining-room was pleasant with the early morning sun pouring in through its open windows and as we looked out across the wide park-like meadows in front we felt that fate might hold worse things than being compelled to pass one’s days in Broken Hill. We were shown to a bathroom, to reach which we were conducted out at the back of the hotel where bedrooms were built round a garden of flowers with a fountain playing in the middle. A delightful spot, this hotel at Broken Hill.

We dawdled lazily over a hearty breakfast and Humfrey, having spotted a photographer’s shop, went out to buy a camera as he feared that his own cameras had suffered from the ducking they had received when they had lain under-water for 12 hours. It was for this reason that we brought back so few photographs of the portion of our journey between Juba and Broken Hill. He felt it was a waste of time to take photographs with a camera that was not working properly. He later discovered that his small “Retina” was in perfect order, and we regretted particularly not having any pictorial record of the crossing of those fantastic swamps where the tall grass grew all across the road a foot above the level of the radiator.

We wasted a lot of time at Broken Hill but we were content to laze a few hours in the pleasant sunshine and it was not until 10.13, after a stop of nearly 3 hours, that we set off on the road to Lusaka 91 miles away. The road belied its early promise, so that it was 1.15 when we drove into this growing town. Lusaka is the new capital of Northern Rhodesia. It having been decided to move the seat of government here from Livingstone, as it had been found that this was not sufficiently central. I have no doubt that the new part of Lusaka where the government buildings are and which lies away to the left of the through road is pleasant enough, but the parts that we saw resembled nothing so much as the pictures of early American townships. It was a jumble of corrugated iron and wooden shacks, with broken bottles and old tins forming prominent features of the landscape. We stopped here at a modern-looking garage, which was on our list as being a Morris agency, as we wanted to get a small repair job done. The two rods which stay the radiator cowling to the dash and which had been broken in the crash had been welded at Nairobi. They had now broken again, and this had left the radiator cowling free to work backwards and forwards at the top; so that we found some difficulty in persuading the bonnet to stay in place as it was only held by one broad strap since the fixing clips had been torn away in the crash. Also, these rods annoyed us by rattling on the metal of the dash and we felt that we must try and get them repaired. We found that we had unfortunately arrived at lunch time and the repair shop would not be open again until 2 o’clock. We did not want to waste more time so we contented ourselves with tying rags round the broken ends of the rods to stop them rattling and went on.

Outside Lusaka, we bore to the right and came on a most unpleasantly slippery piece of road. It ran on a sort of causeway above the surrounding marshy land and it was covered with a particularly glutinous and slimy film of mud. I had quite a struggle to keep the car from sliding off the causeway into the fields below. About 5 miles out we came to a definite stop. Across the road ahead was a barrier and a notice “Bridge down. Road closed.” There was also a signpost pointing down a road to the right which said “Chilongabonga” or some such word. We consulted a map and Humfrey said that was all right, that it was on our road though it did not appear in our logbook. So we turned off and slithered along for another 5 miles or so. There were various roads turning off which appeared to lead to farms – indeed we saw a car ahead turn away down one of these. Suddenly, without any warning, our road deteriorated into what I can only describe as a combination of a river bed and a cattle track! It was deep in red mud and ran between high banks of earth. There were no tracks of vehicles on its surface, no marks at all except the hoof marks of cattle. We didn’t like it and as it grew narrower and narrower we liked it even less. It in fact, it was quite plain that something was wrong. This was not a road at all: it was a cattle-path leading to some farm.

There was nothing for it to turn back. It wasn’t easy. The track was very narrow, not much wider than the length of the car and the surface was deep and soft, so that while I moved gingerly backwards and forwards I was in terror lest the wheels should begin to spin and we should get stuck. Gentle manipulation of clutch and throttle managed it at last and I drove slowly back along the slippery road. As the road, which was apparently the one we wanted, was closed for a broken bridge Humfrey decided that the only thing to do was to return to Lusaka, get our broken tie rods repaired and find out if there was any way of circumventing the broken bridge. I hated going back along that slippery causeway, but it was so obviously the wise thing to do that I submitted, though with ill grace.

