A Long And Winding Road

If and when you drive from Joburg to Cape Town… or down to Port Elizabeth… or anywhere along our Cape coast for that matter — don’t always stick rigidly to the common and garden N-number roads.

You know the ones. The big national highways...N1-N2. Efficient. Predictable. Safe. Service stations at polite intervals. Cell signal almost everywhere. A steady stream of trucks and travellers all heading somewhere important.

Those super routes get you there…maybe quicker! But they don’t always show you everything.

If you're heading for Capetown and got the time rather detour via the N8 or N9. A longer route. Add a day or two and make sure to stop over somewhere along the way. A small Karoo dorpie perhaps. Maybe Aberdeen... or Willowmore, or even one of the bigger towns... Middleberg or Graaf Reinet. Spend the night. Have a simple meal. Wake early.

And then… take the detour!

Head off onto one of the R roads. The regional routes. Already quieter. Already less hurried. Already beginning to feel like you’ve slipped out of the main current and stepped into something slower and more personal.

And if you’re feeling just a little adventurous… Take an S road.

Those are the ones that branch off from the R roads. Smaller. Narrower. Often bumpier. Sometimes hardly more than a determined ribbon of gravel wending its way through karoo fynbos and silence.

They are, to put it mildly, waaay off the beaten track!

More often than not, they are quite challenging. Muddy and rutted after rain. Corrugated in long bone-rattling stretches in the dry times. Gravelly with sharp stones capable of shredding a tyre without a second thought.

Believe you me… I speak from bitter experience.

It happened to me.

There I was, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, off the beaten track on some far away S road in the Northern Cape Somerset East region.

Yes — already a tad on the nervous side, when that unmistakable flapping-thudding sound began. The slow realisation that this was not “just another stone caught in the tread.” No. This was something far more decisive than that.

A shredded tyre!

No cell signal!

No passing traffic!

Just me, a jack, and a spare that, thankfully, had been pumped and was ready for action.

So yes… when I mention “risk factor,” I don’t do so lightly.

There is often no signal. Help is not five minutes away. You’re very much on your own. And in that aloneness, you become aware of just how small you are in this vast South African Karoo landscape.

But in my humble opinion?

Still worth the risk.

Just drive conservatively. Keep your wits about you. Make sure that spare is pumped and ready. And then allow yourself to see what most people travelling Gauteng to Capetown never see.

Because those S roads … those long and winding roads, they often hold the most breathtakingly beautiful views and vistas and quiet surprises that any human travelling person could ever wish to witness!

They unfold slowly.

A rise in the land reveals distant Karoo mountains. The ones I so love. Soft blues and long shadows. A lonely windmill. A cluster of faraway farm buildings nestled quietly among a copse of blue gums at the foot of a typical Karoo koppie, as though it’s been there for a hundred years — because it probably has.

There are so many “Long And Winding Roads” waiting to be discovered in our faraway Karoo.

Depicted in this painting is one of them.

This particular stretch lies between Middleburg in the Eastern Cape and Richmond in the Western Cape — straddling the two provinces as it were. A kind of quiet borderland where geography feels more significant than politics.

It branches off from the R398.

The R398 is, in Karoo terms, fairly well maintained. A decent gravel road running through a section of the Sneeuberg range. Close to the Sneeuberg nature reserve. Not to mention of course, what I read somewhere, the unofficial not well known but appropriately and colloquially named... 'Teat Mountains'. Conical breast shaped hills along the route between Middleberg and Richmond. And of course, as always, all along the way… the inimitable wide skies and big horizons of our Great Karoo. A sense of space that presses in gently but firmly..

But this side road… this long and winding offshoot… had a different feel altogether.

It wasn’t a bad S road at all, truth be told. In fact, it was better than most. Firm under the wheels. Manageable. Yet still remote enough to give you that delicious sense of having left the main artery and wandered into quieter capillaries of our landscape.

The road curved and dipped and rose again, pulling the eye forward. Always forward.

That’s what always strikes me most about these far away Karoo roads.

The way they wind into the distance.

Not dramatically. Not theatrically. Just steadily. Quietly. Drawing you in.

As a realist landscape artist, I’m always alert to those lines in the land — the compositional elements that carry the viewer into the painting. A winding road is one of the most generous gifts a Karoo landscape can offer.

It creates movement.

It invites you in..

It suggests journey.

And perhaps that’s why this particular scene lodged itself in my mind.

No grand farmhouse dominating the view. No dramatic storm brewing. No blazing sunset demanding attention. Just the road. The fynbos. Some remote farm sheds. The distant mountains. And of course, that sense of quiet expectancy.

The late afternoon light doing what Karoo light always does so beautifully — defining edges without harshness. Creating long, soft shadows. Giving shape to otherwise subtle undulations in the land.

In painting “A Long And Winding Road,” I wanted to capture that sense of invitation. That feeling of standing on the cusp of something unseen. The road curves away, and you can’t quite see what lies beyond the next rise.

But you want to.

There’s something deeply metaphorical about that.

Life, after all, rarely travels in straight N-number lines. It bends. It dips. It occasionally throws a sharp stone into your tyre.

And yet, more often than not, the detours are where the richest experiences lie.

The Karoo has taught me that over and over again.

As someone who has spent years painting the South African Karoo — its sisal plants, its remote farmsteads, its old tractors quietly surrendering to rust — I’ve come to appreciate that beauty often lives in the overlooked places.

The side roads.

The forgotten buildings.

The in-between spaces.

This painting isn’t about a destination. It’s about the journey. About the pleasure of turning off the main road and trusting that what lies ahead will justify the effort. And the risk!

And most times in the Karoo… it does.

You may not always get a puncture. But even if you do… you’ll likely remember the mood, and the atmosphere, and the far away silence, far longer than you remember the inconvenience.

So next time you’re heading south… or west… or simply somewhere else…

Don’t always stick to the N roads.

Take an R.

Better still — take an S.

Drive carefully.

Keep that spare pumped.

And allow yourself to be drawn into one of the many long and winding roads that crisscross our faraway Karoo.

You might just find that the road itself is the point.