A Grobicki Shortcut

I flew into Joburg on Thursday afternoon and was picked up by my aforementioned uncle Ted. We met in front of the very large Christmas tree (WEEE CHRISTMAS) at the aiport and drove home – missing the traffic!! This trip was already off to a good start. Back in Nairobi, I had began to feel like a bad luck charm as every single time I got into a car, the person driving would say “Wow, traffic is so much worse than usual”. So this was a nice change.

Now for a brief familial overview. Ted has three children, my first cousins, who are all older than me. I was going to put “much older” but I think that might not be appreciated if they choose to read this post. Andrew is the eldest and is married to Danielle – who has been a part of this family since as long as I can remember – and they live here in Joburg. Mark and Laura are twins. Laura lives in London. Mark lives in Joburg with his wife Kate and they are about to move back to Australia.

Pictured left to right: me (looking like I'm 3 ft 2 - I missed out on those genes), Andrew, Mark, Kate - Danielle is taking the picture.

I had been in Joburg for five minutes when Mark came over to announce that they were taking me away for the weekend and Andrew and Danielle would be joining us the next day. The weekend trip was a total surprise but it sounded fun and I’m always up to see new places. The next day (after I’d been on a 6am run with Ted*), Mark and Kate picked me up and we drove off to the Magaliesberg – a string of mountains stretching east to west, about an hour and a half outside of Joburg. We were staying in this lovely self-catering cottage.

Saturday morning, Mark and I embarked on up the mountain. We had figured out our trail: we would go up through Lightening Gorge (the guide book strongly recommended to do this with a guide, but being Grobickis – we laugh in the face of sensible recommendations), pick our way across to the next gorge, and find our way back to our accommodation. We left Kate at 7am and began our trek, feeling pretty confident with our plan. We were luck that the day was a little cloudy so it wasn’t too hot. Everything started well, we found the beginning of the trail and happily started hiking up the mountain.

Before I go on, I need to describe a phenomenon in our family which I refer to as “The Grobicki Shortcut”. This phenomenon is the result of the fact that my family is quite intelligent, very confident, incredibly adventurous, and just a little bit stupid. The Grobicki Shortcut happens when a Grobicki knows that to get from A to B there is a very clear path but becomes convinced that they know of a shorter way to get there. Everyone will trundle down the shortcut which is usually a longcut and sometimes a dead end, but most importantly is never an easy path. Some examples include: when I was 6, we were living in Poland and attempted to go to the Zoo. My mom thought she knew a shortcut round the city to get there and we ended up on a dirt path in the middle of a forest, nowhere near the Zoo. Last year, Ted and I were in London and trying to find out how to get to a pub about mile away. We had been walking along a river. The path to the pub told us to veer away from the river, go up to the road and walk along that. Instead, we veered off the path to try and cut out the loop made by the road. We ended up pushing our way through brambles, and then scrambling through a barbed wire fence and up the side of a bridge. Needless to say – it was not a shortcut, or really any sort of cut, or a path in any way shape or form.

Back to my story, Mark and I had been following the blue diamond shape signs that indicated the lightening gorge path. The path wasn't very well maintained, but the signs were every couple of metres and so far the going looked good. We got half way up the mountain and the trees started to thin out. At this point the guide book had said "When you reach the heather, stay left of the gorge". We got to a fork in the road and dutifully went left. This path died out pretty quickly so Mark suggested we try going right. After a bit of discussion, we decided that the path to the right was going straight up so that would probably be quicker. This path turned out to be a non-path and before we knew it, we were battling through heather that was hip-height or taller.

After much scrambling, we made it through the heather and angled across to lightening gorge - no signage in sight. The bottom of the gorge looked like there had been a pretty recent landslide so more scrambling ensued.

We then found the chains that helped you climb up quite a steep rock face until we finally reached the top of the mountain. Success! No guide needed (maybe?). After some much needed water and an apple, we did what most people would do: took a selfie (behold my inability to look at the camera lens while taking a selfie thus making it painfully obvious that I'm staring at myself).

The top of the mountain was also absent of any clear signs. The guide book's next instructions were to "find the solitary tree" and "follow the path down". Simple enough right? Wrong. We found the tree, and started our descent. However, we must have missed some turn off (reminder that there were no signs - any hope of seeing little blue diamond shapes in the bush was long gone) and ended up in the plot next to our cottage which was an "aerospace leadership academy" according to the big entrance sign we had passed. Don't ask - I have no idea. A very nice woman let us out their gate which led back to our cottage. A little scratched, but pretty psyched that we'd conquered the mountain - we happily sat down to bacon and eggs.

Because I am a crazy person, I agreed to climb the mountain again the next morning with Andrew and Danielle.

Danielle and I scaling rocks.

Victory photo of me and Andrew at the top!

In the afternoon we played Settlers of Katan and then a friendly game of croquet (as you do) and had a lovely braai**.

It was a great weekend, definitely made more complete by a very Grobicki expedition.

More to come on life in Joburg soon xx

*I thought I kept up pretty well. The Grobickis (and they are actual Grobickis – in that my branch of the family is the Abbott-Grobickis) are sporty AF. My memories of family holidays - we used to spend lots of Christmases together – consist of being dragged up this mountain and that mountain and everyone forcing me to walk everywhere. Now that I am a bit older and actually like doing these things, I’m really looking forward to spending time with them.

**South African word for barbeque.

#Johannesburg #SouthAfrica #Family