We found the garage open now, for our little tour down the cattle track and back had occupied about three quarters of an hour. The manager, a keen young fellow, himself undertook to weld new ends on to our broken rods and meanwhile he telephoned to the local civil engineer about the broken bridge. The reply was consoling if annoying. It was “Oh yes, the bridge is broken but a way has been made for a car to get down the bank and ford the stream. No. He was sorry he didn’t know about the “Road closed” notice which was still there. He though it had been taken away. Humfrey and I looked at each other. We wondered what we should have done if we had arrived at this “Bridge Down” notice in the middle of the night when there was no one from whom to make inquiries. It was funny that, that thought should have occurred to us, because in the early hours of the next morning we had that very problem to solve! Rhodesia in the rainy season is a nice motoring country! It is certainly rarely dull!!

It was not until 3.35 pm that we finally got away from Lusaka, the radiator stay-rods having been repaired. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes since we passed through it for the first time on our little excursion along the cattle track and once again, we drove along that slippery causeway which we had come to hate exceedingly. We drove boldly around the “Road Closed” notice on the pass and continued. In a mile or so we came to a stream with its bridge washed away. It was not a serious obstacle. A track had been cut in the bank and we drove down this, forded the stream on a bed of logs laid in the water, climbed up the bank on the other side and regained the road.

It was a pleasant country through which we drove after leaving Lusaka, well-wooded and friendly looking country, and the road wound in gentle curves around the shoulders of little hills. The surface was dry, hard, and not too bad. Perhaps the weather was a trifle too hot for the sun blazed down from a clear blue sky but even overpowering heat was preferable to the ghastly downpour we had driven through the day before. We had no anxieties, though we were disappointed at our slow progress since we left Kapiri M’poshi that morning: we had spent more than 5 hours at Broken Hill and Lusaka and had only covered 130 miles. Nevertheless we were not worried and after our exhausting struggle with bad roads and worse weather the day before I think that our leisurely progress that morning probably did us an enormous amount of good.

The next point in our log was Kafue River, where there was a ferry which, we knew, only ran during daylight hours but we had no anxiety about that. It was still early afternoon when we had left Lusaka and the ferry lay only 37 miles away. Eventually we arrived on the riverbank at 4.52, having averaged exactly 30 miles an hour from Lusaka. There used to be a bridge over the Kafue River some six or eight years before it had been carried away by unusually heavy floods and since then the crossing has been carried out by a native ferry. It has not been thought worth while in view of the paucity of through traffic, to rebuild the bridge. It only took 16 minutes to cross the river, a fairly considerable tributary of the great Zambezi, and I only remember it because of the intense heat that surged up in great waves around us while the car was stationary. It was bearable while we were on the move and the heat-proofing of the Wolseley double bulkhead system was perfect. Never at any time did we feel any heat or suffer from any fumes from the engine, even though we passed through abnormally high temperatures. Yet one remembers certain cars which are almost undrivable in warm weather even in England because of the appalling heat of the driving compartment. The road remained reasonably good and we made good time to Mazabuka. We had intended to stop here for dinner and to drive straight through the night, for our morale had completely recovered and I personally was feeling quite well again. Humfrey had always been ready for a night drive, with the possible exception of the night at Mbeya after our nerve-shattering journey over the slippery mountain pass. He had, however, realised that I was quite unfit for the fatigue of a night drive and had wisely suggested stopping each night. It had been a sad waste of time but the soundness of his judgment was shown by the fact that, although our days had been fairly strenuous ones, I had now completely recovered. There was a nice looking little hotel at Mazubuka but as it was only 6.35 when we passed it having coveraged 31 miles an hour from Kafue River, and it was not yet dark, we decided to go on. It was only 67 miles to Pemba where we had had reports of a good hotel and if the road remained as good as it had been we should be there soon after 8.30, not too late for a meal of sorts.

