Johannesburg - Growing up in Africa, I never saw snow as a child and, like many, was fascinated by the almost fairy tale whiteness of the European countryside in December.
I saw my first snow when I was in my 20s and on my first visit to Europe. It wasn’t much – just a few flurries one evening as we drove in the Enniskillen area of northern Ireland. Earlier we had seen light dustings of snow on the peaks of Wales as we drove through.
In 2009, though, when we went on a family holiday to Britain and Ireland, I saw the nasty side of the postcard pretty winter. It was said at the time to have been the wost winter in 50 years in the UK and, because of that, stocks of salt and grit to keep the roads free of ice had dwindled. There were stories of people being trapped in cars in snowdrifts and even Eurostar trains were unable to use the Channel Tunnel for a few days.
Driving a rear-wheel-drive BMW in those conditions was one of my worst nightmares at the wheel. On a crisp Christmas Eve morning (about -4 at 10am), I approached a hill on a country road near Loch Erne, on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Before I even got halfway up, the wheels started spinning on the black ice. Then I did the two things you should never do in a situation like that: took my foot off the accelerator and the hit the brakes.
The first action saw me lose momentum and any hope I had of getting to the top of the hill. And because of that, we started sliding backwards. When I applied brakes, we became an uncontrolled, unguided missile going backwards into a ditch.
Only after the efforts of a farmer who borrowed a four-wheel-drive tractor (how embarrassing for the German car) to get us out (and aren’t the Irish wonderfully hospitable and helpful to strangers?) did we continue our journey.
The experience – and a similar one where we made a 100km detour to avoid a narrow hill road in the Lake District of northern England – froze a lot of my winter romanticism.
Winter in this country can also have its bleak side. When the late Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kevin Carter and I used to work together in the 1990s, he would say: “I hate this place (Joburg and the province) in winter.”
So it was that we began planning trips to cover right-wing politics… to get us out of the city and into the country. Some of it was brilliant: the northern and eastern parts of South Africa (Limpopo and Mpumalanga) don’t get that piercing cold we do in Joburg; and the Free State, although even colder than Gauteng, has none of the awful smog and pollution that hang over Gauteng.
It became a habit for us as a family to head to the bushveld or down to KwaZulu-Natal in winter and, planning carefully, we often avoided the worst of the Joburg winter days. The roads also seemed less crowded, perhaps because most people waited until the end of the year before taking their breaks.
Our family breaks have to be planned around school holidays, because my wife is a teacher. To get away this year, we are looking at July and September.
Our plan – as I’ve talked about before – is to head to the Karoo. I have been overwhelmed by the suggestions from readers about places to go and routes to take (we will be running more of these in the coming weeks), but now I am wondering whether going in the teeth of winter, in July, is such a good idea.
The Karoo can be teeth-shatteringly cold at that time of the year. And, unlike Europe, we are not equipped for the cold. I don’t feel like shivering under an inadequate duvet in a small B&B somewhere, praying for morning to come.
On the other hand, there is an undoubted attraction in sitting beside a fireplace (whether in the Karoo or elsewhere) while the inhospitable night lurks outside.
Another thing that concerns me is that we will be probably travelling in a diesel vehicle. I have heard horror stories about diesel fuel turning to gel below a certain temperature and of some fancy urban diesel 4x4s having to be taken home ignominiously on low-loader trucks.
I don’t want to have to travel to the vast open spaces of the Karoo, to let my soul unwind – and have to worry about whether I’ll be able to get a car started in the morning.
Any advice would be most appreciated: What’s the best time to see the Karoo – would September be better? Is the diesel fuel problem a real issue and, if so, have you heard of a solution? Where’s the place (any province) with the best fireplaces? What about a good winter bushveld breakaway place? - Saturday Star