TWO LADIES FOLLOW ALL RED ROUTE FROM CAPE TO ENGLAND.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 261, 28 June 1932, Page 2

TWO LADIES FOLLOW ALL RED ROUTE FROM CAPE TO ENGLAND.

Early in 1932, two South African ladies, Miss M. L. Belcher and Miss E. C. Budgell, both of them Guiders from a particular district in the Cape, decided to visit England, and began | dicussing their means of travel. "I hate the sea," one said to the other; "Let's _go by land." And the matter was settled. These pioneers (for pioneers they certainly were, having regard for the circumstances of their journey) set out from Cape Town on their epic 10,000-mile trek on April 1, choosing this date doubtless as a humorous gesture towards the many of their friends who imagined that they had taken leave of their senses. The honour of conveying them fell | upon a standard 1924 Morris-Oxford touring model, which had already seen much service. Almost exactly six months later, despite being held up for a long period by floods, they arrived in England, having covered the all-red route from Cape to Cairo, taken boat to Marseilles, and motored through France to Calais. The story of this adventure is absorbingly told by Miss Belcher in ber just-published "Cape to Cowley via Cairo in a Light Car," a large number of photographs accompanying the text. "Bohunkus" (the car's name), concludes the author, "had made it possible for us to cross the African continent. With his speedometer registering 25,000 miles before he left Cape Town, he was game all through. Long ago we had ceased to regard him as a car. We looked upon him rather as a personal friend. Our lives had depended upon him, and he had nobly performed his task."