We were to meet with a sad disappointment. Less than a mile from Mazabuka we were sliding about on villainous black cotton soil of the very worst type! We agreed that it was probably only a short patch, probably caused by the fact that we appeared to be crossing a swampy track. For five miles or so we skidded violently from side to side as we crawled along over the vile black slime, and if it had not been for our good knobbly tyres I am sure we should have slid bodily off the road altogether. As it was, it was a terribly slow business. Ten miles an hour seemed a racing speed and our visions of dinner at Pemba began to recede into the dim distance. After about five miles we met another car and the driver signalled to us to stop. It was a Ford and we noted that he had chains on his rear wheels. He leaned out of his window and “You can’t get through,” he called. “I’ve been bogged for an hour and have decided to turn back.”

We looked at each other and the same thought was in both our minds. “Thanks very much,” answered Humfrey, “but we’ll go and have a look at it, I think.” We drove on. We were not going to admit defeat without a struggle: we believed that our Wolseley could get through anything with the possible exception of water over the radiator and our friendly adviser had only spoken of being bogged. We went on. The road was no worse and no better than it had been for the last five miles until at last, just after darkness fell, we came to a really bad bit. The black soil seemed to have no bottom and we waltzed and curtsied as the tyres skidded and spun in the bottomless stuff. Two yawning chasms opened before us as we slithered sideways along that detestable road. “A Graveyard” we exclaimed with one breath. With a great effort Humfrey managed to avoid the great holes where our friend had stuck, for under these conditions a car always evinces an insane desire to follow the course of its fore-runners and drive into the holes it has made. We sidled ungracefully past the danger spot and crawled along. We’d got further than he did, anyhow, and we did not relish the prospect of going back. After all, if the worst came to the worst, we had plenty of food in the car, could sleep comfortably in our beds in it, and dig ourselves out in the morning.

We went on and gradually the road improved. It was still dangerously slippery but the danger points were now more in the nature of mud holes than of continuous slime. At last, the road began to rise slightly and as it rose the surface definitely improved. The black cotton soil disappeared and ordinary yellow mud took its place. We began to hope that the worst was passed and that we had left the swamp behind as we climbed onto higher ground.

At nine o’clock we drove into Monze, a small township clustering round a railway station and, to us, a railway station seemed to betoken the end of our journey. No longer for us the wild solitude of French Equatorial Africa or the forest belts of the Congo, but a journey through civilisation, the beginning of the end of our struggles. A railway station seemed so very homelike, stable, and solid.

It was nine o’clock when we reached Monze and it was clear that dinner at Pemba, 23 miles on, was a dream. People go to bed early in these parts and it was hopeless to expect a meal at 10 o’clock at night: 10 o’clock if we were lucky with the road, 11 o’clock if we were not! You see, we had grown humble in our estimate of probable average speeds! Before that stretch of black cotton soil we had reckoned an average of something over 30 miles an hour respectable, now we were contemplating an average of 23 or even half that as a possibility! The reason for this sudden access of humility was quite simple. The 44 miles from Mazabuka to Monze had taken us 2 hours and 25 minutes! 18 miles an hour!

Humfrey said, “We’ll get something to eat here.” “What a hope!” I answered pessimistically. And it certainly seemed as if my pessimism was justified. No hotel at Monze had been mentioned on any of the data I had studied for so many weeks before our departure, and anyway the whole place, a very tiny place by the way, seemed to be dead. Not a light showed.

“Look!” exclaimed Humfrey, triumphantly and pointed to where, in the headlamp beam, the word “Hotel” showed up painted in large letters on the side of a building. It was in pitch darkness. Humfrey got out and went to the door – we always planned to avoid my having to move about more than was absolutely necessary because of my leg. He knocked. Knocked again. He tried the door. It opened and he went inside. “Anybody about?” he called and a woman’s voice answered. “Who’s there?” it said.

