Gordo's Travels

February Snow

2012-02-08T23:15:00.001Z

With the recent heavy snow, it wasn't much of a surprise when the Northants 4x4 Response Team was called into action to assist the council and other services. Responders were out continuously through the Saturday night, all day Sunday and in the late evening on Sunday night.

My own call out came on Sunday morning: could I go to Wellingborough to assist with Meals-on-Wheels... and PS, there'll be a BBC cameraman waiting for you.

Arriving at MoW HQ in the Defender, I met up with two other responders, Dave and Mark, and was introduced to the MoW team and the cameraman. The plan was to go out delivering the hot meals in our Land Rovers, escorting the lady who usually does the round, starting in Wellingborough and heading in a circular route out to Woodford and back.

Time is of the essence with MoW as the food needs to arrive hot, and at lunchtime. Unfortunately the needs to filming slows the process down, so the meals were transferred to Dave's vehicle while Mark and I helped the cameraman get the footage he required.

By early afternoon the meals were delivered, the BBC had their footage, and an interview with me, destined for the regional BBC Look East programme that night.

At 18.50 I sat with bated breath wondering exactly what the results of our effort would be:

Not too painful, but do I really sound like that?!?

Next morning, I'm having breakfast when the Breakfast edition of Look East starts and to my surprise I'm on it again, with a different part of the interview and Mark in a supporting role as we point at a map:

A great bit of publicity for the Response Team, which has been picked up by other groups and the national 4x4 Response forum too. It's an honour to be able to represent the Response Team network like that, and to show that we, often criticised, 4x4 drivers aren't all bad.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T23:01:00.001Z

A very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Where will 2012's travels take me?

Freelander

2011-11-25T18:45:00.000Z

I've written pieces on my Discovery and Defender, but have neglected my Freelander.

Quite a few of my 4x4 exploits have been in my Freelander. It's a 2005 Td4 which has been modified with:

2" suspension lift for extra ground clearance
Mantec sump-guard
DAP Sliderz rock guards
Reinforced front recovery points, and
Spare-wheel mounted work light.

The lift kit and recovery points were manufactured by Tornado Motorsports and fitted by Freelander Storm, both in Derbyshire.

People say that Freelanders are not 'proper' Land Rovers and are only suitable for driving to the supermarket: nonsense. I've taken mine around off road courses and shown up a few Defenders by not getting stuck when they've needed a tow...

Punch Challenges

2011-11-09T18:43:00.000Z

After taking part in a 4x4 trial in the Freelander, I have been trying my hand at another off road competition in the form of Punch Challenges with Northants 4x4.

The concept is very simple: a laminated card is attached to the passenger-side door mirror, a number of orienteering punches are set out around a site and the aim is to visit and stamp your card with as many punches as possible. As the card is attached to the vehicle's mirror, you need to get the card to the punch.

Each punch has a different pattern of pins to mark the card, and the card has numbered boxes corresponding to the numbers on each punch. It is a simple matter then to match them up: e.g. mark box A3 on the card with the punch labelled A3. Simples. The person with the most punches in the shortest time is the winner.

Of course it is the location of the punches plays a big part, and this is where the challenge element comes in. They can be anywhere: up embankments, across streams, in deep water, through narrow gaps in trees, in ditches etc., so the skill of the driver, and the type of vehicle, plays its part too.

A heavily modified 4x4 with larger wheels, a winch, raised air-intake etc. will find it much easier than a completely standard vehicle, so a handicap system is employed. At the start of the challenge, each entrant is told how many punches they need to collect: the more modified the vehicle, the more punches will be required. This allows the unmodified entrants to avoid some of the more extreme punches that they are incapable of getting to.

Whilst it is possible to do it while single-crewed, it is much easier to have a co-driver (AKA "winch-bitch") in the passenger seat to punch the card, look for the punches (which are often hidden), guide you in to tight spaces and, if necessary, help you winch yourself out of trouble.

Depending on the site and how the punches have been laid out, it can take from a couple of hours to most of the day to get them all. Even if you are not especially competitive and are just doing it for fun, the opportunity to get a punch gives a purpose to the day and gives you an incentive to stretch yourself to have a go at things you might not normally consider trying.

The nature of the event means that you will be putting yourself and your vehicle at a degree of risk in terms of damage, but with care and patience it should be possible to emerge unscathed - although most Land Rovers are not watertight, so fording deep water is likely to result in wet feet (don't ask me how I know...!).

Whether you win or not, it's the taking part and having fun that counts!

Freelander 2 - Road Test

2011-09-14T10:40:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately my Defender has been having some teething problems, and it has gone back to the supplying dealer to have the defects attended to. While it's away, the dealer has kindly lent me a Freelander 2. As a Freelander owner, I'm enjoying being able to experience at first-hand the differences between the two.

The loan car is a 2011 Freelander 2.2 Td4 XS 6-speed manual, and has a full leather interior, fully (electrically) adjustable seats, automatic stop-start (more about that later), built-in sat nav and Bluetooth mobile phone hands-free, automatic headlights, windscreen wipers and dipping rear-view mirror, parking sensors front and rear, climate control, and cruise control.

From the outside, the resemblance between the two cars is very obvious: the profile, and in particular rear windows being very similar in shape. The 2 is taller than the original, although mine has been lifted by 2" so these two are same height.

Inside the 2, the seats are comfortable and supportive, and adjustable in most directions whereas in the original the seats only have basic fore-aft and rake adjustment. The driving position is a lot more cramped than in the original: the centre console is wider, and consequently there's nowhere to put your left leg when it's not on the clutch, and your knee rests on the edge of the centre console. There's no space under the seat to fold your clutch leg out of the way either as there is a plinth that the seat sits on.

The leather-trimmed steering wheel isn't adjustable, seems a long way away and slightly on the small side. It has controls for the cruise control, mobile phone and radio as well as two slender chrome strips that are the buttons for the horn. It feels very car-like whereas the original feels more Land Rover-like - a similar change with the Ford Transit van, where the more recent models feel less van-like and more car-like. Whilst I'm sure this is intentional to make them more appealing to 'normal' people, it does mean that those of us who buy Land Rovers for their rugged, chunky nature are left feeling short-changed.

Like many other manufacturers, Land Rover have done away with the traditional ignition key and replaced it with a rectangular plastic block that doubles as the remote control for the central locking. Slotting this in to the dashboard, you push down on the clutch and press the start button - handily located behind the steering wheel to the left of the instrument panel. The same button stops the engine, and if you press it without the clutch down, it just turns on the ignition which lets you open the windows, use the sat nav etc. in the same way as turning the key to the first position. The key cannot be ejected while the engine is running, but when you've switched off, you push the key in slightly before it pops back and you can pull it out.

There are a number of automatic systems in the car:

Headlights
Windscreen wipers
Dipping rear-view mirror
Central locking
Stop-Start

Some of the things the car insists on doing for you cannot be overridden. For example, you will spend a lot of time unlocking doors: by default only the driver's door unlocks when you press the button on the remote - a second press is required to open the rest of the car. When you start driving, the car automatically locks all the doors again. Why? If you want to get something out of the boot when you arrive, or pick up passengers or do anything you will need to find the remote and unlock the car again, or press the unlock button on the centre console. Opening the driver's door from the inside doesn't unlock the rest of the car. If you unlock the car and don't open a door, after a few seconds the car will automatically lock itself again. There is a boot-button on the remote control, but it only releases the boot rather than opening, so isn't all that useful if you've got your hands full.

The automatic headlights don't work all that well with them turning on and off, seemingly at random, on an overcast but not particularly dull day in Peterborough. Why do we need automatic headlights? I can tell when it gets dark.

With the automatic windscreen wipers, there are three settings on the wiper stalk: automatic, on and fast. There's no intermittent setting, which I presume it replaced by the automatic setting. I have a distrust of automatic systems which stems from my experiences in a Peugeot 206 several years ago, where the automatic windscreen wipers decided to work only in the dry, and when passing a lorry that was throwing up bucket-loads of spray, they decided that wipers were not necessary - which lead to an exciting few moments as I tried to override the automatic system so I could see where I was going.

My concerns were not entirely unfounded, with erratic wipes of the screen in completely dry weather. Automatic wipers seem very like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist: As with the headlights, I can tell very easily when I need my wipers on.

The 2.2 litre diesel engine is very quiet, almost too quiet, as when you're on the open road is difficult to hear exactly what's going on. A green arrow indicator on the dashboard tells you when to change up a gear, but if you follow its direction you will find yourself in too high a gear, with the engine starting to struggle and vibrate. To be fair, the 2 isn't the only car to suffer this: the automatic gearbox in the BMW 1-Series I've driven suffers a similar issue unless you put it in sport mode.

In what I assume is a attempt at emission reduction, the 2 has an automatic stop-start system: come to a halt, put the gear lever in to neutral, lift the clutch and the engine stops. A green 'Eco' light lights up on the dashboard to let you know it's stopped. When you're ready to go, push down the clutch and before your foot reaches the floor, the engine's running again and off you go. While stopped, all the other systems in the car keep running. If you stop for too long, the engine will start again of its own accord; presumably to prevent the various systems running down the battery. The stop-start system can be turned off by a button on the centre console, but it will be reactivated again next time you start the car.

At Motorway speeds, the cabin remains quiet with little engine, wind or tyre noise. Steering is light and responsive, possibly a little too light and responsive for a vehicle of that size - a little more weight would stop the steering being quite so flighty at speed, especially on faster turns such as open roundabouts or on fast, twisty cross-country roads.

The radio has a CD player as well as an Aux socket to plug in your iPod, and the speakers give a good performance. There's even a sub-woofer hidden somewhere in the car - which was turned up to the max when I picked up the car, which made Radio 2 sound a little odd. There's also a built-in Bluetooth hands-free mobile phone system, which works very well and accounts for many of the buttons on the centre console.

A large touch-screen at the top of the dashboard contains the built-in satellite navigation system. The user interface is not particularly user-friendly, and it took a lot of fumbling around and back-tracking before realising that the "Destination" label at the bottom of the screen was actually a button. On the road, the announcements are clear and easy to hear over the car's speakers, but the timing of the announcements is very poor. Approaching a turn, your first warning is at just 400 yards: if you're not in the inside lane at the time, forget it - you're going to miss your turn. Bizarrely, on Motorways (and only on Motorways, not dual carriageways) it extends the warning to one mile.

The second announcement is at 200 yards, almost before the first announcement has finished. The map set on board has similar errors to other navigation systems, leading to vague and confusing instructions; especially in towns where there are lots of junctions and roads in a small area where it strings instructions together for multiple turns.

Yes, you can look at the screen, but the maps are very diagrammatic and don't reflect the actual arrangement on the road. Also the location and dimness of the screen means you cannot easily see what it's showing. As a very expensive (£1530) option on the Freelander 2, it's a big disappointment and I certainly wouldn't be choosing it over my my much cheaper, more accurate and clearer Garmin.

Interestingly, the satellite navigation has a number of Points of Interest (PoIs) in it's database, including a list of franchise dealers - but the dealer who lent me the car is not included.

There is a trend in some cars for soft-touch indicators that don't stay tipped in the appropriate direction, like the aforementioned BMW. The stalks in the 2 behave as indicators should, staying cocked until cancelled either automatically by turning the wheel, or moving the lever back by hand.

At the back of the car, the 2 has a lift-up boot instead of the side-opening one on the original. It's a big, fairly heavy door, held up on gas rams. A shorter person might struggle getting it closed as it's a bit of reach up when fully open. The boot space is much greater than on the original, although the floor starts much higher up to allow space for the spare wheel. Which isn't there.

Lifting up the boot floor, which has a handy hanging hook to keep it up, reveals a large, mostly circular space where the spare wheel would go if one were supplied. Instead, in a neatly shaped box in the centre of the space there's a bottle of tyre sealant and a pump, which also acts as a support for the centre of the boot floor. Whilst I'm sure these kits work fine for a simple puncture, any other wheel or tyre problem will leave you stranded and I doubt that a recovery company will be all that keen to collect you and the car from a remote field or byway should you damage a tyre.

Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to try the 2 off road, but having driven its bigger brother, Discovery 4, and experiencing the Terrain Response system I am sure that it'll be just as capable, if not more so, than the original. Next time I visit the Land Rover Experience I will be putting the Freelander 2 to the test.

Would I buy one? Maybe. There are too many automatic systems on it for my taste that cannot be turned off or easily worked around (why would you want the the doors to lock automatically? In an accident, I want people to be able to get me out!). On the other hand it drives very nicely, is quiet, comfortable and while I've had it the average fuel consumption has been around 36mpg. It just needs to feel a bit chunkier and more like a Land Rover.

With thanks to Hammond Land Rover, Halesworth, Suffolk, for lending me the Freelander 2 while repairing my Defender.

Irish Weekend - May 2011

2011-08-22T20:56:00.001+01:00

After my Irish trip in February, I vowed it wouldn't be fourteen years before I went back again. When some of the KTM Forum guys in Northern Ireland posted that they were heading to Co Dongal for the long weekend I jumped at the chance of joining them.

My plan was simple: ride to Birkenhead, take the overnight boat to Belfast, meet with Kyle (the ringleader) for breakfast, ride, camp overnight, ride, and get the overnight boat back again.

Stena Line ISF operate the ferry service, and the overnight boat leaves at 22.30 and gets in at the early hour of 06.30. Boarding commences well in advance of departure, so although I arrived at 19.30 I was in the Mersey Seaways's snack bar soon after with a group of three other motorcyclists from Norfolk on their way to the Antrim coast.

The boat is best described as basic, although the cabins were clean and comfortable, the food was pretty poor, and they ran out of glasses in the bar...

An 06.30 arrival means getting up about 05.30 (they kick you out of the cabins at 06.00), but I didn't quite get around to breakfast on the boat. Fortunately it was only a half-hour ride to Kyle's house for an
Ulster fry :)

From there we headed over to the Donegal coast, picking up another two others along the way. The sun was out, the roads were clear, and it was a wonderful run through the spectacular scenery.

Photo by Terry Irvine

We were camping at the Sleepy Hollow camp site, which was very aptly named, and they'd kept plenty of space for us, including reserved parking for the bikes. After pitching our tents, I unexpectedly tested
mine... Well, it had been an early start and a poor night's sleep...

Photo by Eugene Gillen

Time for an afternoon ride. There are a lot of gravel tracks in the area, so instead of the area we were expecting to ride (a half-hour ride away) we explored the new tracks while trying not to get stuck in the peat bogs!

Somehow one of our group managed to get lost, as did the person sent to find him. Just when we though we'd found the local equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle, we were reunited up a side-trail. Quite how the wrong turning had been made is a mystery.

Unfortunately some of the longer trails through woodland were closed for forestry operations, but they'll be there for next time.

On one section of trail through an area there they'd been cutting peat, I beached the bike on top of a mound - that takes some doing with the 990, and a bit of a shove to get it off again (and all on video!).

