'Dust in the wind'. Our speed date with the extraordinary Cape 1000 Rally.

Posted on Tue March 14, 2023.

The scadonks and farm bakkies of Van Riebeek Str, Barrydale held their collective breath for the arrival of the Cape 1000 Rally. Fortunately the Barrydale Honey Sucker never came. And sadly neither did the Blue Train.

The back story of the Blue Train

If you're either a romantic of a car buff steel yourself to click on the above link. It's the romantic back story of one of the most iconic cars ever built. And it has a wonderful South African link as the one featured was owned and driven by the iconic 'Bentley Boy' heir to Barney Barnato's Kimberley diamond fortune Woolf Barnato. Unfortunately the Blue Train that was headed for the Cape 1000 rally got itself stuck out at sea and locked in a container at Richards Bay so it never came. But then neither did the Honey Sucker.

The idea on the day of Barrydale's much anticipated 'speed date' with the Cape 1000 Rally was to close off half of Van Riebeek street to allow facilitate diagonal parking in front of the hotel and then stick with the standard arrangement of parallel parking on the opposite side - leaving a single lane for traffic going through. One experiences these endless Stop n Goes on our highways and it all looks pretty simple. But try it yourself on a day when the walkie talkies suddenly go missing. Looking down an avenue of multimillion rand bumpers (some of them as good as irreplaceable) and realising that sign language had become the chosen communication medium of two members of our hotel staff who were manning the Stop n Go, my mind went to the Honey Sucker (What a great title that would be for a horror movie on a municipal sewage truck that eats cars). Where they were scheduled to be at that very moment stood a Bugatti Veyron flanked by two Ferrari's and just across from them on a street now perhaps just a foot wider than the width of the Sucker itself stood the R25 Million Rolls Royce with the front doors that open backwards and that contain a shaft for an umbrella. Service delivery is an issue in the municipal world of South Africa these days. But not with Colin and his Honey Sucker team. They're typically dead on time. So that was the one detail we hadn't taken care of. To call the Honey Sucker off. Miraculously for us the Barrydale municipal bi election coincided with the day of the Cape 1000 visit and the Honey Sucker never came.

Thanks Thomas Bula for the slide show