UNLIKE my car and bike crazy husband, I do not have more than a passing interest in two- and four-wheeled forms of transport, even when they go very fast.
Bill, on the other hand, is a huge fan of any and all forms of motor racing, particularly when the cars or bikes roaring round a track hark back to yesteryear. Thus, the annual Passion for Speed festival at Zwartkops Raceway in Gauteng, a feast of historical racing, is right up his alley.
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The last weekend in January every year sees him making his annual pilgrimage to Zwartkops to relive South Africa’s motor racing glory days. During the 50s and 60s our country was on top of the world when it came to automotive technology, motor racing facilities and grand events like the South African Grand Prix and the legendary Nine Hour.
During those years, there was tremendous public interest in motor racing in our country. Most South Africans of a certain age, even those automotively challenged like me, would stay close to the radio (no television in those days) for nine long hours, to follow the highs and lows of our world famous endurance race every year.
It is that spirit that lives on as the rock ‘n roll generation meets at Zwartkops every year to celebrate the golden age of motoring. For a number of years, Bill headed for the raceway with a gang of like-minded friends, but he managed to persuade me to accompany him last year. Much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This year, Bill pointed out that a weekend in Gauteng to attend the 17th Passion for Speed festival would work well sandwiched between our stay in the mountains and three-week visit to Kruger National Park.
I enthusiastically endorsed his plans. Not only did I find myself rather looking forward to the Zwartkops experience but it would also give us a chance to catch up with Gauteng friends and family. As keen parkrunners, a Gauteng visit would give us a chance to notch up a Valhalla parkrun, a new event for us, too.
An added sweetener was the opportunity to visit Pretoria’s famous Botanical Gardens, something I had wanted to do for some time.
For all those reasons, after our peaceful mountain retreat, we left the Champagne Valley looking forward to an action-packed Gauteng weekend.
For a number of years, the beautiful Oliviershoek Pass road, a scenic alternate to the N3 between Escourt and Harrismith, was a no-go route because it had deteriorated so badly. However,the road surface has now been rehabilitated so we turned onto the R74 at Winterton and headed north towards the pass. It was a misty, cloudy morning and at first the Drakensberg was totally obscured but as we drove towards Bergville, the cloud cover lifted and began to fray at the edges, enough to let a little sunlight etch the mountains against a lemony sky. By the time we reached Oliviersnek Pass, the clouds had cleared completely, allowing us to view the spectacular scenery unimpeded. We are so lucky to live in a country that offers such spectacular mountains, not to mention all our sumptuous and varied other forms of natural beauty.
Reaching crazy Gauteng before rush hour, we were able to negotiate the traffic with relative ease and to reach our friends, west of Pretoria, by mid-afternoon. That gave us all plenty of time to catch up with each other’s news.
It was pouring with rain when we left their home early the next morning to complete a wet, muddy, but friendly and enjoyable Valhalla parkrun before heading for Zwartkops Raceway. The Passion for Speed programme included all sorts of races, highlighting a wide range of cars divided into four categories. I was told that these were pre-1966 ‘Legends of the Nine Hour’ production cars, pre-1968 Le Manse sport and GT cars, Pre-1974 international sports racing prototypes and pre-1974 Trans-Am Series for production cars.
This translated into a wide variety of races for all sorts of models, including some modern supercars and, most thrilling of all, those huge petrol-guzzling, chrome bedecked V8 pre-1966 production cars.
I amazed myself by getting quite caught up in all petrol-generated excitement, but it was the nostalgia, the catchy enthusiasm and the congenial atmosphere that made it such a special day for me.
Early Sunday morning found Bill prowling around the track and pits, admiring all the historic bikes lined up to take part in the ‘Day of the Champions’ motorbike racing programme. After seeing every single motorbike at the track, not once but two or three times, and watching some of the racing, my bike crazy husband eventually relented and took me off to see the botanical gardens.
We’d heard good things about the gardens and our high expectations were more than adequately met. They were absolutely lovely, a peaceful green retreat from city life, offering a tree-hugger’s delight of an arboretum, a fascinating medicinal plants garden, an instructive section and clever ideas for disabled gardeners, some unstructured bits of wilderness, succulent gardens, a spiny forest featuring a unique plant community from Madagascar and plenty more.
We had time to explore the gardens fairly thoroughly then to drive through to Springs to spend the afternoon and evening with my brother and sister-in-law.
Early next morning found us bidding farewell to Gauteng, South Africa’s prosperous and rapidly growing power house of a province, and heading east along the well-maintained but incredibly expensive N4 toll road. By lunchtime we were at Malelane Gate, looking forward to three heavenly weeks exploring Kruger National park, South Africa’s premier wildlife destination. What a contrast to our mostly densely populated, highly urbanised province this wildlife paradise proved to be.
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