With Saturday's plan taking shape, we headed back to camp for a cuppa in the evening sun before retiring to a local pub for a superb steak and plenty of local ale (not Guinness - I don't like it).

Saturday morning, and a trip to a local petrol station cafe for a decent cooked breakfast. The other riders joining us spotted our bikes as they rode past, so came and joined us. Everyone was on a KTM 9x0 Adventure, except one brave chap on a Suzuki V-Strom 650.

Photo by Terry Irvine

Knowing the trails a bit better than yesterday, we strung them together more smoothly, found a few more, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

One of the hills was home to a wind farm (isn't there enough wind already without farming more?) and the view was amazing. The track up to it was a mix of steep bits, not-so-steep bits, some gravelled, some sealed - I almost threw myself over the bars on the way up when I found a larger rock in the road (the only one for miles).

Lunchtime approached so we headed in to a village for lunch, and found the Seaview Hotel a short distance inland. Toasties were the order of the day, and the landlord was able to suggest some trails we could try - even taking Kyle in his car to show him where they were. Sadly they were the closed forestry ones. Undeterred, he called another chap who's a rally driver and knows the area well, and he came over to the hotel to talk to us about the trails too - that doesn't happen over here!

We were getting back on the bikes when someone noticed that my front tyre looked a bit soft. Flat, in fact. Fortunately I'd stuck a front tube in my luggage just as I was leaving home, so it wasn't long before we'd changed the tube and found a four-inch thorn stuck in the tyre. Impressive!

The others had gone for a ride while we changed the tube, so from there we decided to return to the camp-site. I was booking on the overnight ferry at 22.30 from Belfast, so after striking the tent I set off in hot persuit of the chap on the V-Strom. It was a very brisk run through the mountains, joining the main roads in Northern Ireland and I got to the ferry terminal just after 20.00.

Once on the boat, the Lagan Seaways, I found myself in the queue for cabins behind Guy Martin - the TT rider and star of the BBC series "The Boat That Guy Built" - who'd misplaced his boarding card. He headed off to the restaurant while I made do with the snack bar again (the food was better, but still not brilliant).

As it was Mum's birthday I went on deck to give her a call to the accompaniment of Celine Dion's greatest hits on the PA system: hearing the theme from "Titanic" whilst on a ferry is... well, not ideal if you're a nervous passenger (which I'm not). Although looking at it another way, we were just a few hundred yards from the place RMS Titanic was built.

The crossing home was uneventful, if slightly rougher that the outward journey, and I didn't see Guy in the morning - perhaps he jumped off as we passed the Isle of Man?

Arriving early at Birkenhead, it was 06.30 as I left the port for the ride home. I was the only bike on board, and it had been well secured with three wheel-chocks and two straps. I guess they don't see bikes all that often!

Some excitement on the ride down was finding the load-liner of a pick-up between lanes 2/3 on the M6. I thought a call to the Highways Agency was in order at the next emergency phone - and before I hung-up I could see an incident unit on the scene. Glad it wasn't dark and wet or it could have been nasty, although the traffic was very light.

A brilliant weekend, well worth all the travelling.

Some footage from my helmet camera.

Self-Service Checkouts

2011-08-22T18:29:00.000+01:00

I know this 'blog is supposed to be about my travels, but while on those travels I've had a few problems with self-service checkouts in a variety of shops. The problems range from forgetfulness on my part right through to... well... stupidity.

On a recent trip to a well known furniture shop of a Swedish persuasion, I bought a large recycling 'bucket' with handles. I used the bucket to put my other purchases in before going to the checkout. They don't have scales on their self-service ones, so I very carefully took everything out of the bucket, scanned everything, checked it twice on the screen, moved the bucket to the other side of the till and put everything back in it.

I was halfway to the door when the penny dropped... Once I got to the door (I was on an escalator at the time) I went back and confessed that I hadn't remembered to scan and pay for for the bucket itself. Firstly I was directed to customer returns, but they can't take money, only refund it. Eventually I was ushered to the front of the checkout queue where I was thanked for my honesty and everything was sorted out. My conscience wouldn't have let me not pay for it, so there was no question of not paying for it and I was very embarrassed at making such a stupid mistake.

A few days later, I stopped a northern supermarket for my weekly shop. After dealing with the somewhat temperamental and irritable self-service machine, I took my shopping and receipt and drove home. The following day, when I went to pay for something in another shop, I realised that I'd left my credit card in the till's chip and PIN machine - a call to the shop confirmed it and, as I'd already spoken to the card company, I asked that they destroy it.

But my crowing achievement took place some months ago, in another supermarket (one that's expanded all over the world), where after paying for my shopping, collecting my receipt and card, I then left the shop leaving my shopping neatly bagged at the checkout...

I'm sure I'm not the first to have done any of these, and I dare say I won't be the last. Perhaps checking-out shopping is best left to the experts.

Out with the old, in with the new(er).

2011-08-22T18:25:00.000+01:00

The Discovery didn't stay long. I've always wanted a Defender, which to me is the definitive Land Rover, and when I bought the Disco I knew I'd probably regret it. So when I found a Defender at an attractive price, in good condition and the type I wanted, a 110 double-cab, it was the end of the Disco.

It's a 110 Double-Cab Td5 XS, first registered in October 2005, with 70k miles on the clock. It's been owned by a farm in Suffolk and has obviously been earning its keep with a few bumps and scrapes - but it's a Defender and they look better that way. The XS spec. means that it has a heated windscreen and seats (which are part leather) and it also has air conditioning.

At the moment it is completely standard, but that will change: the spare wheel lives in the load-bed and takes up a lot of room, so a carrier for the rear will take care of that. It's also lost its 'tent' that it originally left the factory with somewhere along the line, so a new cover will be needed too. And I'm going to keep the winch from the Discovery to fit, so a new bumper and other bits will be needed for that.

And don't worry about the Disco: it's gone to a good home.

LRO 4x4 Training Day

2011-02-09T19:14:00.001Z

Having never had any proper training on how to drive off road, and with the Discovery having low-range gears and a central diff-lock which the Freelander doesn't, I thought it wise to have some tuition. A friend mentioned that the LRO Adventure Club was organising a training day with Protrax at Rockingham Castle (where I had my Land Rover Experience), which isn't too far away, so I booked on as well.

Arriving at the centre there were a couple of Land Rovers there already (plus the LR Experience ones), and after signing in and a cup of coffee we headed in to the classroom for an introduction on the mechanics of driving off road, where the power goes in certain circumstances and how to use the car's abilities to your benefit. In total there were five Land Rovers and six drivers taking part: two Discoveries, a 110, a 90 with two drivers, and a Wolf (110).

From there we drove down to the off road course for our morning session. The weather was dry but chilly, with a cold wind, and I was wishing I'd brought a warmer coat with me as we were talked and walked through the route we were going to follow around the course: down a steepish slope, across a side-slope, through a section of axle-crossing holes (the section shown in the video in my LRE story on this 'blog), through two puddles, up a steep slope then up a parallel slope to the first descent, stopping half-way up to simulate a failure.

We took it in turns to go, there being plenty of room for three cars to be on the course at a time. I was last, and got to the axle-crossing holes before realising I hadn't engaged diff-lock... Land Rovers really are capable! A lack of momentum meant I got slightly stuck (or temporarily detained as the instructor put it) and needed a gentle shove to get enough wheels on the ground to reverse out again and drive around before completing the route.

As is often the case, the same obstacle in the opposite direction is completely different so next we drove the course in the opposite direction. This meant that on the side-slope the driver was on the downhill side, and it takes a lot of concentration not to steer uphill which would increase the lean-angle and could result in the car rolling over. One of the cars had a roof-tent and spare wheel on the roof-rack, but even the resulting higher centre of gravity didn't cause any problems.

Nobody had any particular problems, although the wet, slightly muddy grass did cause a bit of sliding around - wet grass is possibly one of the most tricky surfaces to drive on and is sometimes referred to as "green ice".

For the afternoon session we were going to relocate to Tixover Quarry, a nearby site used for pay and play days which has more space as well as a lake which we could use to practice wading. On our way to Tixover we stopped to grab a quick sandwich for lunch.

On the way from Rockingham Castle to the sandwich shop, a runaway dog, which was chasing another dog which was running away with its owner, decided to bounce in to the road right in front of me. I had already spotted the two dogs, and seen that one of them wasn't on a lead so I was half expecting something to happen. As a result I was able to stop before hitting the dog - but it was a close-call. The others thought I'd hit it.

Arriving at Tixover we had another briefing from the instructor before a 'follow-my-leader' drive around using some of the site's gentler slopes, the edge of the lake and other features to allow us to get a feel for the place.

The afternoon's first session was wading. The route was down a moderate slope, in to Tixover's lake, through it in a gentle arc before choosing one of three exit slopes: gentle, easy or moderate. When wading, technique is very important: too fast and you'll be swamped by the bow wave; too slow and you again risk being caught by the deeper water than follows your bow wave.

After a demonstration by the instructor, which we were advised to watch carefully so as to get the right route through the water (there were hidden rocks, and the lake is very deep in places!), we all had a go. Carefully down the slope, stopping at the bottom to change gear before driving confidently in to the water. The aim is to create a bow wave and then keep up with the wave to stay in the shadow of it where the water is shallower. Once out of the water there was a simple drive up the chosen slope and round the top back to the start.

The shore of the lake on the opposite side was a good vantage point for photos, although you needed to be aware of the incoming wave so as not to get wet feet.

Next was the same, but in the opposite direction - the instructor was heard to say "perfect" as I waded past his vantage point - but he could have been speaking to someone else...!

With wading mastered we had another 'follow-my-leader' drive before the next subject: rock crawling. Using an area with some scattered boulders we were talked through how to pick a line, hazards to look for (troughs big enough to catch and stop a wheel, for example) and the risks involved in getting it wrong, such as damage to tyre sidewall if you scrape them along the edge of a rock, and tips on how to make it easier, like having a banksman to guide you from outside the car, or in the case of smaller rocks moving them to clear a path or fill-in holes, as well has driving technique on how to stay in control. When it was my turn, the person who kindly offered to act as my banksman directed me around the rocks rather than over them...

A final session of 'follow-my-leader' covering all the things we'd tackled that day: steep slopes, axle-twisting holes, wading, tight turns and rocks, before a free period where we could go and explore the quarry on our own - with a warning about a particularly technical section where we would get stuck, and we'd be on our own if we did!

Shortly after four, with the light starting to fade, we made our respective ways home having learnt some new techniques, reasons why we tackle things the way we do, and a new confidence in taking a Land Rover off road. A very enjoyable day, and excellent value at £50.

Thanks to Lee and Russ for taking some of the photos.

Land Rover Experience

2011-01-07T23:16:00.000Z

From time to time Land Rover offer places on their Land Rover Experience days, which allows you time behind the wheel both on and off road with an instructor. After seeing the invitation on Facebook I jumped at the chance to try an up-to-date Land Rover and chose a Discovery 4.

My nearest LR Experience is at Rockingham Castle in Leicestershire, so with Mum & Dad coming as my guests, I took a seat behind the wheel of a very new, shiny, 8000 mile Land Rover Discovery 4 HSE. The differences between my Discovery and the D4 are many: the D4 is much bigger and has automatic transmission, leather seats, 3.0 TDV6 engine, seven seats, Terrain Response systems and the like.

The most unusual feature is perhaps the five cameras located around the outside of the car: two in the front bumper, one under each wing-mirror and one at the back for reversing. The rear camera has a number of other benefits in that when you engage reverse it superimposes yellow lines that indicate where the car will go with the steering wheel in its current position. As you turn the steering wheel the lines move accordingly. For hitching up a trailer there is another mode that shows where your tow hitch is in relation to the image, and a yellow line branching from it again shows where the hitch will go as you reverse which should make hitching up a very easy process even when on your own.

Our instructor introduced himself and after a quick overview of the controls and satellite navigation system (which allows you to put in phone numbers instead of Postcodes to find places of interest - I was wondering what would happen if I put in a mobile phone number...!), we went for an
on road drive.

First impressions are how very smooth, quiet and powerful the car is, so much so that it's almost impossible to hear the engine. I loath automatic gearboxes, but this one seemed OK, with normal, sport and manual settings. To use sport mode you move the selector sideways, then the manual mode is a sequential system where you change gear by tapping the selector in sport mode forward to go up a gear and backwards to go down again.

On a quiet lane I was given a demonstration of the effect the Terrain Response system has on the throttle and gears: the grass and snow setting softened the throttle response considerably means a very gentle and smooth take-off, whereas the sand mode sharpened up the response beyond that of 'normal', giving a lot of power very quickly.

The Discovery 4 has air suspension and as a result compensates very nicely for undulations in the road. One of the roads on the route had a series of crests and dips, and even a sharp, off-camber crest failed to unsettle the car. The smooth ride, quiet engine and high seating position makes it very easy to end up driving faster than you think, partly due to the lack of hedges flashing past (you're sat at hedge-top level) and the lack of noise... Officer.

After switching drivers to allow Dad to try it, the instructor demonstrated the emergency braking feature: driving at around sixty miles an hour the instructor pulled on the parking brake. This causes the car to slow to a stop under the full control of the ABS system so that in the event of the driving being incapacitated a passenger can safely bring the car to a halt. In a normal car, pulling on the handbrake is likely to cause some loss of control through locking wheels.

Returning to the Experience Centre we took to their off road course. The cars used are completely standard and are on road tyres, which makes their ability all the more impressive (even although it does cause some interesting sideways moments on wet grass). With low range engaged the car
will pull away in first, second or third gear (third being the equivalent of high range first), and changing the Terrain Response system also adjusts the ride height to help prevent grounding between ruts, or when crawling over rocks.

A number of obstacles have been constructed, including a thirty-six degree sideways slope, which the car coped with easily (and I'm told that even a forty-five degree sideways slope isn't a problem, but thirty-six is the official maximum!). The party piece for the occasion is a series of offset holes that causes a cross-axle situation. With two diagonally opposite wheels off the ground, the instructor opens the driver's door - and more importantly closes it again to prove that there's no flexing of the body going on. Something that my Discovery couldn't do as body flex would make the door difficult to open and potentially impossible to close. The traction control system kept the car moving despite having only two wheels on the ground:

From there I took to the wheel again, and after a couple of rutted tracks, a climb or two (and matching descent) the instructor took us to a harder section - he also asked if I was a mystery customer sent by Land Rover as I obviously knew what I was doing! Road tyres on wet grass with a sideways slope isn't the best recipe for success, but gave the instructor an opportunity to demonstrate the difference that the stability control makes, and how turning it off made for much easier progress off road as the car kept wheels turning instead of braking them. While the technology means you need less skill to drive off road, you do need a good memory to know what all the buttons and dials do, and which setting is best for the current situation!

Cresting a gentle hill, I was told to leave the brakes alone and let Hill Descent Control (HDC) do the work. Think of a ski jump where the track turns uphill after the skier has landed - we hurtled down this slope towards a sturdy looking fence at the top of the 'landing ramp' with me resisting the temptation to hit the brakes! Sure enough, the car brought itself to a halt just as the ground started to rise. Tyre tracks further up the landing ramp, much closer to the fence, were, we're told, the result of people trying to do the braking themselves and not letting HDC get on with it!

