Rentals Cape Town makes marmalade of Jonkershoek bike trail.

After 2 single tracks: the Lower Patula and the Medulla Oblongata we pause to do some press ups and star jumps.

Now the stop for sandwiches and lemonade. Home brew would be more suited to the strong and burly attitude that about 3km of hard-core, awesome, gnarly, pant-shattering, hymn singing and utterly subversive dirt riding has cultivated in our normally prim selves.

Bring out the navigation chart.

Leaving Boschkloof- The Pie of Die Tol

The little valley hideaway of oranges is now about 15km behind us now. After the arduous packing and loading of baggage, bikes and freshly picked oranges and newly acquired bags of braai wood we needed breakfast.

Here we are at Die Tol Plaasstal. Just finished a plate of pepper steak pie, toasted ham and cheese sandwich and chips dusted with Aromat. It was delicious. Big food eaten to the roar and grind of trucks going up and down Piekenierskloof Pass on the N7 just 20m from our table. There goes a Fanie Visser vehicle. Now to go into the store to load up on marmalade and rusks and more pie.

Rosemary appropriates Gonnafontein apricots...

...for our survival. My apricot had lots of what look like insect eggs in it. I hope my digestive juices can dissolve them.

We make it up the Ceres Pass to critical turning point at Gonnafontein. We are gaunt and in need of some beer. I think it is mostly rough but downhill from here.

Tour de Citrusdal, 1st stop

After the first downhill out of Boschkloof we take water and solace at the foot of the Berg St fluorescent cross.

Boschkloof Cottage: contented lady before Tour de Citrusdal

This is an example of mobile blog posting from my Nokia E71.

Rosemary relaxes before heading off with me on the gruelling 26km Le Tour de Citrusdal. We have both trained for it over the last 72 hours and have just had pasta salad, tea and shorbread to ensure constant and top grade nutrients are available to our high-performance systems.

Boschkloof, Citrusdal: Short bike ride to ruin.

Yay, we're on holiday. The Rentals Cape Town personnel (all two of them) are renting a house on a citrus farm just outside Citrusdal.

No appointments, no violin practice, no Pick 'n Pay. Rosemary spent her whole first day under a fig tree reading a book about good places to stay in the country in South Africa and drinking her home made lemonade.

Me and my two new friends, Tessa and Alfonso, dogs both of them, went on a bike ride through the farm on the mountain bike trail. It is a circuit of about 26 km and I rode a trial distance of 4 km out along the sandy and rocky farm road to see if I was up to the full distance in a day or two.

The crouching orange trees, the coarse and heated landscape, the smallness of the bottle of water I had taken with me were all stark reminders of my suburban fragility. Had I applied enough sunscreen to my protruding ears? Why had I not brought along my SAS survival manual and kit with the fish hooks and flexible saw and scalpel blades? Were the local leopards really shy and retiring or would they come and taunt and nip me, sensing my weakness? Why had the two dogs deserted me?

I got a grip on myself and banished from my mind the image of my desiccated remains lying in the fynbos like a well-done rasher of streaky bacon. Time for some exploration. Look, there’s an old clay brick cottage, roofless and derelict. Perhaps the shelter of a woodcutter making his living from the timber in the nearby bluegum plantation. Outside was a heavy plough blade manufactured by a company called Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies of Ipswich, England. It would look nice and ornamental in our herbal kitchen garden at home but was a bit too unwieldy to be transported back by bicycle. Another time.

I mounted my Raleigh Platinum that was resting in the shade, mentally switched on Nick Cave’s “Wanted Man” and rolled boldly homeward down the stony track.