I recently discovered the very nice comment Phil had left on the Rooms for Africa website about History's Walk and out battlefield tours. He had been back for a second week-long battlefield tour in November, sporting a brand new Sony camera this time. We wanted to go up Hlobane mountain, but the weather gods turned fickle, and I could not even see the top of Hlobane from the gate below. Buller's route was covered in mist, and I had no intention of riding off that devil mountain, so we paid homage to the ghosts of the Border Horse on Ityentika Nek, where these men had met their fate on March 28, 1879.
(Phil doing his thing with the new Sony at the old Manchester fort at Caesar's Camp, outside Ladysmith)We paid a visit to Ntombe Drift, where the luckless Captain Moriarty met his death in his pyjamas during the massacre at Meyer's Drift. The site was in an awful state, with all the fencing gone, and the memorials and gravestones weatherbeaten and in a state of ill-repair. Spioenkop and Mount Alice was next on the list. we took pictures mainly, as Phil and I did the tour the previous year, when we also walked the Fugitive's Trail from Isandlwana, an exercise which put him in hospital.
(Phil in the Lukas Meyer house in the town of Vryheid, with a Zulu stabbing spear in his hand.)Phil Gibson left for the second time in the first week of November, leaving behind gifts of books and research material - again - this time including the excellent book of Byron Farwell on the Boer War
Thanks, mate, you're a real gent, and always welcome back.