Next was a long, steepish, rutted climb with a few lumps a bumps along it. Selecting rut mode, disabling the stability control, increasing the ride height (I think I've remembered it all!) I opened the throttle and we started our ascent... and failed about halfway up despite wiggling the steering from side-to-side in the approved way. Rolling back to the bottom (HDC doing its thing again) we had another go which also failed. It was on my third attempt that the engine started to make a funny noise so the instructor asked me to stop, so I did: the car produced lots of black smoke from the exhausts and stalled. And refused to restart.

The parking brake warning light was flashing and a warning tone was sounding, so we tried resetting the car's computer system by turning it off and on again, opening and closing doors, locking and unlocking it.... Eventually we managed to get the parking brake released using the emergency release under the centre console which allowed us to roll back to level ground, but the car still refused to start. Eventually the instructor admitted defeat, and the group in the other D4 came to our rescue. With two of them, plus three of us and an instructor, I got the opportunity to try out the third row of seats - and they're surprisingly comfortable, with plenty of leg room - for a trip back to the centre's reception area.

With profuse apologies from the instructor I was invited to come back again, which I will no doubt do, and after coffee and biscuits we headed home.

If you are thinking of buying a Land Rover Discovery, Freelander or Defender (or Range Rover - they have RR and RR Sport models available to try too), or if you've just bought one and want to see what it can do, then it's well worth a visit.

Thank you to Land Rover and their Experience Centre at Rockingham Castle, particularly our instructor, Luke, for a very enjoyable afternoon.

Response Call-Out: Lincoln

2010-12-06T17:57:00.002Z

With the earliest winter snowfall for seventeen years, it was only a matter of time before the Northants 4x4 Response Team was called in to action. I've been a volunteer responder for quite a while now, but this was the first time I was called-out: to assist the Yorkshire & Lincolnshire team in Lincoln.

Heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures had left many roads in a treacherous condition, especially in rural areas where they were all but impassable without four-wheel drive. Responders from groups all over the country went to help out, especially those from areas less affected by the wintery weather such as Northants.

The call came on Sunday morning, so after a quick check that everything was in order in the Freelander I set off up the A1 to Lincoln hospital which was the operations centre for the area. The further north I went, the more snow there was in fields - despite a brief thaw over the weekend (which brought rain, which fell on icy roads making them even more icy than before). Arriving at the hospital I found the controller, who had come from Norfolk, and I was duly dispatched to the nearby village of Nettleham to collect a Sue Ryder nurse and take her to do her evening house-calls.

Roads in the village were icy but passable with care, although some houses with long driveways were a bit more of a challenge as were those in hillier areas. Finding houses in the dark, in snow and ice wasn't always easy, but with the aid of my big torch we could light-up the house numbers without having to brave the cold outside the car. We made a dozen or more visits before I dropped off the nurse at her home.

During the visits I waited in the car, listening to the radio and wishing I'd thought to bring something to read. I'd stopped at a couple of petrol stations on the way up in the hope of finding a Land Rover or motorbike magazine, but I can only assume other responders had got there first because the selection was very poor. In one petrol station the magazine section consisted of only a top-shelf, which while it would have helped to pass the time, didn't seem all that appropriate!

By 21.30 I was finished and stopped for some hot food before meeting up with the rest of the Northants team at a nearby hotel. Two of us were heading home while the other two were staying overnight to assist on Monday. The A1 is very quiet around midnight on a freezing cold Sunday night, and after a non-stop journey I arrived home in the early hours of Monday; exceedingly tired but pleased to have been able to help out.

Some of the RT's calls are exciting and adventurous, but many are far more mundane. Either way, they're just as important and without our assistance a lot of elderly and vulnerable people would not have received their visits and been left cold and lonely.

The Inevitable

2010-11-29T18:14:00.001Z

I knew that it was likely to happen sooner or later - one of the Land Rovers broke down and needed recovery.

It was the Discovery that let me down yesterday. It had been a little poorly since using it to tow the bikes to Wales for the Cambrian Rally, when it developed a nasty vibration when under load - accelerating, going uphill etc. I thought it was a problem with the transfer box caused when I made a mess of changing from low range to high range, but it turned out to be a badly worn universal joint (UJ) on the front prop shaft. It's possible that my ham-handed gear change was the final straw for it, or it could be coincidence. That's a much easier repair than replacing the transfer box - which friends from Northants 4x4 has offered to help me with.

Setting off home with a nice smooth transmission, I didn't get far. Within a mile or so the engine stalled, the ignition lights came on briefly, and I rolled to a halt at the side of the road. Turning the key in the ignition had no effect - no ignition lights, the engine didn't turn over, nothing. The non-engine electrics worked fine: hazard lights, interior lights, clock etc. but they weren't going to get me home.

Turning again to my N44 friends, the cavalry soon arrived but they couldn't breathe life in to it either.

Time to call RAC - I've paid for their recovery service for times like this, so let's see what they can do! Not a lot is the answer. After fifteen minutes on hold I got through and was informed that it would be
four hours before they could attend. Yes, four hours... An hour and a half later I got another call saying it would be another three hours... At least I had a car to sit in, even if it was unheated, and I wasn't sat on the curb as I would have been on the bike.

Plan B: Tow the Discovery home behind another Land Rover... Which is what we did. I've towed a few times, but never been towed before and it was an interesting experience. There's something slightly eery about trundling along with no engine noise, just the roar of the Defender in front and a bit of wind noise - and by this time it was dark too.

It took a while, but we made it home. I was a bit surprised that the speedo still worked, although it's a mechanical one not electronic so perhaps not all that surprising! What didn't work so well were the brakes and steering. With no engine power there was no power steering and no brake servo to assist either. And when the windscreen mists up you don't have a blower to clear it, nor can you open the windows.

I think I preferred having a mechanical fault because at least the car was mobile whereas now it's not going anywhere. My suspicion is that the immobiliser has died so that's going to be first on the list of things to look at, and hopefully remove.

So as one fault is fixed, another one occurs - but I guess that's the charm of driving an older Land Rover...

New Arrival

2010-11-15T20:20:00.000Z

There's a new addition to the fleet - a 1993 Land Rover Discovery:

Previously owned by a friend, it comes with a very comprehensive history, has been converted to run on vegetable oil and has a remote control winch on the front. Despite having 144k miles on the clock it runs beautifully and I'm looking forward to learning what to do with two gear levers as well as taking it to places too risky for the Freelander.

Now to find a source of used veg. oil...

Abingdon 4x4 Festival 2010

2010-11-15T20:17:00.002Z

The last weekend of September saw the annual Abingdon 4x4 Festival take place at Dalton Barracks in Oxfordshire. This is an annual event and raises money for local charities. This year, owing to the Cadwell Track Day being the Thursday and Friday immediately before, I arrived at lunchtime on Saturday direct from Cadwell.

The first challenge on arrival was finding my friends who were already there: Bobby with his Defender 90 and Robin with his Discovery. Before I'd even parked I'd found Bobby's 90, but it was parked and unattended. I was at this point I realised that I didn't have mobile phone numbers for either Bobby or Robin - memo to self: plan further ahead next time!

With the power of my iPhone, Facebook and e-mails we were soon in contact and, after pitching my tent, met up for my first lap of the course. First impressions were that it was a more technical course than in previous years - "technical" is a wonderful euphemism meaning bloody hard!

Before you're allowed on the course you have to have your vehicle scrutineered to make sure everything in it is secure and not going to fly around the cabin - this includes the battery in the engine bay. This is why tent-pitching came first!

Dalton Barrack's off road course is used by the army for driver training and has a range of features for the festival's Clerk of the Course to choose from. As in previous years there were "easy" and "hard" routes in many places, although the distinction wasn't always obvious with some of the "hard" bits being fairly easy - so much so I happily went that way in the Freelander - but the truly "hard" bits were just that, and there's no way I'd risk damaging the Freelander by attempting them.

The centre-piece of the course is the Mud Run, which is a deep, muddy water-filled channel much too deep for the Freelander, but that's not to say the Freelander didn't get the chance to have a swim. The course drops down in to a large pond, before the hard route splits off towards the Mud Run. The water level in it varied over the course of the weekend, with it being topped up periodically by water bowser.

With the recent rain, parts of the course were very slippery and on some of the steeper climbs lots of people struggled to get to the top, including some seriously modified 4x4s which demonstrated it's as much about driver technique as vehicle specification. I'm pleased to report that in most cases the Freelander made it to the top - to the surprise of some of the marshals!

As Bobby was only at the show on the Saturday, I left the Freelander and climbed aboard his 90. For the first lap we went the easy route again, and the difference between the two cars was very noticeable, especially in terms of the ride with the Defender making even the smoother sections of the course feel much more dramatic. The limited turning circle of the 90 meant taking a couple of shunts at some of the tighter parts of the course, as did most people - the Clerk of the Course drives a Freelander 2: I'll say no more!

On the tallest, steepest and, that weekend, the most slippery climb we ground to a halt and rolled back. And again. And again. So we were directed around it - and we weren't the only ones by a long-shot as it continued to defeat 4x4s of all kinds.

For a second lap, Robin joined us in the forward-facing passenger seat in the back and this time Bobby decided to raise the stakes and opted for some of the harder sections. All went well until we branched off towards the Mud Run. Having got the hang of a using a heavier foot to get up the slopes, on particularly short, sharp climb over a ridge, Bobby forgot to lift-off at the top and we hurtled down the other side a bit too fast (understatement!). Fortunately no harm done, although how Robin had avoided going head first through the roof I don't know!

From there to the Mud Run, and after some advice from the marshal we took the plunge. The advice was spot on and we made it through where many had failed. Although in keeping with Land Rover tradition in such things, we did have wet feet. By now Bobby was on a roll, and even the highest, steepest mound couldn't stop us this time!

And that was the end of Saturday. Robin and I finished setting up camp and prepared some food as the temperature fell. Sitting out on a cold, clear night was not unpleasant but a warm caravan would have been nicer. It kept the beer (milk and orange juice) cold at least. Turning in for the night I checked the weather app on the iPhone for Didcot and it said 8°C: Brrr!

As the night went on it got colder and colder and I can tell you that my sleeping bag is a bit snug when you're wearing several layers, including a coat, inside a fleece liner. And I was still chilly...

After breakfast Robin and I made plans: a solo lap each in our respective Land Rovers, then we'd have a lift around in the other's Land Rover, then swap and drive each other's. That went well until half-way round the first lap when one of Robin's Discovery's rear shock absorbers broke, allowing the spring to pop-out and foul the rear wheel - it was the smell of burning rubber that gave it away. We discovered later that the mounting for the rear anti-roll bad had also sheared. Thanks to our neighbours in the camp site Robin was able to drive home that evening, very carefully.

So that left us with the Freelander, but the Freelander's time was nigh too and while following a Nissan Pathfinder around the course a lingering smell of diesel pervaded - we hoped from the Nissan, which had beached itself on a couple of humps. Sadly it wasn't, as subsequent investigations showed a burst fuel line where it runs under the suspension in the front wheel arch.

I didn't know about the fuel leak until after I got home, so we carried on lapping the course, being slightly more adventurous with the hard sections (although on one lap I was prevented from attempting the highest, steepest mound by the marshals, despite having already cleared on previous laps!). The video from this year's show on the official web site shows one of the climbs and a number of vehicles trying several times, and in some cases failing, to get over it. My Freelander features in the video, with it going straight over in one shot - very satisfying. [Link]

Right at the end of the course, Beds, Herts & Cambs Land Rover Club were manning a see-saw. In return for a £1 donation you could have a go at driving over it. Last year I'd made a right meal of it and was wary of it this year. On my first attempt I went straight over - gently up the slope to the balance point, stopping, tipping and rolling gently off. On the second attempt I didn't make as good a job of it when I stopped too soon, and in trying to start up the slope again the unmistakable smell of a burning clutch was all too apparent. After that, I decided to give the see-saw a miss to let the clutch recover.

On the Sunday I decided to try something a bit different and entered the twist-off challenge. I lined up in the area with a couple of purpose-built challenge trucks, a Series II, a SEAT Ibiza (yes, really) and a few other vehicles including a mobility scooter. When it was my turn, the commentator noted that my Freelander was modified, and sitting higher than standard - I was impressed because he hadn't been briefed. For those that don't know, a twist-off is a competition to find the vehicle with the greatest amount of suspension articulation. You drive up a single wheel-width ramp until you lose traction - diff locks etc. must not be engaged. Going forwards I didn't do all that well, but going backwards I did rather better - so much so I didn't realise that my rear wheel was dangling in mid-air. Unfortunately that's considered cheating... And probably not entirely safe either.

I'm looking forward to next year's show already, but which Land Rover will I take...?

Cambrian Rally 2010

2010-11-11T19:48:00.000Z

After a disappointing performance in the Beacons Rally I was determined to do better at the Cambrian. It's also organised by WTRA, but the course is less technical. The start / finish was near Lyn Brianne reservoir, and the weather was just about perfect: cold but sunny.

Unfortunately neither Mark or Craig could make this one, but I wasn't alone as Gareth came to do his first rally on his 950 Adventure. I decided I deserved a bit of a break and left the 990 Adventure at home and used my 250 EXC Racing instead - the first time I've used it in over a year.

Instead of camping, we decided that a B&B was a better option this time, and we found a very comfortable room at the Castle Coaching Inn in Trecastle. After checking in on Friday evening we headed in to Llandovery to meet with our fellow forum riders, Team Bravo Two-Zero - AKA Rob, Gav & Shep in the chippy. And then in the pub - lovely beer, shame I had to drive!

Saturday morning dawned cold: there was ice on the seats of the bikes. The road up to the reservoir was narrow, twisty, and it took a lot longer than we expected - even once we'd arrived at the grid reference supplied, it was another twenty minutes to the start!

Taking advantage of the Land Rover we parked on a handy piece of verge, unloaded, and went to get scrutineered and signed-on. Our start time wasn't until almost 11.30 so we had plenty of time to drink coffee, chat and generally get organised.

Once on the start-line, the clock ticked over to our set time and off we went, Gareth leading. There were two special tests, and we were to complete two laps on Saturday, with the first one an untimed sighting lap.

The first liaison was along some sweeping forest fire-roads, through a timber yard and down on to the famous Strata Florida. The water level was fairly low, but there were still some deep puddles to ford (up to the front mud-guard on the 250), not to mention some tricky sections with loose rocks and a couple of rocky steps.

From there it was a short road-ride up a 25% gradient to Test One - where were arrived over half an hour early because they'd allowed too much time for the first liaison. While we were waiting we chatted to our fellow riders, I drained large volumes of water from my boots, and we gradually shuffled forwards to the start-line.

Rallies work to a timetable, and you are given a time for your start, stage one, stage two, refuel etc. but the time allowed to the first section was far too generous - and the pedantic marshals wouldn't let anyone start until the allotted time.

