RETURN TO VERO'S
Bicycling South Africa|July/August 2023
THE FREEDOM TRAIL CAN BREAK AND MAKE...
MIKE WOOLNOUGH
RETURN TO VERO'S

OVER THE LAST 16 YEARS I've ridden over 30 000km down the Freedom Trail.

In that time, each section has had a chance to delight or destroy me. The weather conditions and various stages of fatigue have been the critical components in each experience.

In October 2022, during the Race Across South Africa, I limped into Vero's Rest and Craft Shop. I was running on empty. I wrote about that terrible experience in a blog post. [Scan the QR code to read about Mike's woes in 2022... - Ed.]

Yesterday, I revisited Vero's. This time I felt great; I'd spent two incident-free weeks making my way down the trail from Rhodes. The familiarity of Vero's - syringa tree, wind chimes, snuffling dog and hard wooden picnic table/bench - brought a smile to my face.

The images and experiences of the last few weeks, indelibly inked onto my memory, have woven a few more colourful threads into the tapestry of my life on the Freedom Trail.

This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of Bicycling South Africa.

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This story is from the July/August 2023 edition of Bicycling South Africa.

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