ED’S LETTER

good piece of gear is worth its weight in gold. I’m not talking about a digital creation like an iPhone that’s mass-produced by the millions. No, I’m talking analogue; something handmade by a craftsman that you won’t have to replace in a few months’ time with version 8 S+. Something you’ll treasure for years, maybe even for the rest of your life. My wife Ronel and I still use an expensive German chef’s knife daily, which we bought two decades ago. The same goes for a set of Italian pots that swallowed almost a month’s salary when we had to stock our kitchen way back then. When I read Cyril Klopper’s feature about classic gear items (p 84), a wave of nostalgia washed over me. He writes about Trailbusters, those leather boots that the Lubbe family produced in their Stellenbosch factory for almost 30 years. I had a pair of two-tone T5s and Ronel stomped around in less flamboyant T3s. Both pairs had the signature red laces. If you wanted to find a fellow South African in a London pub in the 1980s, the first thing you did when you walked through the door was look at people’s feet. If you saw those red laces, you knew you’d found a drinking buddy! Every week I’d treat my T5s with Dubbin, and in return they carried me along the Wild Coast, through the Cederberg, up Table Mountain and across Europe to Turkey and back. It was a sad day indeed when the Lubbes closed the factory doors in Plankenbrug in 2001; it meant I couldn’t replace my trusty T5s after they’d given me years of service. My boots might have been shot, but my love of hiking is still alive and well. Read Toast Coetzer’s story about the Indlela yoBuntu pilgrimage trail in the Eastern Cape (p 42) and your feet will be itching to hit the trail. Just make sure they’re shod in the right boots!