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Page 2 of 6 My mother was compliant, the maps dusted off. I can remember tracing the road with my finger where the orange of South Africa changed to Swaziland's brown and then the exciting foreign pinkness of Mozambique, with names like Inhambame and Inhica and Inharriem and little spiky tufts which the legend assured me were swamps. And it was then that the compelling and addictive bug of adventure travel sunk its fangs deep within my psyche so that now, at the age of 45, its sweet venom courses just as strongly through my veins as it did then. What twelve-year-old could forget walking through the silent dusty streets of Chaka's Kraal in the frost-pale darkness of early morning, water-container icy against fingers covered by dragged-down jersey sleeves; a crashed train, mangled and torn, around a corner of some obscure rail line between grassy hills somewhere in Swaziland; a blustery night on the sawdust floor of a railway goods wagon where we had stolen to escape threatening rain, the clank and bang of a loose door mingling with the moan of wind and the lighter, more precise taps of rain; and being terrified during the night that the train would clank and begin to move, taking us somewhere into the dark night; coming across the bloated stiff body of a cow in the road, the stench of blood and dung hanging heavy in the cold morning air; the clang of a police cell door where we had requested shelter and the stale smell of urine and despair that hung about the place, laying our home-made sleeping bags on the cold floor, a high, barred window set deep in whitewashed walls; a sweet-cold orange flung by a black man driving a refrigerated truck in the shimmering heat of midday, the road straight and endless and slow; hunting for firewood in the dark and under-cooked dehydrated peas crunching between the teeth; cold spaghetti eaten from the tin with a shared spoon and a rustling delicate mouse in the torchlight nibbling Marie biscuit crumbs from a discarded packet, so tame and unthreatened that we could stroke it?  The images are personal and precious, small oases in my consciousness as fresh now as they were thirty-three years ago.
Two years later, we rode by bicycle to what was then Beira, a distance of 1200 miles, using those wonderful old black, single-speed, rear-wheel-pedal brake Phillips bikes we had in those days. We scorned the three-speed bikes available at the time (only weaklings need gears and we were tough, although I coveted those gears in secret and wished we could afford them) and we rode our iron steeds more beloved than girls, hardy as tractors and unbreakable. I can't remember when this second trip was decided, but I believe it was again on one of those blustery walks across green rustling fields of sugar cane, the rail tracks being ripped up in favour of Mercedes trucks and progress, the quaint era of the chuffing trains gone for ever. Walking was too slow, we declared. Bicycles - that was the ticket!
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