Humfrey replied that we wanted something to eat and, for he is never anything but courteous, explained why we were so late with apologies for disturbing her. A woman appeared in a dressing gown. She was a good sort. She was alone now, she said, all the native boys had gone home but she could give us something cold, and she explained that she couldn’t cook for us because the fires were out. We said that anything would do and, after showing us where we could wash, she ushered us into a clean wood-panelled dining room. We ate heartily excellent cold meat and salad for we were hungry. We had eaten nothing for 12 hours. It had been an unsatisfactory day and we seemed to have wasted a lot of time since we left Kapiri M’poshi nearly 15 hours before: yet in spite of all our delays we had covered 258 miles. Livingstone was only 190 miles away and we hoped to be there early in the morning. This would bring our 24 hours’ total to 450 miles and would at least be something knocked off the diminishing number of miles that lay between us and our objective, Cape Town.

Chapter 27 – Rain in Northern Rhodesia. 18 January 1939

October 3, 2024August 4, 2025 clairepatriciaLeave a comment

We left next morning at 6.42. It was raining. Our host had warned us that the road was bad and that we should have to be careful of any patches we found where the road had been repaired. These patches were apt to be slippery. We didn’t really understand what he meant, but we were soon to learn. The method of repairing the road is this. The road, like the soil on each side, is simply red earth. In fact, the red earth is the road. When a stretch becomes too deeply rutted to be passable, holes are dug at the side of the road and the earth removed from these holes is spread on the road, spread on it very carefully to a depth of about a foot. This work cannot be done in the dry season as the wind would then simply blow the red earth away in the form of dust, so it has to be done during the rains. Perhaps my readers can imagine what the surface of the road is like: a foot depth of soft red earth after a week’s rain and real rain, Rhodesian rain, not gentle showers like we get in England, but a torrential downpour that may last for a week or more! It resembles nothing so much as a newly ploughed field in Devonshire where the soil is of a similar red colour after a wet month. It is incredibly slippery, and we were thankful that we had not tackled this stretch in the darkness of the night before. Where the road had not been repaired, it was passable. Deeply rutted and wet, it was nevertheless not too bad but the repaired patches, sometimes a mile or more in length, were nightmares. I am quite sure that without our great knobbly Dunlop tyres we should not have got through without a great deal of trouble. As it was, we had one adventure which was something of a joke. We had negotiated several of these evil stretches of repaired road and had covered some miles since the last one when we met parties of native roadmen walking towards us. We concluded that they had been working on repairs to the road ahead and kept a sharp lookout for a change of surface. The road climbed a fairly steep straight hill and at the top curved slightly to the left. I rounded the bend very cautiously, probably at about 20 mph and immediately I saw that we were in for it. The road sloping sharply downhill was quite straight and wide, and the whole surface of it from edge to edge was covered with a foot-deep layer of this loose slimy red mud. I braked as hard as I dared before reaching the line where the mud started, then released the brakes just before we reached it and hung on. Immediately the front wheels entered the mud they slewed sideways, and the tail of the car swung the other way. It was hopeless to attempt to correct the slide as it was clear that the front wheels would not answer the steering. Humfrey said quickly “Let her go, Bertie, its quite all right.”

Round and round we went, gyrating in graceful circles, till I had no idea which way we were facing and had quite lost count of the number of turns we had made. Our speed was so slow that the whole business was more comical than anything else and as the edges of the road were of a soft swampy nature there was no danger of damaging any part of the car by hitting an obstacle. We had almost reached the foot of the hill and I began to see a prospect of regaining control on reaching the level, when with an extra vicious swing of the tail the car slid bodily backwards off the road, and stopped with the rear wheels in the swampy ground and the bonnet facing almost in the direction from which we had come.

I began to say I was very sorry but Humfrey, laughing, said “It doesn’t matter a bit, Bertie. You did the only thing possible in not trying to hold her.” I said that the reason I had not tried to correct the slide was for fear of turning the car over. Humfrey replied that that was the only danger and that it only remained now to get out again.

