Joburg by beer-lust. From Morningside to Melville on foot

It was one of these strange days. I had done what I needed to do by lunchtime. But it was simply too early to start drinking. I felt like Melville, but that Uber rate is killing. I also needed some cardio.

The logical solution was to take a three-hour walk to Melville for that beer. It would get me some exercise, delay the inevitable onset of alcohol and give me a fresh perspective on my city, all for no extra expense.

It would also be a quest, and I’m all about quests. Challenges! Run Comrades, climb Kilimanjaro, travel around the planet … I have set myself all of these challenges and achieved them. But they’re a bit basic in concept.

A good quest is one you come up with yourself. If you leave Durban at sunrise, will you be able to reach Cape Town before the sun sets on the same day? Can you visit all nine provinces within 24 hours? Can you drink 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes?

These are fresh quests tailored to our own curiosity, and we have attempted all of them, if only to come to the realisation that they are not quite achievable.

The Walk to Xai-Xai was of this stripe. Unique to my own personal proclivities of booze, exercise and exploration, challenging, but borderline achievable.

The other thing was the rain. We were of course in the middle of a biblical downpour that was already five days old, and would persist for another week or so. By braving the elements on foot, I was risking wetness, pleurisy and death.

But we are nothing if not reckless, so it was on!

I set off from a damp Morningside just after lunch, already feeling this was a bad idea. A solid shower had just abated and seemed in the mood to return. I lowered my trucker cap shrunk into my tracksuit top a little and hoped for the best.

I ignored the route recommended by Google Maps and plotted my own course through Morningside, across the Sandton Drive dip, and up through the affluent enclave of Sandhurst. That would take me past Hyde Park and enable a dip into the Parks, where I could find shelter in the leafy lanes of Dunkeld, Parktown North and surrounds.

And so began an afternoon like no other – sweaty and damp, sure, but spared the worst excesses of precipitation. The biggest surprise was that this was a fragrant odyssey, an olfactory exploration of Johannesburg North.

The smells and aromas were almost overwhelming. I believe they call it petrichor, the earthy scent released by rain upon the earth. That was everywhere, but rain also unleashes a veritable smorgasbord of odours. Some more delightful than others.

Here was a whiff of frangipani from a suburban garden, there the miasma of oil, rainwater and asphalt; was that the scent of a defiant, rainy-day braaivleis from the other side of a wall in lower Parkview? The unmistakable smell of damp lawn mowings…

In among all of that was the pong of a rather wet, sweaty person stumbling their way through the suburbs and dreaming of a draught beer.

It was a happy, fulfilled person, even if a slightly stinky one. The sun made no appearance, not even a cameo, but the rain never really settled in either. Sunburn was not a factor – not to be taken for granted on a December outing.

The streets were deserted, save for some vehicle traffic on the main roads, and a lady who bade me a hearty “How are you!” in lower Parkmore.

There was the onset of lower-leg stiffness during the third hour, but this was a cross-city hike after all. That’s what we signed up for. By 4pm, I was seated at the Xai-Xai bar, quaffing one of the most well-earned beers of my life.

There may have been load shedding that afternoon during my walk, but here’s the thing: I have no idea.   

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