On Saturday, 22 October 2022, the Durbanville Heritage Society hosted a very inspiring event. Owen Nel, a retired headmaster and science teacher from East London presented a talk at the Durbanville Library Hall during which he told the audience about a group of cyclists known as Grandads’ Army, who went on a cycling tour from Mapungubwe to Nahoon Point. Owen and his wife Michelle accompanied the group as part of the support team with the task of doing research on the National and UNESCO World Heritage sites along the way. He then provided the narration for a video produced by the media team. The videos were to be used to elicit donations for the Eyabantwana Trust – an organization that provides funding for the Eastern Cape Paediatric Surgery Unit based at the Frere and Cecilia Makiwane Hospitals.
The six cyclists covered a distance of 1500 km in 14 days, averaging 107 km per day.
In an interesting, very informative talk, highlighted with slides, their journey and the sites visited namely Mapungubwe, Masorini at the Kruger National Park, the Blyde River Canyon, the Barberton Greenstone Mountains, the Vredefort Impact crater, the Cradle of Humankind, the Rock Art of the San and the Maloti Drakensberg Park were presented. The tour ended at the site of the 124 000 year-old trace fossils of human footprints found at Nahoon Point in East London.
Of Mapungubwe Owen imparted valuable information on the golden artefacts found on the Hill of the Ancestors at Mapungubwe, indicating that Iron Age trade and that technologically advanced pre-colonial societies lived there.
The other site Owen focussed on was the Vredefort impact crater, caused by a massive asteroid about two billion years ago, which hurtled toward Earth. The impact made a 40-kilometer-deep and 100-kilometer-wide dent in the surface. Almost immediately after impact, the crater widened and shallowed as the rock below started to rebound and the walls collapsed. The world’s oldest and largest known impact structure was formed. More than 2 billion years of erosion has made the exact size hard to pin down. The various layers of upturned rock eroded at different rates and produced the concentric pattern still visible today.
After the talk, which was well attended, members and friends of the Durbanville Heritage Society enjoyed a cup of tea.