We tore some brushwood that lay handy and packed it under the wheels. Humfrey said “I believe I could drive out of here. Anyway, its worth trying before we start trying to jack her up.” He got in and started up the engine: I gave a push behind and, as he let in the clutch very gently, the big, barred tyres bit on the brushwood and slowly the car emerged onto the road. She was of course facing almost exactly in the wrong direction but Humfrey, giving a dab on the acceleration and twisting the steering wheel quickly, swung her neatly round till she was facing straight up the road. He called “Jump in, Bertie. I don’t want to stop.” With my damaged leg it was not easy but somehow, I managed to scramble in, and we were away. But not yet out of the wood. Ahead stretched a long gentle slope covered with this deep red mud and Humfrey crept gingerly along at about 5 miles an hour. He changed up to second, hoping to avoid wheelspin by using the higher gear, but had to return hurriedly to bottom gear as the resistance of the soft surface was such that the engine, on the mere whiff of throttle that was all he dared to use, could not pull the load on second gear. Creeping along like the top of the rise looked miles away and halfway up was a little ridge where the gradient steepened for perhaps 20 yards. “If we get over that”, said Humfrey, “we shall be all right.” But we didn’t. Slower and slower grew our progress till we were barely moving. Humfrey opened the throttle a trifle and immediately the rear wheels began to spin. We stopped. “I’ll give her a push,” I said, opening the door, “and you can get away.”

“Wait a minute,” Humfrey answered, “I’ll try without your pushing.”

“All right”, I said “but for goodness sake don’t get the wheels dug in.”

“I won’t,” he replied. “There’s a bottom under this stuff if the wheels can only get down to it.”

Whether the wheels did get down to it or not, I don’t know but Humfrey, using infinity of care in the manipulation of clutch and throttle, managed to get the car on the move again. Presently we topped the summit, and the incident was over. It was rather amusing and for some miles it quite cheered us up.

Crawling along as we were, nearly exceeding 30 miles an hour and frequently doing much less, the journey seemed endless and I could not help saying “What would people say if they saw us crawling along like this and were told that we were breaking the record to the Cape?”

Eventually we reached a place which the log called “Kasama Town”, where we saw a signpost point to our right with the word “Kasama”. It was 12.23 when we reached this point. We had come 109 miles in 5 hours and 41 minutes! We had averaged less than 20 miles an hour.

After Kasama Town the road improved: in other words, we got away from the region of “road repairs”. The country was dull and uninteresting but at last we crossed a horribly dangerous-looking bridge, crept up a steep hill round a shoulder of rock and saw a pleasant-looking little hotel. On it was the word “Makungwe”. Our next logging point had been Makungwe and as this was within 3 miles of where Makungwe should have been we decided that this must be it. The 68 miles from Kasama Town had taken us 2 hours and 35 minutes. So, we were speeding up! We had averaged 26½ miles an hour! After Makungwe we entered a stage that for sheer misery will live in my memory for ever. We were here close to the southern border of the Belgian Congo and we found ourselves travelling through dense forest. It was an unpleasant sort of forest: the trees were only about 20 or 30 feet high, but they were so close together that nowhere one had a vista on either side of more than 100 yards. The road was a dirty little track with deep ruts and every 100 yards or so there was a small depression full of water and mud. Driving over this road was a most exhausting business. At each one of these mudholes, ruts a foot deep had been left by passing vehicles. It was a matter of studying each one carefully as we approached and choosing the best method of avoiding the deepest part of the water. Sometimes one could put either the offside or the near side wheels off the road altogether, onto the coarse grass at the side of the road, while the tyres crushed the small bushes in their path: but sometimes, owing to a fear of the possible softness of the ground and the fear of getting bogged, one was compelled to drive straight through the ruts. Each one of these mudholes was impossible of negotiation at a higher speed than about 15 miles an hour. Everything faster than this sending all over the glass screen a shower of mud and water through which it was impossible to see. It became a deadly monotonous progress of frantic acceleration between these holes and decelerations to negotiate them and the maddening splash as we passed each one of these obstacles made the whole journey an absolute horror. Also, it rained. It rained in torrents, it rained in solid sheets. Words fail me to describe that rain. It descended in a curtain blotting out everything beyond a radius of 20 yards or so, and every 100 yards there was one of these exasperating mudholes to add to our misery.