Despite it being untimed there's always the urge to keep going, and the first test was a fairly fast mix of fire tracks with a few more technical sections of bog and narrow rutted tracks. There were better ruts to pick, and I didn't get them right by any means!

From the first stage there was a longer road ride to the second test, which was not dissimilar to the first, but on generally tighter, steeper trails making it a bit slower. I did better on the second than the first, possibly due to having a smaller bike.

by Michael Davies

The two section tests were more technical than the liaisons, but not especially difficult, so I'd have been fine on the 990 after all.

On the second lap I was rattling along when I spotted a bike off the side of the track, a good twelve foot down the embankment. A black bike. A KTM 950. Gareth.

With the help of another rider, and a couple of marshals when they arrived, we got the bike back on to the track with no harm done. Gareth had over-cooked the corner and gone a bit wide, kept it on the edge, got on the straight, through he'd gotten away with it, then went over the edge...

Next day the route was reversed, with an earlier start time.

Gareth and I rode up to the start line where we switched off and awaited the nod. When it duly came, Gareth roared off down the road, and I didn't. The 250 refused to fire despite having carried me to the start. After a while the battery was flat, so I tried using the kick-start. That didn't work either, and my leg felt like it was going to fall off. Thankfully a bystander, with a fresh leg, stepped in and I was off.

This way round there was a lengthy road-ride to start with before the two timed stages, which were exactly the same as the day before albeit in reverse. And with less waiting.

Gareth and I managed to stay together most of the day - Gareth was a bit quicker on one stage, I was quicker on the other. The only real excitement was a chap who got a bit out of shape on a bend, almost caught it before veering off the track in to the hillside - and amazing managed to find a storm culvert, probably a metre cubed, which stopped him dead. We got a thumbs up, and left him to it - there were marshals close behind us.

At one point on the third and final lap I nipped past Gareth on a 'technical' section where his 950 needed more care, and thought he was behind me as I trundled along. Some time later, I looked over my shoulder and there was nobody there... So I stopped and waited. No Gareth.

I stopped at the next radio check-point and asked if he'd been seen recently. While I was there, a call went out for an ambulance, and I started to worry a bit...

It turns out he'd had a puncture shortly after I'd passed him, and he'd stopped to fix it - I knew nothing about it, and obviously couldn't go back.

By mid-afternoon we'd all finished, packed away and set off for home - I'd finished! And not last either. Shame they decided not to give finisher awards this year :-\

So next year I'll be taking the 250 to the Beacons and the 990 to the Cambrian. Who knows, I might do some of the others too.

Coming soon...

2010-10-18T22:50:00.001+01:00

I've had a busy couple of months, and there's a lot to write about:

Cadwell Track Day
Abingdon 4x4 Festival
New Land Rover
Cambrian Rally

When I get some time, I'll add the stories to the 'blog.

Cambrian Rally 2010 - Preview

2010-10-18T22:44:00.002+01:00

_MG_2785, originally uploaded by ysbytymike.

Following my DNF at the Beacons Rally, I tried again at the Cambrian Rally - and I was caught on camera!

Full report to follow later.

The Blitz

2010-09-07T17:59:00.005+01:00

Today is the 70th anniversary of the first bombs falling on London in what became known as The Blitz. In the words Winston Churchill used just a few months earlier: "Never in the field of conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few".

A Spitfire outside St Paul's Cathedral today.

To all who those gave their all, the fire-fighters, nurses, ambulance men, boy scouts and, of course, The Few: thank you.

Beacons Rally 2010

2010-08-24T23:17:00.000+01:00

This weekend I was in Wales for the second Beacons Rally, near Llandovery.

There were a number of us from the KTM Forum competing, and three of us from the east were going so we used Mark's horsebox to transport the three bikes: my 990 Adventure, Craig's 950 Superenduro and Mark's 690 Enduro.

My plan was simple: go through to Wales Friday afternoon, settle in B&B, have a meal, couple of beers and an early night.

Unfortunately Mark was arranging the accommodation as well as the transport, so we ended up camping at Llandovery Rugby Club.

Now I don't mind camping, but when there's a severe weather warning in force for heavy rain, and you're going to be out in it all day, the appeal of camping does tend to wane a bit.

Still, we got through to Llandovery about 19.00, set up camp (in the rain), chatted to our neighbours (who were also competing), then headed in to the Kings Head for some food and a Cwrw or two.

I slept surprisingly well, and next morning we headed off in to the forest to set up shop in the paddock. The start time was fairly civilised, and it had even stopped raining. Mark, Craig and I signed in promptly at 09.00 after our bikes having been given a fairly cursory examination. I was 107, and with the bike duly adorned with race numbers it was time for breakfast from the burger van.

I was a bit nervous, but not as much as I thought I would be - although this photo, taken just after someone described a "technical" section of the route, might suggest otherwise

Photo by John Mullen

My start time was 11.36 with Mark, and Craig was a minute later. I didn't get off to the best start: you have to wait with the engine off, then when you get the signal you can start your engine and ride away. Of course I had to turn off the ABS after starting the engine, and then I stalled it and had to repeat it all again - all in all, I made a right pigs ear of it.

Picture by Mark (Dibdob on the the KTM Forum)

The rally was to be three laps, each of 30 miles and containing two special stages which were timed. The liaison sections aren't timed, but you have a reporting time at each stage, plus the refuelling point between laps. Get behind by an hour and you're eliminated.

To break us in gently, the first couple of miles were gravel fire-roads, and we kept a reasonable pace. The 990 is a heavy beast, and the gentle weave from the back-end reminded me not to push it too hard!

Before we started we'd been trying to decide on the best attire for the event. When it rains, I normally wear a jacket but knowing it was going to be hard work I opted for just a MX shirt (over my armour and the rest, of course). Within a matter of moments we were soaked through, but not cold!

The course wound its way through the forest with plenty of fire-roads, narrow muddy tracks, steep descents through woods (so wooded that headlights were essential - unfortunately Craig had stuck his race-number over the headlight...!), puddles, climbs, sheep-tracks through bracken and gorse... you get the idea.

Photo by Keith Davies

Each of the special stages had a set of traffic lights at the beginning, and you lined up and set off one at a time when the light went green - although a few people seemed to have trouble with this concept much to the annoyance of the marshal :)

Being the timed section most people were keen to make progress, despite the first lap being a sighting lap and therefore untimed. The first section was fairly straightforward with more of the same that we'd already ridden through with a couple of steep embankments to negotiate, and a narrow plank bridge just before the end of it.

Leaving the section there were two possible routes: one via a very boggy, narrow section with a couple of rock-steps, and the other a short fire-track to the beginning of the stage two. The marshal suggested that, being on a big bike, I might like to take the alternative route - and from the reports received later I'm very glad I did.

Stage two was to be my undoing. After an intimidating looking bog, which wasn't really a problem, there was a narrow rutted-climb with gravel over slate. Slate is slippery when wet, and with the not-all-that-knobbly tyres on the 990 I made heavy weather of it. A ridge in the rut stopped me dead halfway up, and the gravel and wet slate meant I couldn't get started again.

Thankfully people behind me helped me out (they had to - I was blocking the course!) and after what seemed like an age I made it to the top. Exhausted.

The rest of the lap was fairly uneventful, although one stretch had some very deep puddles and one in particular was taped off so we had to go around it through a very soft, tree-rooted section where everyone was getting stuck and falling off; me included. One chap decided to "cheat" and go through the puddle - he came to an abrupt halt with just his handlebars above water.

Photo by Claire Newland

Back in the paddock I was exhausted, with another two laps to go! Red Bull, cereal bar, banana, go!

Lap two started much the same as the first, although the trails were a bit more churned up and on one particularly greasy climb I slithered sideways in to the undergrowth and fell off. If I dropped the bike once I must have dropped it a dozen times and by the time I got to the second stage I was fit to drop.

My plan was to be more committed and hopefully get up in one go. No, didn't happen despite help from other riders. After picking the bike up four or five times on the hill I threw in the towel and tucked myself out of harms way to let the fast riders (who were about to lap me) come through.

I was pretty much trapped, unable to get up the hill and of course I couldn't go against the direction of travel. After half an hour or so a marshal rode past and stopped to help - he rode out of the section and back to the start of it, waited for a break in the flow and stop the stage so that I could ride out backwards. All I had to do was turn the bike around to be ready for him - easy in theory, but I barely had the strength to hold the bike up never mind turn it around!

Between us we got the bike round and then I attempted to steer back through the bog and out on to the fire-track. He then offered to lead me back to the start of stage one so I could get in a third lap...!

Somehow I made it back to the paddock and pretty much collapsed in to a chair. Craig had run out of steam after the first lap and was on had with a much needed bottle of Lucozade!

That left Mark in the running, and by the time I was back he was on his third lap.

With the rain still pouring down, we packed up ready for Mark's return, then headed back to the rugby club for a hot shower and the hog roast provided by the organisers (rather a meagre affair, sadly). After sampling the 'beer' in the clubhouse we headed once more to the Kings Head for food and proper beer.

I was in two minds about riding on Sunday, Craig wasn't going to and Mark was still in the running. I decided to wait until I got to the paddock before making a decision - one that was made very quickly when I failed to hold up my own bike in the trailer while we were unloading. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was very weak...

At least the weather was smiling on us, and the course started to dry out as the riders set off in the opposite direction. The marshal who rescued me said I should give it a go because the climb I got stuck on was now a descent - but I knew how slippery some of the descents had been the day before which were now climbs!

Most people in the paddock are friendly, so I kept myself busy taking photos (once my camera dried out) and chatting with our neighbours as well as acting as pit crew for the other forum guys still riding and, of course, Mark.

By late afternoon all the riders were in, Mark had collected his finisher's trophy, I had sunburn, we loaded up the trailer and headed home - all of us tired, aching but happy, and vowing to have a go at the Cambrian Rally later in the year. In my case, probably on the 250 instead of the 990!

Mark celebrating with a cup of coffee

For a rally billed as being suitable for the bigger bikes it was a lot tougher than expected. Many were saying it was harder than the Hafren, although that was no doubt in part due to the weather. If it had been dry it would have been a different matter and I'm sure I would have been able to complete the two days.

Now to start cleaning and repairing the 990...

...and there's the Cambrian in October!

Swiss Adventure Rally 2010 - Part 2

2010-07-14T20:49:00.000+01:00

Sunday felt not quite as hot as Saturday had been, and after breakfast the course opened again so we took to the trail. With so many bikes passing through, some of the rougher bits had been smoothed out while some of the smoother bits were getting a bit rougher.

Photo by Marc von Weissenfluh

My bike still wasn’t behaving itself despite trying a few things to work around the problem by adjusting throttle cables, checking the throttle-cam was properly installed etc., but I persevered for a few laps before deciding I’d had enough – and we had a long ride ahead of us.

By lunchtime most people had struck their tents, packed their luggage and headed off. We looked around for Marc, but he’d had to run a couple of errands that morning so we set off hoping that we could find his house from the GPS route he’d sent me earlier.

Leaving the venue was much easier than arriving, and we were soon on the main road towards Porrentruy where we stopped for fuel. The Swiss like their unattended filling stations, and we set about deciphering the instructions on the payment machine because, unlike pay-at-the-pump systems in the UK, there isn’t a card reader on each pump. It seemed simple enough: insert card, machine switches to English, asks you for the pump number, your PIN and then returns your card. You then fill up, replace the nozzle, put in your card again for a receipt. Simples. Unless you’re me, in which case it will stop after dispensing about a cupful of unleaded for no obvious reason .

Anyway, with both bikes fully fuelled (I just tried again and it worked perfectly) we began following the route to Interlaken. It was a scenic route, due to taken several hours and take us through the mountains and some interesting scenery. Something that nearly caught us out was the signage for the Swiss Motorways: they’re green, not blue. Swiss Motorways are all toll roads, but instead of paying per use you must buy a sticker, a vignette (not, as I accidentally typed elsewhere, vinaigrette), in advance that costs 40Ch and lasts all year. Failure to display leads to a fine of 100Ch, plus the cost of a vignette. As we were only going to be in Switzerland for the weekend it seemed a bit excessive to buy one for just two days, so we had to stick to the national roads – which have blue signs.

Thus slightly confused, we pulled up on the edge of a roundabout to check our maps.

We’d not been stopped for long when a white van drew up – in a stroke of luck it was Marc on his way back to the rally site. He soon pointed us in the right direction, explained the signage and we were on our way to Biel.

I was using my Garmin Zumo GPS receiver for navigation, and it appears that the roads on its internal map are not as accurate as they might be. In the first village was came to the main road through it was closed, so we took a diversion and the Zumo recalculated the route – and took us in to a domestic cul-de-sac.

It was to be the first of many wrong turns, missed junctions and general faffing about as I tried to get to grips with the Swiss road system – particularly junctions that are well disguised and look as though they could be driveways.

We spent so much time riding around in circles that a chap came out of his house and started waving his arms around at us. Obviously we’d outstayed our welcome there and it was time to move on.

The roads were, in the main, interesting and well-surfaced with more hairpin bends in an afternoon that I think I’ve ever done before. A couple of times on the journey we passed mud-spattered KTMs which had obviously been to the Adventure Weekend, and we exchanged friendly waves.

Arriving in a small town we spotted a selection of bikes, including a BMW GS, parked in the square and decided that it was lunchtime. We had coffee and a large cheese “sandwich” each, which was an open sandwich with pickled onions and gherkins on top. When the bill arrived the total was given in both Swiss Francs and Euro, and through the combined exchange rates amongst the Pound, Euro and Franc, it was best value for us to pay in Euro – although when the waitress spotted a brightly-coloured Swiss note in my wallet she refused to accept payment in Euro and insisted that I pay in Francs.

Part of the original route we were given included a stretch of Motorway, so we had been given an alternative route between Aarberg and Worb. Sensing I was close to the Motorway, and seeing an “Ausfahrt” sign, we took the slip-road and found ourselves on the edge of a moderately large town.

The road was a fairly major route, but the town was congested with traffic and it took us a while to work our way through it. Riding up the hill out of the town, after an interesting route through some very narrow roads in a housing estate, there was the first suggestion of rain and, more importantly, a red light on my dashboard and a flashing temperature gauge: engine overheating.

Pulling in to a lay-by to let it cool, I checked the coolant level and looked for any obvious problems, but it seemed to be caused simply by the mud from the weekend’s riding clogging the radiator fins. Leaving the bike to stand for a while the light eventually went out and the gauge stopped flashing.

Setting off again, it soon started to rain. And I mean rain. I haven’t seen rain that heavy for a long time. Within a matter of minutes, gutters were full, the road was awash and we were soaked to the skin. I’m sure I even saw a chap loading animals, two-by-two, in to a large boat…

If you’re a motorcyclist you’ll know that uncomfortable feeling as the rain starts to seep in: the trickle of water down your neck, the chilly feeling as your boots fill up with water, and the distinctly uncomfortable feeling as your outer layer gradually submits to the rain and the water starting to collect where you’re sitting.

