David Bristow

This is a pretty and singular town; it lies at the foot of an enormous wall, which reaches into the clouds, and makes a most imposing barrier. Cape Town is a great inn, on the great highway to the east.

Charles Darwin, from a letter to his sister Catherine, while anchored aboard the HMS Beagle in Table Bay, 1836

What's In A Name?

David is, variously, a writer, journalist, photographer, editor, publisher and specialist tour guide.

During his intrepid life he has garnered several monikers; Dee to his parents, Show-Off to his siblings, BD* to his journalism colleagues at Rhodes University, which morphed into Deebee among his friends. Oscar to his partner (“and the Oscar goes to….!”). To his colleagues at Getaway travel magazine (where he was editor for 13 years) dubbed him the Walking Enviropedia. A more recent role is The Storyteller, hosting visitors around the Cape and beyond.

 

But the most lasting, and perhaps apt, is the Eardstapper**. He started travelling seriously at age 14, hitch-hiking from Joburg to Cape St Francis, home of the “perfect wave”. After that he stuck a large road map on his bedroom wall and filled in his travels year by year. Then along the road of life he became a travel writer and photographer. There are few people who know those roads – including byways, 4x4 routes, cycle and foot paths – better.

 

Should you go there, you’ll find this is also his e-mail alias. The name would a fitting epitaph, he says. Although his long-suffering and witty partner suggests “He sure got around”.

 

 

 

* BD is the football playing character in the wonderful Doonesbury comic strip that was serialised in the Rhodes University’s rag Rhodeo, of which he was sports editor in the late 1970s. He proudly shares this distinction, being the sports editor of his college newspaper, with two of his literary favourites, Tom Wolfe and Tom Robbins (both attended Washington and Lee University, VA.).

 

** Eardstapper is a name derived from Old English (Anglo-Saxon). Its first known use was in an epic poem thought to have been composed around the year AD 600. The warrior-hero is identified as Eardstappa, from eard (earth) and steppen (to step out, or walk).

 

After the Norman invasion of England in 1066 the spelling changed (as with almost all older Anglo-Saxon and Viking words) to the more recognisable form “eardstapper”. It was used variously to mean a wanderer, an exile, a pilgrim or “one who seeks a meaning beyond the transitory meaning of earthly values”.

 

This theme of wandering influenced many later works in English including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Pilgrims Progress, Gulliver’s Travels and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.