On Saturday 6 December 2008 Gudrun and I set off on the long journey from Windhoek to Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa to attend a ringing workshop organized by SAFRING/BirdLife South Africa. We reached our destination after one and a half days having travelled across Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. The workshop was for trainee ringers and ringers and Gudrun (trainee) and I (recently qualified ringer) both thought that we could benefit by attending.