Thankfully it wasn’t cold, so we kept going – we couldn’t get any wetter, and hanging around wasn’t going to get us any closer to Interlaken.

Eventually the rain eased off and finally stopped as we turned off the main routes once more and headed up in to the mountains. The scenery, what we could see of it in the mist, was spectacular and we stopped a couple of times to stretch legs and take photos.

Arriving in a small village the Zumo told me to turn right, and I missed the turning because, once again, it didn’t look like a road. Turning around we trundled along the narrow road and eventually came to a gravel track with a forbidding looking sign (in German) which neither of us could translate – but the Zumo was insistent that it was the correct route, so we rode on. It took us first to a farm where the track disappeared, and to another couple of dead-ends before bringing us out on to a surfaced road again on the other side of the hill.

These roads were single-track, twisty and very wet and greasy from being under the trees. We followed the Zumo’s directions until I noticed that there was an odd double-ended arrow on the screen… Obviously we’d missed one of the ‘via’ points on the route, and the Zumo was taking us back to visit it before re-tracing our steps again – although thankfully not over the hill again.

I don’t think I’ve been as appreciative of a proper main road for a long time as I was that day, and we started to make better progress – although there were still a few missed turnings, U-turns and odd routes along the way.

At long last we were overlooking the lake, and the road wound its way down to the shoreline. The roads were quiet as most sensible people were indoors because the weather was still pretty miserable and it was getting late on a Sunday evening.

The road followed the shoreline, winding around the bottom of the cliffs with occasional tunnels – one of them on a bend, complete with a line of metal inspection covers down the centre of the lane to make it all the more interesting (tyres + rain + metal cover = slides). It was just after 19.00 when we arrived in Interlaken and made our way across town to Marc’s house.

When we arrived we were ushered in to the cellar to change in to some dry clothes and hang our riding kit up to dry before being given a warm welcome by Marc, his wife Geraldine and their son David. We’d been given a shopping list of British food to bring with us, and Geraldine was very pleased to have a fresh supply of butter, Cadbury chocolate (chocolate to Switzerland? Coals to Newcastle?), cheddar cheese and tinned peas (for a poetic interlude!).

We tucked in to a very welcome meal of pasta bolognaise and a couple of beers before Marc took us out to a bar in the centre of town: Hooters. For those who aren’t familiar with the tacky, yet unrefined features of a Hooters bar, I’ll let you do your own research. Time flies when you’re having fun, and it was well after midnight when we left, and fell in to bed.

Next morning, when we finally surfaced it was after 10.00. Monday’s plan was to begin the journey home, crossing Switzerland through the mountains and to spend the night in a hotel somewhere in France. Marc had plotted a route for us, again avoiding Swiss Motorways, so after stopping to refuel we set off in a generally north-west direction.

The first part of the journey was around the edge of the lake, the same road we’d done the day before, although this time it was a Monday morning and it was a lot busier. Roadworks meant a diversion through a busy town centre, and after crawling through it in the hot weather my bike was overheating again.

We let it cool, and then we set off looking for a bike shop because Nick needed some chain lube because his chain was squeaking a bit. We stopped at a couple of likely looking bike shops but they were closed. We’d half expected this because the shops are open on Saturdays they take Monday off instead so they can still have a two-day weekend. We did find a place in the end: a bicycle repair shop with a mountain of rough-looking push-bikes outside, and a cluttered… well, I think it was once a showroom. We explained with sign-language what we were after, and the chap appeared with a promising-looking spray can: Hmm, brake cleaner isn’t quite what we had in mind… Second time lucky though, and Nick had a squeak-free chain.

Turning up in to the mountains, it was a relief to get away from the traffic, and with the better weather we enjoyed a good view over the lake to the mountains beyond. With our late start, it was now getting on for lunchtime so we stopped at a supermarket in a village to have a bite to eat.

When we set off again, I was getting more in tune with the Swiss road system and there were a lot fewer U-turns – although at one point I did manage to do a complete loop and go through a village twice.

The roads were even better than the ones we’d done the day before: well surfaced, wide, quiet and with some amazing twists and turns. Even on a 990 Adventure with knobbly tyres and luggage it was fun, so on a road bike it must be fantastic. The oddest road of the day was a steep, single-track road up a hillside that must have been a 1:3, which just popped out on to to another road at a blind junction. I wouldn’t have liked to have met anything coming the other way because setting off up such a steep gradient would be a challenge.

As we neared the border the roads became busier, and we got stuck in a column of camper-vans. The bends in the road and the solid white lines meant overtaking was tricky – and I was mindful of my error of judgement on the trip down. Having hopped past, we then came up behind a combine harvester…

Crossing the border, this time on a more major route so there was a proper border post, the quality of the road decreased and the traffic levels increased. We were heading to Besançon, which is handy for the Autoroute and would give us a good start for the long haul back to Calais. Some sections were dual carriageway, but much of it was single. The French seem to be getting keen on speed cameras, which are not always obvious but at least they do put up signs only where there are actual cameras, but we made good progress and arrived in Besançon around 18.00.

Never having been there before, and knowing French hotels can be of variable quality, I turned to the Zumo’s list of hotels with the intention of finding something cheap. The Etap Hotel seemed a promising choice and it was cheap, clean and handy for the station (not that we needed the station): 55€ for a room (double-bed with single bunk above it) and breakfast, and the room even had air conditioning.

For dinner we decided to forgo the restaurant beside the hotel and went in to the town centre where we looked at a variety of cafés before choosing one in the square, near the fountain, for an entrecote steak and chips followed by three scoops of proper French ice-cream (banana, apple sorbet and strawberry – which was supposed to be raspberry).

Next morning we had breakfast then loaded up the bikes, which we’d parked in the station car park opposite the hotel. It was an underground car park, and the fee was 5.50€ each for a space in the dedicated bike parking bay beside the attendent’s office. Just as we were about to ride off, a Renault Scenic reversed out of a space nearby and hit one of the car park’s signs, shattering the car’s back window. It was quite an impressive feat with broken glass everywhere. The driver got out to survey the damage and the attendant looked most nonplussed as she came to check the damage to her car park.

I had a feeling that this might take some time, and we just wanted to get away. There was a walkway from where we were to the exit barrier, and Nick nipped down it on his bike. I couldn’t follow because I was too wide, but I was able to sneak around by the entrance barrier and get to the exit that way.

With just a stop for fuel en route to the Autoroute, we were on our way north. This time we managed to get our fuel stops organised, and we filled up every 100 miles or so at service areas. The weather was much cooler which made the trip a lot less tiring this time, and the roads were quiet too. The only minor mishap was when Nick got stuck at an automated péage lane that didn’t like bikes.

Arriving early for our booked crossing back through the tunnel we were able to get on an earlier train and arrived back in England around 16.00 for the ride back home – which meant tackling the M25 in the rush-hour. There was a bit of a queue for the Dartford Crossing, but only for a minute or two, and I was home shortly after 18.00 having done 1500 miles over the weekend.

It was a superb weekend. Thank you to Marc for the original invitation and for his hospitality, the Swiss KTM Adventure Club for making us so welcome, and to Nick for putting up with my sometimes errant sense of direction.

I’m looking forward to next year’s meeting already!

Swiss Adventure Rally 2010 - Part 1

2010-07-12T23:21:00.000+01:00

When an invitation to join the Swiss KTM Club’s Adventure Rally appeared on the UK KTM Forum it seemed an ideal way to spend a weekend, meeting other KTM riders and visit a country that I’d not been to for many years.

Quite a few people expressed interest in going, but in the end just two of us, Nick on a 950 Super Enduro and Gordon (me) on a 990 Adventure, made the journey. The plan was to cross the channel through the tunnel, then ride down through France and across the Swiss border to the village of Bure [Boor] on the western edge of Switzerland, where the Swiss KTM Club had borrowed the Swiss Army’s tank training ground. There are very few opportunities to ride off road in Switzerland, so this was something not to be missed.

On Thursday evening, 1 July, I rode from Cambridgeshire down to Nick’s house near Ashford, and just twenty minutes from Channel Tunnel Shuttle terminal at Cheriton, Kent. For once the M25 was flowing freely, despite an accident on the Dartford bridge, and I got there in around two hours.

Next morning we made an early start to catch the 07.50 shuttle. I’ve never been on the shuttle before, although I have used the Eurostar passenger trains through the tunnel, so I was looking forward to the experience. Heading towards the M20 there was a tail-back of traffic with very little movement. As we drew closer (filtering is tricky on the 990 with its panniers fitted because of the width) we could see lots of blue flashing lights, Police officers directing traffic, and an accident at the top of one of the slip-roads closing the roundabout. Hmm…

The only thing we could do was to head up the Motorway to the next junction, turn around and ride back, although by this time we were getting a bit tight for time. Fortunately the terminal is linked directly from the Motorway, and we rolled up to the check-in kiosk and were issued with our boarding passes – but the 07.50 had closed so we’d have to wait for the next one.

Riding through the maze of terminal roads, through security, British and French passport control, we arrived at the boarding queues with a handful of other bikes and lots of cars. Boarding is controlled automatically with traffic lights and barriers for each of the lanes, and before too long the barrier for our queue lifted, the light went green, so we were on the 07.50 after all – result!

If you haven’t been on the shuttle, then it’s best described as basic. The idea is that you sit in your car for the half-hour crossing, but obviously that doesn’t work on a bike. Bikes are loaded in to the double-deck carriages, in single file, and at a slight angle to the carriage. They are not secured in any way but the journey is fairly smooth and the bikes just rocked gently whilst we perched on the handrail that runs the length of the carriage. There are no facilities onboard other than a toilet, not even seats or a coffee machine, so it’s not exactly relaxing but it is quick.

Arriving in France there are no formalities to complete so you roll straight off the train and on to the Autoroute. There’s a petrol station at the exit of the terminal, and with hindsight I ought to have topped up. Nick had a full tank, and I’d filled up before leaving home, but I’d already done 100 miles with a 170 mile range…

It was a recurring event, having to leave the Autoroute to find petrol. At least it was a Friday so the village filling stations were open for business, but this did mean more tolls as we left and re-entered the Autoroute. Nick’s Super Enduro has a range of about 100 miles, so we had to make fairly regular stops.

The temperature was steadily climbing and by mid afternoon it was, according to a sign outside a pharmacy, 37°C. At each stop we bought a cold drink and tried to find some shade, but it was getting increasingly unpleasant, and I was thinking how nice it would have been to have the air conditioning of the Land Rover if I’d towed the bike down – but it wouldn’t have been the same.

Autoroutes are fast, but very dull. The speed limit is 130kph (85mph), so we made good progress. Leaving the Autoroute we took to normal single carriageway roads, which were reasonably busy.

It was on this road that the early start, the heat and general tiredness nearly got the better of me. Pulling out to overtake a couple of lorries on a long straight stretch, I failed to spot the black car emerging from the heat haze in a slight dip in the road. Thankfully the big KTM has good brakes, and I was able to tuck myself back in between the lorries, but it was a much closer call than I’d have liked.

We crossed the border in to Switzerland on a minor road, and then tried to find the meeting point. If there’s one thing that the Swiss like it’s road signs, and every route we took seemed to have a “no vehicles” sign blocking our way. Eventually we found a road that lead in the right direction, with no prohibition signs – and we ended up in someone’s garden… Apparently it happens quite a lot, but thankfully the lady of the house spoke English and was able to point us in the right direction.

Of course it turns out that our first attempt was pretty much spot-on, and if we’d ignored the sign, which is to stop unauthorised traffic driving on the training ground, we would have been at the meeting point in a matter of minutes!

We added our bikes to those already parked; a good selection of 620, 640, 950 and 990 Adventures, a couple of 950 Super Enduros and some interlopers in the shape of BMW GSs, a Cagiva Elephant and a Honda Africa Twin.

The camping area was a short walk away down a flight of steps, so we unloaded our kit, found a promising bit of space, and set about pitching our tents. It was really, really warm, and we were both sweltering. The insects had plenty of energy though, including a large horsefly that took a fancy to my back.

That done, we headed to the open-sided building that was serving as a clubhouse for the weekend, bought some drinks and found Marc, who’d put the original invite on the forum. He had brought his air conditioned caravan with him, and very kindly offered the two spare bunks in it to Nick and me.

Everyone we met was very friendly and welcoming, and most were amazed that we’d ridden so far (580 Km) in one day – and to be honest, I didn’t quite believe it either! We chatted about the journey, trips we’d been on, plans for future trips, compared bikes and all the usual things that bikers talk about when they meet. Some people were interested in our plastic number plates, because Swiss and German plates are metal and plastic ones aren’t allowed, and the yellow UK plates were an easy giveaway as to which were the British bikes.

Dinner was duly served, spaghetti bolognaise, and we were all given a briefing on the rules and timetable for the weekend, with a translation from our new friends who realised our German was just about non-existent!

The evening’s entertainment was a video / slide-show of a recent trip to Poland, which looked to have been great fun and quite challenging owing to the amount of rain and flooding they’d had to contend with. Luckily pictures speak a thousand words!

Next morning we woke up to an equally hot day. After breakfast, a typical continental affair with cheese, cold meat, bread, jam, fruit juice and coffee, we took to the track. There were two sessions on Saturday, 09.00 to 12.00, and 14.00 to 17.00.

The idea was that a guide would lead the way for your first lap to get an idea of where the course went, then you could do as many laps as you wanted (although it was recommended that you didn’t ride alone). Marc, Nick and I set off, and with the dry weather the course was very dusty – so much so that I had to hang back to see where I was going, and duly lost the other two. At least the course was well marked, so it wasn’t hard to follow, and I eventually caught up with them at the finish.

Picture by Marc von Weissenfluh

The course was a mixture of wide, fast tracks, narrow wooded sections, tight turns, loose slopes and other features, and was about five and a half miles in length. Despite the heat, there were a number of puddles around the course, and one in particular looked small and innocent enough on the inside of a curve after a flat-topped hump, but was deep and very muddy – hence the state of my bike!

Lunch time came, and we returned to the clubhouse for a tasty meal of ham (think gammon steak), potatoes gratin and salad. The heat had taken the edge off my appetite, but it was certainly needed after the morning’s exertions.

With plenty of lunchtime left, people found shady spots to rest. I got the Therma-rest out of my tent, and had a lie-down on a grassy embankment in the shade of the clubhouse and went to sleep…

Woken by the sound of revving engines, it was time for part two.

After its Moroccan trip, my bike was in need of a service and it duly went off to the dealer. For some reason, certain 990 Adventures suffer from a surging throttle, which makes delicate throttle adjustments very difficult. Unfortunately, despite my bike having been surge-free for the previous couple of years after some attention from the dealer, the Swiss course revealed that my surging problem had returned. This made the slower parts of the course very difficult, and at one point an inopportune surge saw me leave the course instead of taking the right-hand bend – fortunately without harm to me or the bike. Even on the faster sections, rolling off the throttle and rolling on again smoothly was impossible, and it lead to a nodding-donkey effect on the rider.

