Blog 4.Ben Freeth’s Ride for Hope – in the desert heading towards Klein Spitzkoppe

24 September 2025

After my last entry I started riding through proper desert towards Klein Spitzkoppe. 

Warrior and I cut across a great wide open featureless flat expanse of nothing.  Here the grass gave way to proper desert country with no vegetation at all.

Even far in the distance there was nothing ahead at all to steer towards: no tree; no mountain; nothing at all.  It was just Warrior, me and God.  All other life seemed to suddenly stop. 

Warrior was not convinced of the wisdom of entering such territory and for the first time became dilatory, stopping suddenly and saying: “Are you sure about this?”

I later learned the area was called “Lost All Hope”.  

It was on the one hand thrilling to be riding through such desert in faith that I would find the place where water had been dropped ahead of me; but at the same time Warrior’s nagging uneasiness tugged at me too.

I reassured him that all would be well and spoke kindly to him, and after an hour or two he was back to his old self.  I was amazed how well he kept a direction once he knew it.  I could let the reins go and head forward into the desert expanse on autopilot.

In the afternoon we came to a gentle ridgeline below which there were a few, very scattered, struggling thorn trees in the valley below.  Some were dead from several years of no rain. 

We followed this along until the Spitzkoppe River where our water had been dropped with a Damara family living on their own miles in the wilderness.

The Damara family were most welcoming.  After I had unsaddled in the riverbed, Manike brought me a cup of tea. 

We chatted about his work mining stones and his life far in the wilderness.  They are a Christian family and we chatted much about God too.

Later, he brought down a fish for me to cook on my fire.  Fish in the desert!  He had been to the coast and had brought a fish back.  It was fresh and large.  He brought salt and fish spice and a chair for me to sit on in the riverbed, along with a thermos of tea and some very hard wood to make lovely coals.

I ate my fish under the stars bemused and feeling utterly amazed.  My rusks were finished.  I still had biltong and nuts and dried fruit; but this was truly a Godly gift to be given a fish to eat in the desert!

We slept under a perfect camelthorn tree and ate breakfast as the sun came up