We relapsed into sullen silence. Hour after hour we crawled along through the rain down that miserable track, our only comment being to try the twin horns after negotiating each mudhole full of water. These were mounted rather low, too low, in front of the car and they evinced a strong disaster to receiving a bath of mud and water every 100 yards. Sometimes one was put out of action, sometimes the other, sometimes both, but they always recovered when the water drained out of them and our progress was marked by a series of blasts – from the horns, of course – as we tried them after each water passage. At last, even this small amusement palled, and we relapsed into silence, only broken by a muttered apology when whichever of us was driving took a water splash too fast and covered the screen with an opaque film of mud and water.

Only once did anything occur to shake us from the sullen silence into which we had fallen. In one place the road passed directly through the middle of an antheap the centre of which had been cut away to leave a passage. An African antheap is a tall mound ten or twelve feet high and perhaps 10 feet in diameter. Baked by the sun into a substance as hard as concrete, these queer objects are a common feature of an African landscape. Rather than remove the antheap altogether the roadmakers had cut a path through it, leaving a kind of gateway between two vertical walls about 10 feet high. Earth had banked up in this gateway and formed a dam, where water lay to a considerable depth. I slowed to a crawl and cautiously crept through it. It must have been nearly two feet deep. The front wheels reached the earth dam and broke through it. Humfrey looked back through the rear window and said quickly “Get a move on, Bertie. We’re being pursued by a torrent from the dam.” I accelerated and Humfrey reported that we were gaining slowly on the veritable wall of water pursuing us. Soon we outdistanced it as some quite imperceptible rise of ground must have checked it, but the little incident which Humfrey described as an amusing sight quite cheered us up – for the moment. However, we soon relapsed into dull apathy.

Rain in torrents, a blank view through tree trunks for perhaps 100 yards on each side of the road, and the general undesirableness of the road itself, sodden and monotonous under the leaden sky, with its detestable and wearisome mudhole full of water every 100 yards or so, the deadly monotony of the same routine: creep through or round the deep water splash, accelerate, change to third, then to top, brake, change to second for the next hole – the same thing repeated continuously and becoming maddeningly tiring and boring. The rain streaming down from the narrow patch of heavy sky was all we could see as we ploughed along the narrow alleyway between the everlasting trees, deadly monotony and hopeless boredom. Also worry because a place called Chimfwembe that was supposed to boast a Government Rest house and an aerodrome hadn’t appeared at its appointed place. We began to feel that we were doomed to go on driving for ever through this endless forest under the pitiless sky. Then darkness fell but it made no difference to us. We plodded steadily on, mostly in silence.

At last, 95 miles – the longest miles we had known since our journey began from Makungwe – we came to something that we recognised. Our road bent sharply to the left and, running in from our right, came another road. “The Congo Road”, we exclaimed with one breath. Sure enough, there was a signpost, pointing up this other road, and “Belgian Congo” it said. This was the possible road of which we had been told and which we had turned down because of its reported difficulties. We were not really interested in the Congo Road itself now. We were only interested in its appearance because it meant that we were only 3 miles from Kapiri Mposhi. Humfrey said, “Look here, Bertie, we’ve had a hell of a day with these blasted roads and the rain and everything. If there’s a decent hotel here, I think we’ll stop for the night. What do you say?”

I said, “I am agreeable, though I’m ready to go on if you want to.”

“No,” he answered, “I think we’ll stop. We shall be all the better for it in the morning.”