Mid-afternoon I decided to call it a day. Arrangements had been made to use the showers at the army base’s gym, so in groups of ten or so we piled in to the back of one of the organiser’s pick-up truck and were driven the few kilometres to the barracks. En route we passed the place we’d originally arrived at, and had turned away from having found the no vehicles sign – we’ll know for next time.

The shower was very welcome, but with the heat and humidity, we just about needed another one before we were even back at the camp site.

Dinner that night was roast chicken with potatoes gratin, washed down by Swiss beer and was delicious. The evening’s entertainment was another slide-show of a trip from the south of Africa to the north, along with the trials and tribulations encountered such as crashing your Cagiva and breaking your bike’s instruments, headlights, fairing and GPS receiver right at the beginning of the trip. The ingenuity of how they fixed it all was impressive – or at least it seemed that way from the photos.

Those of us sitting outside were treated to an impressive lightning display, complete with purple storm clouds, and we were hoping that the storm would pass over and help to clear the air as well as keep down the dust. It missed us completely.

Sunday was a morning-only session, and after that we would be riding to Interlaken via the scenic route.

To be continued…

The Big Adventure - Part 9

2010-07-09T20:47:00.002+01:00

And so to the highlight of our trip: the sand dunes of Erg Chebbi. After breakfast we left our luggage at the hotel and set off towards the dunes, which where visible in the distance from our hotel, looking for a place away from the various hotels in the area. Distance can be deceptive, and the dunes were a few miles away but it was pleasant ride across the gravelly nothingness.

It's easy to understand why people go to see the dunes because they're just what many people think the desert is like – golden, shifting sands like in the Fry's Turkish Delight TV advert.

Photo by Gareth Jones

Taking 200Kg of bike, even unladen, in to soft sand isn't for the faint-hearted and it wasn't long before the sand claimed its first victim of many. We were a bit surprised when a young lad appeared and began setting out a display of fossils and the like in the apparent hope that we might buy something from him – the entrepreneurial approach was at least optimistic, but we didn't really have any interest in them and didn't buy anything. But to be fair, we didn't get any hassle from him either.

Gareth was determined to get further in to the dunes, and between us we managed to get his bike over the first dune and in to the valley beyond.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Mark H and I got stuck a few more times, Jason had a play and Mark L stayed on solid ground.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Before too long the appeal of the dunes started to fade, and the realisation that perhaps the big Adventures weren't the ideal tool for the job. So we set off back to the hotel with the intention of doing as little as possible, but not before Gareth had decided to walk to the highest dune we could see, and investigate a camel on the way.

The hotel didn't serve lunch, so we set-to with our camping stoves and used some of our own supplies on the patio behind our room. We also took the opportunity to do some laundry, the various luggage straps making an impromptu washing line.

It was a very humid day, much like a British summer day but a lot hotter, so we retired to the pool for a swim, and for some quality lazy time: reading, dozing and listening to iPods. The water in the pool was cold, but once you were in it was very refreshing. I'm not a keen swimmer, but even I did a good few lengths. We'd watched the hotel staff cleaning the pool that morning, and the long grass behind it being cut by a group of ladies, by hand. It looked like they were taking the grass away with them, although what they would do with it we don't know. There were being provided with the traditional silver pot of tea though.

That evening we again gathered for pre-dinner drinks before taking our place in the open-air dining room. The wind had got up, it was a warm wind and thankfully it got rid of the worst of the flies. For most of the trip we didn't have any real problem with flies, mosquitoes etc., but for some reason there were dozens of them around the hotel. In our room we had the air conditioning on and this seemed to put them off, but they were everywhere when we were out and about.

On the menu that night was a dish of chicken and potatoes, and it was obviously the chef's night off because it was the poor relation of the previous night's delicious tagine. Even the desserts were sub-standard with the cheeseboard being particularly meagre after the generous portions of the night before – or perhaps they knew they didn't need to impress us because we were leaving anyway?

In many ways this was the end of our tour – we were turning for home, we were retracing our steps and nothing would be particularly “new” any more. With a slightly gloomy air we turned in for the night.

Next morning we loaded up the bikes and set off towards the Todra Gorge, which runs pretty much parallel to the Dades Gorge. Leaving the hotel I was at the back of the ride and spotted a mini tornado not far from the road. If you look closely you can see the column of dust:

We were riding up the N13, which runs most of the way down Morocco from north to south, traffic was light and the surface was pretty good. Turning off the N13 to head west we again were crossing a lot of nothing, but there were a variety of lay-bys and other places for tourists to stop to have a closer look.

Spotting a handy group (herd?) of camels we set off on foot to take photos (the novelty of camels never did wear off).

Looking back towards the bikes, despite being parked on a well surfaced road they looked a bit lost in all the open space:

The Todra Gorge is closer to civilisation and consequently was even busier than the Dades had been. Lots of tourists, touts, stalls selling souvenirs, 4x4s and the like. The road was in the process of being rebuilt having been washed away, and there's film footage on YouTube (see below) that shows an intrepid biker riding through the flowing water in 2009. It was nicely shaded though, and a pleasant enough place to have a break.

We'd been given details of a campsite further up the gorge, and the plan was to camp there overnight. Unfortunately, as usual, we couldn't find the actual place so we improvised. On the way up the gorge we'd stopped by somewhere that might or might not have been the campsite, and were immediately besieged by kids wanting sweets, Dirham etc., and wanting us to stay there. Their clamouring was so persistent that none of us felt inclined to stick around any longer than necessary.

We carried on up the gorge, looking for somewhere suitable to pitch our tents. This isn’t an easy task in such a rocky area, but at last we spotted a suitable site on the side of a dried-up river bed. It was still quite visible from the road, but from there we could see a more secluded spot a little further up the riverbed that was out of site of the road. The ground was soft and reasonably flat, so we decided to stay.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

With the tents up and the stoves on the go heating water we were pretty comfortable; and it was a lot cooler than it had been in the desert! As I’ve said before, you’re never alone in Morocco, and it wasn’t long before we had a visit from a young shepherd. He stood and looked at us for a few minutes, then disappeared again.

Dinner was prepared from our long-life, boil-in-the-bag meals (beef stew with dumplings for me), and we enjoyed the last of the evening sun by exploring further up the river before watching another beautiful sunset.

Next morning we were woken by the sound of cowbells and the bleating of sheep as the shepherd from the previous evening drove his flock straight through the camp. It was a bit of a rude awakening, but no harm done.

Photo by Gareth Jones

After breakfast we packed up and returned to the road. The road up from the Todra Gorge had been recently surfaced, was deserted and had some spectacular views.

I can also offer a ‘tip-of-the-day’ at this point: make sure your pannier lid is closed before riding away – especially if it’s the one with all your paperwork in it. Fortunately nothing fell out, but I did feel a bit of an idiot!

The road wound up in to the mountains, and on one corner with a particularly impressive view we encountered a pair of British riders who were heading south on smaller trail bikes: one on a Honda the other a Suzuki. We chatted with them for a while, exchanging trail-notes before setting off in opposite directions, their adventure still to come.

We’d decided that rather than extend our journey home for the sake of it, we’d get on and head back to Spain a couple of days early to allow some rest and relaxation before flying home (ash cloud not withstanding). Our destination was Midelt, and the same hotel we’d stayed at on the way out, and where Gareth and I caught up with the others two week previous.

Our route took us back to Imilchil, and through the town of El Rich [El Reesh]. The roads through the mountain wound along the valleys with flowing bends that were great to ride, with the odd village and junction to break it up.

On the edge of Imilchil there was a small group of children waiting at a road junction. They did the usual scrounging for sweets, Dirham etc. from us, but by this stage we didn’t have much left. I was at the back of the ride, and one young chap got a little too close and was caught by my pannier as I pulled away. I only know this because in the mirror I saw someone doubled over at the side of the road, put two-and-two together and assume it was the chap who been tapping me on the leg while I’d been stopped. Perhaps he’ll stand a bit further back from bikes next time…

Lunch was due to be in El Rich, but after being mobbed at the petrol station on the outskirts (to the point where the staff at the filling station were chasing the kids away), and not seeing anywhere all that appealing in the town itself we decided to press on.

Instead we stopped on the edge of Midelt and watched a chap on a locally registered Yamaha R1 ride backwards and forwards. Posing bikers on sports-bikes are the same the world over – except for the lack of race rep. leathers, which would be far too hot.

In the centre of Midelt they were rebuilding a bridge across the river, so there was a diversionary route signposted – although Mark L who was leading had other ideas and we plunged in to a maze of narrow residential streets. Encountering a a small square with several roads leading in different directions, and with no sign of Mark ahead, we could only guess which way he’d gone, and fortunately we got it right. Quite what the residents must have made of us, I don’t know!

Arriving at the bridge, the only option was to ride across the parallel footbridge, which was wide enough (just) for a fully laden Adventure. We were split up by oncoming pedestrians, and someone on a moped who’d had the same idea as us, so when we got to the other side (cue joke about why did the biker cross the bridge…!) the advance party was nowhere to be seen. Recognising where we were from the outward journey, close to the start of the Cirque du Jaffar, we set off in hot pursuit and caught them up.

Arriving in the familiar courtyard of Kazar Timney, we were soon making ourselves comfortable in the same rooms we’d had before. But there was a surprise in store: after the disruption of the dust cloud and talk of riding back to the UK, Mark H decided that was what he was going to do – ride up through Spain and France, and get the ferry back to the UK. The last we saw of him was the back of his bike disappearing in a cloud of dust, in a northerly direction.

Dinner that night was our last tagine of the trip, chicken and lemon, and a few drinks. It was much warmer than it had been on our previous visit, and we were grateful for the air conditioning in the room. We also played with the satellite TV in the room, but could only find what might be euphemistically termed adult channels – which was certainly a surprise in a Muslim country (or perhaps it was to cater for the western audience?).

In the other room, the electrics were keeping us entertained where one switch turned on the light, another made it flicker, and a third reversed the whole lot while turning on the bathroom light. I suppose that Joseph Lucas, AKA The Prince of Darkness, needed to do something after he retired from the automotive industry.

Outside I got talking a Danish couple who were staying in their caravan. Their two sons race KTM bikes in Denmark, and he was interested in our big KTMs, where we’d taken them and how we’d got on with them.

Tomorrow’s plan was to get to the hotel in Chefchaouen that they’d stayed in while Gareth and I were stuck in Spain. The route took us through Meknes, and it was absolute chaos. Roadworks were in progress on the main four-lane road through it, so the traffic just crossed the central reservation and used both sides of the road. Police officers were blowing whistles and waving their arms, and nobody was taking any notice. With the traffic being as heavy as it was, filtering wasn’t an option but eventually we made it though almost unscathed: somehow Gareth managed to collide with a wheelbarrow, adding some fresh dents to his pannier and getting a very dark look from the workers.

We also decided it was time to do some souvenir shopping, so we made a couple of stops to look at various pretty stones, fossils, tagines and other trinkets. Mark L and Gareth decided to take home a tagine (dish) each, which lead to the challenge of fitting them securely on to their bikes:

"Is that a tagine in your pocket, or shall we do a very old joke?"

I opted for miniature versions that had been carved out of stone, and a small ceramic one that might be just about big enough to do a couple of olives in. We rode past the Danish couple on one of the steeper hills, and they stopped for another brief chat when we’d pulled in to look at some stalls in a lay-by.

At one point we had to pull over when Gareth got stung by a wasp, and a group of children came over to see us and scrounge sweets etc. They also found the throttle on my bike, and I was able to divert their attention from begging to revving. Another motorist, heading in the opposite direction, stopped to remonstrate with them – I don’t know if it was because they were “pestering” us, or whether he knew them or something else, but the kids ran off as soon as he got out of his car.

Arriving at the hotel on the edge of Chefchaouen, it was busy with people watching a football match on a large TV in the non-alcoholic “bar”. It was the most formal hotel we’d stayed in, with passports required at check-in, and the rooms were small but comfortable (although the light in the shower didn’t work in the room Jason and I shared). We sat down with a drink (coffee or Cola) and watched the game, and apart from the absence of alcohol we could have been in a sports bar almost anywhere.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Unfortunately that's where the good bits ended. The hotel didn’t serve food, either an evening meal or breakfast, there was one gents toilet for all the rooms, and it was broken, a pack of dogs across the road from hotel were barking all night and kept us awake all night – so none of us were at our best the following morning for the last push to the border at Sebta.

It felt a very long way, but it was only a couple of hours to the border and we arrived about 10.00 to begin the process of leaving Morocco and exporting our bikes. Thanks to a text message from Mark H the previous evening, we knew pretty much what we had to do, and we took it in turns to go to the window to get our exit stamps and to hand in another section of our D16 vehicle forms. We’d also intended to change our remaining Dirham in to Euro, but as it was a Sunday the exchange offices appeared to be closed.

In the confusion of vehicles and people, the other three managed to get ahead, and by the time I got back to my bike to go to the frontier proper, they were already en route to Spain. Crossing back in the EU was just like any other EU crossing when you’re an EU resident – they didn’t even glance at our passports and just waved us straight through.

Owing to the time difference, it was now Noon, and Gareth and I needed to get ferry tickets for the same company at Jason and Mark L. There are plenty of shops offering tickets for all three companies, and we found one just near the port and duly bought tickets for the next Baleària crossing at 14.15. Mark L, forgetting the time difference, wondered what we could do in Ceuta for four hours, when it was only going to be two – and with check-in time it was really only an hour and a half!

Having not eaten since lunch the previous day, we spotted a drive-through McDonalds and decided that was probably the simplest option. Great in theory, but although it had a drive-through it didn’t have a car park… We eventually found a spot to park (well, it was more abandon than park) by the aquarium just a short walk away, and we duly tucked in to Spanish chicken burgers, chips and Coke while watch the world, and the incoming Malaga to Ceuta helicopter, pass by.

Despite it being a domestic ferry to Algeciras, security was pretty tight at the port, with passport checks and a sniffer dog watching the passing traffic. The security is almost certainly to prevent illegal immigrants who’ve managed to sneak in to the Spanish enclave from getting an easy passage to Europe.

The boat was a much more modern then the one Gareth and I had been on when going the other way, and was a mono-hull fast ferry instead of a catamaran. Taking the travelator up from the car deck I headed for the lounge with leather seats and a sea view – but the others had a different idea and headed to the café.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

When we arrived in Algeciras we’d made a rough plan to find a camp-site for the next two nights before our flight home (we’d still no idea whether it was cancelled or not). Our destination was Ronda, which I thought was in Wales but isn’t (well there’s a Rhonda in Wales), and we set off from the port on to the Autovia. Through a combination of heavy traffic and reduced speed limits we got split up, only to see the other three disappear down a slip-road as I was in the middle lane… Bother.

