National Braai Day Tour

Getaway Magazine

On the road for National Braai Day - 40 days around South Africa with Jan Braai.

"As I ran out of the tunnel at Ellis Park, a fire extinguisher under one arm and an industrial-grade rubber mat under the other, the only thought in my mind was: 'Has anyone checked if these things really are fire-proof?' If they weren’t, it was too late to worry about it. If the braai blew over and our 'fire-proof’ mats went up like a packet of blitz, I just had to hope I wasn’t going to be the guy explaining the six-foot scorch mark to the already-stressed grounds manager.  In a matter of hours he had a Super 15 rugby match going live across the world and it had taken serious negotiation to secure our one-hour, crack-of-dawn window.

This wasn’t a braai, it was a military exercise. We had just one chance to pull it off and secure yet another coup in a succession of unlikely victories: to braai on the exact spot where Joel Stransky drop-kicked us into World Cup glory on that memorable day in 1995. If we burnt a hole in this guy’s immaculate grass, a firing squad seemed a very real possibility."

Extract from 40 days, 46 braais, Getaway magazine, September 2011. —