We entered the beginning of the town and at once saw a small building with the word “Hotel”. We turned in at the entrance and stopped in the compound. At the same moment, I think, we both said, “Oh yes”. First impressions were favourable. We saw a long low single-storied building, a wide verandah in front of it on which were chairs and tables. At one table sat two young men and an older one. They had glasses before them. From an open doorway, golden lamplight streamed out. So, we both said “Oh yes” with one breath.

All three rose and came towards us. The elder man welcomed us with quiet courtesy. He was the proprietor, Locke by name, and we found out later that he was a wellknown character, a pioneer explorer of early days of Rhodesia and a man with a great fund of tales of Africa. The two younger men were studying our battered car with interest: suddenly one of them said, “By Jove, is your name Symons?” Humfrey said that it was and asked how he knew. It was then we heard for the first time that our story with photographs of the car lying in the bed of the river had already appeared in the African papers. These fellows had seen the account in the Bulawayo Chronicle which is one of the groups headed by the Cape Argus for which Symons writes a weekly London motoring article. The roll of films despatched by air from Juba the morning after we arrived there had reach Thomas at Wolseleys, been developed and printed, and prints had been sent by air to the South African group of papers. They had published them together with the cabled story of our accident that Humfrey had sent from Niagara, Juba and Nairobi. It was now the 18^th of January and we had crashed on the 1^st, so that there had been plenty of time for the rolls of films to reach England, be printed and arrive in South Africa before we got there. The young men were thrilled at meeting us and, after a drink or two, it was a merry party that sat down to dinner in the cheerful lamplit diningroom. They wanted to hear all about it and our host had an unending store of interesting tales to tell us of his adventures in African exploration.

Time passed rapidly and it was midnight before we said goodnight and sought our beds. The young men were, as far as we could gather, representatives of some large firm and were on their way to the copperfields of Northern Rhodesia on business. They were enthusiastic motorists and pro-British to the core, as all Rhodesians seem to be. They deplored the fact that British car manufacturers seemed to take little interest in the large market awaiting them throughout Rhodesia and, they added, Africa generally. They assured us that, as far as Rhodesia was concerned at least, everyone was anxious to buy British cars if ones suitable for the conditions were presented to them. Mostly British cars were too small, too low powered, too high priced, their springing, though admirable for the good roads of Europe, was far too hard for the bad road conditions in the Colonies. Sunshine roofs were definitely not wanted – the weather was either too hot or wet for them – and they were apt to leak under the extreme variation of dry and wet seasons. Our young friends, as enthusiasts, were in love with the fine lines, the beautiful finish of engines and bodies, and the excellent equipment of British cars and they were emphatic that an enormous market awaited a British manufacturer who would go all out for the Colonial trade and back it with a first class system of service and spare parts depots. “Take your Wolseley, for instance,” they said. “It looks absolutely ideal for the job. With its strong cambered springs, its beautiful internal finish and its general sturdy appearance coupled with the proof your journey has given of what it will stand. Well, that’s the job to collar the market and put the American car out of business. Can’t you persuade Wolseley’s to take it up?”

We replied that we didn’t know but that we would have a talk to them when we got back.

They were most interested in our huge tyres and asked us many questions as to how they behaved and what we thought of them. We told them that they seemed to us the complete solution of wet weather motoring in Africa and they were amazed to hear that we had neither used nor felt the need for chains. To give my readers an idea of how completely the season of the rains puts a stop to motoring I may say that their Chevrolet was the first car we had met with since our encounter with the Ford truck at the Abercorn Fork, nearly 500 miles back! Fancy if one were to meet one car at Biggleswade and the next at Inverness!! Wet weather motoring in Africa is but an adventure and no one attempts it unless they are forced to do so.

We only covered 275 miles in 13 hours motoring on this day, but we felt it was one of the hardest days we had had. The constant watchfulness for the dangerously slippery repaired patches and the monotonous boredom of the last 100 miles made the 275 miles seem more like 500 and we slept like tired dogs.