Still, we got back on track and took the road up in to the mountains. I can see why the area is popular with bikers for the roads were very twisty, generally well surfaced, and fairly quiet. We found a camp site on the edge of Ronda that seemed very upmarket, with a swimming pool, lots of grassy pitches and lots of rules – including no groups! Undeterred, we went in to reception and they were happy to show us the various options. They had a number of self-catering chalets available, with twin-beds and en-suite facilities for the reasonable sum of 60€ per chalet – so we took two. I was very relieved that we wouldn’t be in a tent again and looked forward to a good sleep.

The café was very busy with people enjoying the last of their weekend, and we joined them drinking a cold beer or two in the evening sun. There was also food available, and by this time we couldn’t really be bothered to go anywhere else, so we tucked in to a reasonably tasty, if slightly pricey, meal.

With nothing planned for the next day, I decided to head back over to Redtread Honda in Cómpeta to say hello, thank them for their help and let them know how we’d got on. It’s easy to forget relative distances, and it was a little over two hours later that I arrived in Cómpeta but not before having a slightly unnerving moment when I spotted the Police speed-check just as I was passing a slow moving van. I was definitely over the speed limit, but the officers just waved me on my way – phew!

That evening was pretty much a repeat of Sunday evening, with more beers on the terrace, and a not-quite-as-good but still-a-bit-pricey meal at the café.

Our last day dawned, and we had one last ride from Ronda to La Viñuela where Transport Tony was going to meet us to load the bikes for the return journey. It turned out that the route was almost identical to the route I’d taken to Cómpeta the previous day – except that the lure of Morocco was such that Mark L, who was leading, set off west along the Autovía del Mediterráneo back towards Algeciras instead of east towards Tony and home!

The views from Tony’s house were amazing, and after sorting out and loading our bikes and luggage, Hazel, Tony’s wife, very kindly fed and watered us while we enjoyed the view over the mountains and lake.

Eventually it was time to make for the airport, and Tony kindly gave us a lift. Mark, Gareth and I were off to Gatwick and Jason to Manchester. Malaga airport has had a lot of work done to it since my last visit, and while it’s still in progress there’s a lot of walking back and forwards between check-in in Terminal 2, the new security search area everyone has to use in Terminal 3 and the easyJet boarding gate back in Terminal 2 – at the far end of it.

Knowing how to play the easyJet game, we stationed ourselves at the front of the boarding queue and were the first non-priority passengers on the aircraft, an Airbus A320, and sat as close to the front as we could get. After a peaceful flight back to Gatwick we were almost first off the aircraft, straight through passport control and baggage reclaim (we’d only taken hand luggage), and after some brief good-byes I met Andrew and Gayle outside who’d very kindly offered to pick me up and drive me home.

So that was it: Our Moroccan adventure was over and we were back in the real world with some fantastic memories.

…where can we go next?

The Big Adventure - Part 8

2010-06-15T23:07:00.000+01:00

The desert road continued to plough through the barren landscape in a pretty much straight line with only the odd diversion for a fallen bridge here and there. You travel for miles without any real feeling of going anywhere because it all looks the same.

Almost inevitably given the condition of the road, one of us got a puncture: it was Mark H’s font tyre than went down. We’d prepared for this and all of us were carrying spare inner tubes, and we had a selection of tyre levers too. Removing the wheel from the bike, Gareth set about changing the tube – it was a classic compression puncture undoubtedly caused by one of the many rocks that littered the road.

We’d only just set to work when three children appeared from nowhere. The sat on a rock and watched us quietly, not asking for a sweet, money or anything else. When we’d finished, they just wandered off in to the desert again – you’re never alone anywhere in Morocco, there’s always someone watching somewhere.

Back on the road we caught up with Mark L and Jason, and we all came to the same conclusion that the desert was really boring and decidedly over-rated. And we now understood Tim’s comment about having better things to do too!

Our revised plan was to continue to Zagora and instead of spending another couple of days trudging through the desert to Taouz, we’d go via surfaced roads and get there today.

As we got closer to Zagora the surface improved, and widened out. There was also an increase in the amount of traffic – i.e. there was some. A group of Dutch bikes, travelling light on Yamahas, a pair of 4x4s and we passed an encampment with other 4x4s parked in the rare shade of a tree.

The wide, flat road gave a chance for another photo call with the bikes lined up in the middle of the road:

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Arriving in Zagora we found the famous “52 Days to Timbuktu” sign, and took photos to prove we really were there. It was hot, I was tired, and the shade of a palm tree was appealing – so much so that I fell asleep, sat on the kerb, propped up by my own body armour, much to amusement of the others and bystanders.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

One of the bystanders, a chap on a moped, told us he was a big KTM fan (big fan of KTMs or a fan of big KTMs? Don’t know – it doesn’t matter) and persuaded us to visit his garage. We were a little reluctant but when we rode round there we were treated like minor celebrities – the other guys in the garage all wanted photos, as did passers-by, and we took a few too. It turned out that they’d worked on KTMs in the Dakar Rally when it last came through Zagora, and the wall of the garage was covered in pictures of the various cars, trucks and bikes they’d worked on.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

When we eventually extricated ourselves, with all the bikes now wearing Desert Garage Zagora stickers, we headed in to the town centre for some lunch. There was something about five dusty bikes parked at the kerb-side of a bustling African town-centre street that brought to mind horses tethered outside a saloon in the wild-west. Declining an invitation from the neighbouring shopkeeper to view his wares, we followed the main road east towards the sand dunes at Erg Chebbi. The first petrol station we stopped at had a faulty pump, so after filling two of the bikes painfully slowly we decided to do the other three elsewhere. As a main road, petrol stations were fairly frequent so this wasn’t a problem.

The road initially followed a river, which wound is way through a narrow rocky valley below the road, with lush green vegetation along its banks. From the numerous roadside peddlers, it was obvious we were again in prime tourist territory – dates this time. The air was hot and humid, and opening your visor for air was just like having a hot hairdryer blowing in your face. As the afternoon went on, it got even hotter and although we didn’t have a thermometer with us, it must have been in the high thirties if not the low forties.

Leaving the main road for a more minor, cross-country, road we found that Moroccan speciality: the rustic roadwork diversion. The old single track of tarmac with gravel edges was being replaced with a new, full-width tarmac road and where the work was still in progress, traffic was just diverted off in to the desert alongside. This suited the big KTMs just fine, and we loped along at a reasonable pace. Dust was the biggest hazard, with clouds of it being thrown up by other traffic making passing anything, in either direction, an exciting experience.

What did come as a surprise were further convoys of road bikes heading in the opposite direction. They were travelling at a very sedate pace through the works, and even the pseudo-trail bikes’ riders were being cautious. The last stretch of diversion helped to explain it: deep, loose sand right at the end (for us) or beginning of the diversion – entertaining for us, but probably a nightmare for non-dirt riders.

Erring again on the side of caution, we stopped to re-fuel again at around 140 miles from Zagora and to take on plenty of water. We were surprised, although with hindsight it seems obvious, that many petrol stations have, in addition to the more usual facilities, a prayer room.

Throughout the trip, the Islamic influence was one of the more visible reminders that we were in a very different place – simple things like pharmacies having a green crescent on the sign instead of a green cross, and in most towns the minarets of mosques could be seen much like our parish church spires, and the call to prayer from the muezzin; just like our church bells. Riding through towns at certain times, especially on Fridays, we would see a huge number of people making their way to Friday prayers, mostly on foot.

Rissani was our next major town, and getting through it was slightly nerve-wracking. The throngs of people on foot, bicycle and mopeds, most of them with no road-sense or awareness, making their way through the narrow main roads of the town, meant staying extra vigilant as they variously wandered or pulled out in front of us, overtook and generally got in the way. We got split-up through the town, and it was with some relief that when we re-grouped the other side of the town none of us had collected anyone on the way – I’d say more down to luck than judgement.

We'd been given the name of a hotel, but not precise directions to it. Unlike most places, the hotels are not neatly lined up along the roadside, but scattered across the desert around the sand dunes. We selected one more or less at random, and followed the coloured poles they'd thoughtfully provided across the nothingness to the hotel.

Compared to the other places we'd stayed, this was a very grand establishment with a swimming pool, bar, open-air restaurant, house parrot and air conditioning in the chalet-style rooms. Most of the walls were made of mud and straw, and apart from reception and the rooms themselves, everything else was outside with drapes and canopies to provide shelter from the sun.

Our room was the “family” room, with a double bed and four single beds. I was very generously given use of the double after my falling asleep on the roadside earlier.

After taking the opportunity to freshen up a bit, we convened for drinks on the terrace – Moroccan brewed Flag beer. And it fitted the bill perfectly.

Dinner was another tagine, beef and apple this time, and delicious – the best meal we had all trip. We had a bottle of red wine to go with it, from Meknes. There was also a proper dessert on offer, in fact a selection of them, and I had a chocolate mousse.

Tomorrow was going to be highlight of our trip: a day playing in the sand dunes at Erg Chebbi.

The Big Adventure - Part 7

2010-06-11T21:25:00.002+01:00

The day was already warmer than it had been, and the temperature increased as we headed south. Just after leaving Ouarzazate we took a short detour to the oasis at Fint. They really are an unusual sight, with lush green vegetation and trees in an otherwise baron landscape. This one was very much on the tourist-trail, and we had to vie for road space with taxis and 4x4s.

Wildlife likes oasises too, and this frog was obviously enjoying the river. Tempting as it may be, the advice is not to drink the water because it is usually home to various nasty bugs – although it should be OK if you use water purification filters or chemicals

Climbing back up from the oasis we followed the road up in to the hills once again. The road had recently been upgraded, and although it was unsurfaced it was wide, straight and fairly easy to ride. The old road could be seen in places, winding its way through the landscape whereas the new one ploughed through it.

Humidity was increasing and it felt like a sultry British summer day where even the altitude failed to offer much in the way of cooling breeze.

We’d been told that spending a night in the desert would be an amazing experience, mostly due to the lack of light pollution and the resulting show of stars in the sky. Our plan was to ride across the top of the Sahara from Foum Zeguid to the sand dunes at Erg Chebbi, spending one or two night in the desert en route. Tim’s comment when we’d asked if he’d done it was that he had better things to do – and we were about to find out exactly what he meant.

Even this far south there was a surprising amount of water around – enough to need fording, and for the local residents to grow their crops.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

And even in these harsh conditions, there’s always something that will grow in an unexpected place.

Dropping down from the hills for the last time the track followed the bed of a river which made for a challenging ride with loose shale and our first real taste of deeper sand. One of the most important tips for riding in sand is not to stop, because it’s the starting off that causes the most trouble. After one particularly lengthy stretch the leader decided to stop for a breather – and here's a hint: if you're near the front of the ride, please don't stop right on the edge of the firm ground it leaves the rest of us in the deep sand! Ho hum…

The sand hadn’t caused any serious difficulty, although Mark H had a couple of tumbles and with the ground being so soft it made getting off the bike to help a delicate balancing act so its stand didn’t sink-in and allow your bike to fall over too.

At the end of the river-bed stretch the track rose in to a small settlement and from there we joined a properly surfaced main road. It was wide, straight and recently surfaced – in fact they were still surfacing it in places, and there were detours off the road, through rough ground past the works and back on to the road.

With the five of us making progress we carried on towards Foum Zeguid. Looking back over my shoulder to make sure nobody had been left behind I saw nobody. Which was strange because there should have been a Gareth there. I turned back to try and find him, and before too long spotted him still riding along. It turned out that after the work on his bike the previous day, one of the fuel tanks hadn’t been turned back on causing the bike to stop because it had used up the other tank. It’s a common error, mostly because there are few bikes with two separately controlled fuel tanks – but it’s still alarming.

We came up behind a very new, slow-moving, French, Land Rover Defender and overtook. Looking back we discovered why it was going so slowly: it had obviously been rolled at some point, and the windscreen was missing, roof squashed down at the front and the two doors were bent out of shape: A timely reminder that things can go very wrong in the desert if you aren’t careful.

We made a comfort stop to stretch legs and take photos of our first sand-dunes, and while we were resting the Land Rover trundled past with the lady in the passenger seat looking, not unsurprisingly, cheesed-off! That was going to be a very slow drive back to Europe, and a very big repair-bill.

There was very little traffic, and as we arrived on the edge of Foum Zeguid we were stopped at the Police check-point. The officer spoke with Mark L who was leading, and apparently asked where we were going – and looked puzzled when told, “pour quoi?”.

Some of us were running low on Dirham so we were hoping to find a cash machine, and while we were in the town centre, outside an army barracks, we took the opportunity to have some lunch, brochettes avec frites, while watching a Portuguese film crew in a couple of 4x4s – although we’ve no idea what they were actually doing.

After lunch the time had come: we were about to ride in to the Sahara for the first time. Retracing our steps to the edge of the town we stopped in a petrol station to top-up our tanks and also fill up our spare fuel cans in case we needed any later. We bought extra bottles of water, and Mark H and I filled up our panniers’ water jackets with non-drinking water.

Turning on to the desert road, we ran off the tarmac and on to the sandy, gravelly track and it wasn’t long before we spotted our first camel.

Our plan was to camp overnight at an oasis en route. We’d been told that a night in the desert was a “must-do” because the lack of light pollution allowed a much better view of the night sky and that the display of stars was spectacular.

The road was wide, but very rough with a ridged “washboard” surface that took its toll on both us and the bikes. Deviating from the wheel tracks of previous vehicles gave an even rougher ride over stones – which was a surprise because the surface didn’t look all that much different to other tracks we’d ridden earlier in the trip.

Every so often we’d come across a bridge or a causeway that had been washed away. They were marked by a row of three or four larger rocks placed across the road, and that was our cue to divert around across the dry river bed. Missing the row of rocks could lead to a nasty accident, and I’m glad it was daylight when we were attempting it. The main difficulty of taking such a diversion was the soft sand and shale that you had to ride through, and with the extra fuel and water, the bikes were heavier than usual – and in the heat, man-handling the bikes was very tiring.

We rode on and on, the road was straight and apart from the occasional detour there was very little to keep us amused – not even any wildlife, scenic views or anything else to look at.

With the road being fairly new, it didn’t match with either our paper or electronic maps, so there was an element of guesswork involved in locating the oasis. When we found it, the family that were living beside it weren’t all that pleased to see us, with what we took to be the elder son making it fairly clear we weren’t welcome – although the mother seemed more keen, perhaps thinking there could be money to be made (everything in Morocco has its price!).

We decided that this wasn’t going to be all that satisfactory, so we returned to the road to seek out an alternative place to camp. This was easier said that done because, despite what you may have seen in films, deserts aren’t made of soft, shifting sands, but rocks, stones and gravel.

After a few more kilometres we found what looked to be a reasonably rock-free, flat area to pitch our tents in. As anyone who camps will tell you, no matter how careful you are, you will always end up pitching on something that you’ll only discover once you’re in bed and lying on it – and inevitably in such a rocky location it proved to be so.

A friend had kindly lent me his lightweight tent for the trip, and with hindsight I probably ought to have tried erecting it at home rather than trying to do it for the first time when it really mattered. The other four got their tents up while I struggled with mine – the strong wind and light structure of the tent made it resemble a kite more than a tent as I tried to get it to stay on the ground long enough to peg it down.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Dinner was taken from the long-life food that we’d brought with us for camping / emergency use, and because it’s easy to prepare being boil-in-the-bag: Mine was pasta and meatballs in tomato sauce.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

We waited in expectation as night fell for the stars to come out… only to have full cloud-cover. We saw nothing.

A side-effect of the cloud cover was that the temperature didn’t fall as we had been told it would, so it was a very warm and sticky night. Even the wind was hot. I turned in fairly early hoping to get a good night’s sleep, but it wasn’t to be and I got very little sleep. The mesh walls of my tent weren’t all that good at keeping the desert out of the tent, and as the night went on a layer of sandy grit covered everything in the tent.

Dawn broke, and we were greeted with a spectacular view of the early morning sun lighting up the desert is a wonderful golden glow:

Breakfast was another long-life meal, baked beans with sausages for me, and I realised that I’d forgotten to bring any coffee with me which didn’t help matters (I don’t wake up until I’ve had at least one cup of coffee!). After breakfast it was time to strike camp and carry on towards Zagora.

It’s a funny thing, but you know that there’s nothing in the desert, that’s why it’s a desert, but when you get there and find that there really is nothing there, it still comes as a surprise. But strangely, even there, we weren’t alone.

To be continued…

The Big Adventure - Part 6

2010-06-04T21:21:00.001+01:00

On the seventh day we rested. A leisurely start to the day with a traditional Moroccan breakfast: bread, cheese, coffee and sweet tea, yoghurt and fruit preceded a bike-fettling session before going in to Ouarzazate town centre for lunch.

One of the features of Bikershome is a fully equipped garage that visitors are welcome to use should anything need attention The bikes had stood up well (mechanically) to the abuse of the first few days, with just a check-over, chain adjustment and oil top-up required. We also took the opportunity to effect some repairs to the damage inflicted by rocks. Pete showed Jason how to tidy up the scratches in his fairing, and with some super-glue his Lexan headlight guard was back in one almost complete piece. He also repaired and re-wired the damaged indicator leaving just one missing piece of lens.

Deciding to take some interest in the outside world, we used Pete’s computer to get on the Internet and learned for the first time about the volcanic ash disruption – sparking ideas about riding all the way back to the UK through Europe as an alternative to flying home from Spain.

Another guest staying there was Tim Cullis, who some might know from the UK GSer forum. Tim is a regular visitor to Morocco, and much of the mapping we were using on our GPS receivers was his work. He was able to regale us with stories from adventures past, as well as suggesting possible routes we could take later in the trip. As proof of the vagaries of the Moroccan road (and piste) network he related how one year a route on a fully laden GS took two hours, whereas the following year the same route on an unladen bike took eight.

When you’re out in the mountains you need to be aware that most people you meet won’t know what the trail conditions ahead are like. After being assured that the piste was open and passable, Tim discovered that it had been washed away down the mountain and instead of being open and passable it now no longer existed.

At lunchtime Pete drove us in to Ouarzazate in his pick-up truck. There are only three passenger seats, so the rest of us climbed in the back in typical African style. We went to café favoured by both Pete and Tim, where the speciality of the house was fruit “milkshakes”, although they were more akin to smoothies as there wasn’t any milk in them. Pick a fruit, any fruit: avocado, mango, strawberry, pineapple… and it arrived beautifully blended with fresh fruit juices in to a not too sweet, refreshing drink. From the menu we ordered a “homburger” each, which was unformed minced meat, chopped olives and tomato salsa with seasoning in a hamburger bun-sized, round loaf of bread. To finish we had a mille-feuille pastry, which varies from the French version in that it doesn’t have crème pâtissière between the layers of pastry, but something more akin to vanilla buttercream – and it’s not as tall either – but a bargain at just 2d each, and the local equivalent of a latté coffee: a nous-nous.

Tim had broken the number plate on his bike and needed to get a replacement for his journey back in to Europe, and with this being Morocco nothing’s impossible. Although what he came back with was so amateurish it was almost comical. Motorbikes don’t have registration numbers out there, and the ones for other vehicles are entirely numerical, which isn’t all that helpful for a British registration which is mostly alphabetic. My guess at the reason for the numerical only plates is that this means there isn’t a conflict between arabic and roman scripts as “the west” uses arabic numbers anyway. The addition of a Moroccan flag sticker, similar in style to the blue Euro flag on European plates, completed it.

Back at Bikershome we enjoyed the sunshine on their rooftop terrace, carried on with the bike fettling and made plans for the following day.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

We decided that a circular ride would be a good idea, meaning that for once we could leave our luggage behind. Tim was our route consultant, and with his help we put together a route.

On the edge of Ouarzazate lies the film set for Kingdom of Heaven, which you can go and wander around the outside of. None of us had seen the film (in fact I’ve not found anyone who has seen it) but it certainly made an interesting diversion.

From there, there wasn’t a track to the next main piste, so the instruction was “go north”. The area around the film set was stony with dune-like mounds. Some parts had a very loose surface, and Mark H discovered that too much throttle could instil a sinking feeling.

I also came unstuck when I took a route slightly lower down one of the dunes. Looking ahead I saw that it curved up on to the same plateau, but what I’d missed was a square-cut channel between me and the plateau and as I rode in to it I fell off. The bike is well protected with engine bars and the luggage rack, but of course I missed both of them and put some scratches in fairing around the seat.

We’d had a slight navigation error which had seen us go east rather than north, but we found the main trail easily enough. It was wide, flat and straight, and perfect for a play.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Gareth in particular managed a good impression of Terminator on his black 950. The pictures here tell the best story – the well defined track carried on and on across the flat landscape until we came to a series of dried-up riverbeds which we had to ride across:

When we got in to the more hilly terrain we found another film set lurking:

Being at the back of the ride I took the opportunity to take some photos to give a sense of the scale:

One of the more curious sights we encountered was the way the telegraph poles were being held up: by the cable. The rocky and, in places, unstable ground obviously isn’t ideal for keeping the poles up.

At the top of the hill we joined the main road leading back down, which was in the process of the being resurfaced. They’d sprayed it with water to keep the dust down, but this left a very slippery yet sticky clay-like surface that kept us entertained until we got to the bit that hadn’t been watered. We also had to stay alert to the random appearance of heavy plant repairing and re-shaping the rock-face.

We stopped for a late lunch at a touristy place which had a row of tables under an open-sided Hessian tent. The tables and chairs were very low, and those that sat with their backs to the Hessian discovered it was really quite scratchy as it blew against them. I’m not sure whether we ordered or whether it just arrived, but lunch was a vegetable tagine (mostly carrot) followed by cinnamon orange slices and tea.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

Most of the other customers had already moved on, and we were the only ones left. One of the locals came over to talk to us because he wanted to improve his English. He also owned (or a relative owned, I’m not sure) a shop across the road, and on seeing Mark L’s watch he wanted to swap a carpet for it. Needless to say Mark declined – not least because we’d no way of getting a carpet home again.

Where places have a car park, you’re expected to pay a few Dirham to use it. Being the stingy people we are, we’d parked on the other side of the road for free. Although an out of control sounding articulated lorry thundering down the hill caused some concern – if it had hit the bikes they’d have gone over the edge of the cliff. I’m sure it sounded worse than it actually was – when they’re empty they rattle a lot, and on the gravelly road the wheels will be prone to locking up anyway.

It wasn’t far to the main road which would take us back to Ouarzazate, along a two-lane road with only one lane’s worth of tarmac. Not that there was much traffic, and on the Adventure taking to the gravel verges wasn’t really a problem. What was becoming a problem was Gareth’s bike.

It had become more and more rattley as the day had gone on, and the oil light had been flickering at idle. On the ride back to Bikershome it came on properly, and the rattle was really sounding unpleasant. What was it? There was plenty of oil on the dipstick – oil pump? Camchain tensioner?

Back at base we got on the Internet to harness the power of the combined knowledge of various forums – although being a Saturday night would most of them be in the pub? Or just back from the pub?

The first few replies gave a consistent diagnosis: water pump. It’s a known weakness, and we had brought seal kit with us so it was just as case of getting in there to confirm it, and then repair it. So that was another day at Bikershome.

Next morning we set to work. First job was to confirm the diagnosis by checking the condition of the oil filter. Using some old tyres as a cushion we laid the bike on its side and pulled out the filter – eureka! It was crinkled, which is a sure sign of water in the oil and a good indication that the oil pump seals have had it. We set to work undressing the bike and removing the clutch cover to get at the oil pump. The inside of the clutch cover had the classic ‘mayonnaise’ blend of oil and coolant.

In the midst of this excitement, Pete had been called away to help rescue a couple of bikes: a FJR and a Bandit. The Bandit was quite severely damaged after being run off the road by a taxi, and somersaulting in to a concrete drainage channel. The owner, also called Pete, had gotten away relatively lightly with just a dislocated elbow – and a big repair bill.

Mark H decided to set off to explore some waterfalls that he thought weren’t too far away. After he’d gone, we got the map out and found that they were about a four hour ride away… No, he didn’t get to them.

To help get the new bearings in to the water-pump casing the instructions suggest putting the casing in the oven for a few minutes. The resulting smoke was eye-watering, and didn’t go down all that well with our hosts, but it worked and by tea time Gareth’s bike was back together. We didn’t have a new oil filter with us, but fortunately Pete has a KTM Super Enduro which has the same engine, and he had a spare filter. Job done.

For dinner that night Pete and Zineb took us in to Ouarzazate to eat because Zineb had got something in her eye earlier in the day (we don’t think it was related to the engine casing in the oven though).

While we were out Pete got a call from a group of Polish riders on Honda Africa Twins who’d arrived and were needing assistance. They’d been out in the desert, two of their bikes had broken down, and they’d been charged 500€ each to get the bikes rescued. Ouch! They stayed the night at Bikershome, most of them sleeping on the sofa-benches because by now all the beds were full. Their plan, incidentally, was to get a trailer made so they could use their support vehicle to tow the bikes back to the border, get them back in to Spain and let their breakdown insurance deal with them.

And so, after fours nights in the Bikershome, we set out for the desert.

The Big Adventure - Part 5

2010-06-04T21:01:00.000+01:00

By morning the rain had cleared, and we were horrified to find five cleaner (on one side at least) bikes parked outside. Sure enough, Grandpa was still sitting on the step: although I think I woke him when I went out with my luggage.

After a typical Moroccan breakfast, including coffee with goats’ milk, we set off towards yesterday’s target, the Dades Gorge. This meant riding back through the village, but the touts from the night before were obviously still in bed and we had no trouble at all riding through. The road skirts around the edge of the flood-plain, and after an unusually wet winter the amount of greenery was quite impressive and there was even water in the river.

Arriving in a village on market (souk) day was an interesting experience, and we initially missed the turning to start our journey through the mountains to the top of the gorge. A U-turn, and an opportunistic Dirham-scrounger later, we set off along another riverbed. The road had obviously seen a tough winter, and was in a very poor state of repair. At one point it diverted in to the dry bed of the river itself and the shale made tough going before it rejoined the actual road.

I had my second misjudgement of the trip and clobbered one of my panniers on a rock, dislodging it from the bike. A feat I repeated soon after, on another rock. The only apparent damage was to the lock securing the pannier to the bike which would hold the pannier on the bike but no longer locked with a key. Much later I discovered that I’d put a hole in the pannier, and when trying to fill the water jacket it just poured straight out again.

Climbing up the winding track was a matter of preference and technique. With a steep drop to one side and a rock face on the other you had two choices: the inside or outside wheel-track. Most people opted for the inner track, although I preferred the outer track because the odds of clouting a pannier on a rock were much lower.

Riding along a ledge like that isn’t for the faint-hearted because the potential for things to go wrong is significant. That said, if you concentrate too much on the drop then you have less concentration for the road ahead, and there’s always that age-old hazard of target fixation. I have done a fair amount of riding on tracks like this one and the drop isn’t of particular concern. Obviously I respect it, and know what could happen, but otherwise I treat it much like any other stony track.

The map showed a settlement near the (road’s) summit, but when we got there it turned out to be a single, abandoned house without a roof. The views were spectacular though, and we were close to the snow-line: riding around a bend in to a shaded spot and finding a bank of snow on a warm sunny day comes as something of a surprise.

After a short break we began our slow descent, and it was here the differences between our bikes began to show. My 990 is completely standard in terms of gearing and I was struggling to ride slow enough not to run in to the back of the bike ahead, and even in first gear I was having to slip the clutch. A popular modification is to change the number of teeth on the sprockets to improve off road performance, and this probably helped the others – although I don’t know exactly how their bikes were setup.

Being at the back of the ride I took advantage of being able to stop and take photos of the scenery and the others ahead:

Once we got to the bottom we had a river to cross. Although not our first of the trip, it was the widest, deepest and fastest flowing. A gathering of children raised the stakes even higher in terms of sweets, Dirham and general pestering. Whilst Mark L went to see if there was an easier place to cross, Gareth waded in and the rest of us rode though with little difficulty. Mark returned having found something that looked easier to find us all on the other side, so he had a go himself after entrusting his camera bag to me to carry through on foot.

Anxious to get away from the pestering of the children we set off down the road and found a shaded spot between the river and the cliffs to have a breather. We’d not been there long when two young girls on donkeys came past and Mark H tried to take a photo of them – which didn’t go down well at all: Many people in Morocco, especially those in more isolated or rural locations, are superstitious about having their photo taken and the effect it might have on them in the afterlife. It didn’t stop a degree of banter with them, and I suspect they understood more than they let on.

Having been at the back of the ride most of the day I took the lead for the next bit. Mark L showed me on the map where we were going and told me to look for a right-turn at some point. When we came to a junction with a road to the right I stopped and pointed at it. Looking back I saw Mark apparently nodding his head, so I duly turned right – only to discover that the nod was indicating that we should go straight-on. Oh well…

We knew that the road to the Dades Gorge had been properly surfaced because it is a popular tourist attraction, but we were coming at it from the other side and the road was still piste. There is a village at the top of the gorge, and it’s here that you join the tarmac.

There’s no denying that it’s a spectacular sight, but sadly it is also full of tourists. We stopped to take some photos before carrying on through.

There are a few cafés along the road side, and we decided to stop for a coffee and something to eat. One of the things that we were missing most was junk food like chocolate. The healthy Moroccan diet is all very well, but sometimes you need some tooth-rotting sugary sweetness (other than the tea), and when we saw they had Snickers bars we couldn’t resist.

Looking down from the café gave a superb view of the road ahead: hairpin after hairpin, on recently surfaced tarmac. Brilliant.

Photo by Mark Littlewood

A common way for tourists to see Morocco in with a Berber guide in a 4x4, and as we were preparing to leave, a number of these 4x4s drew up outside. We chatted with a Canadian family who appeared to be doing a whirlwind tour of the country, and had our photos taken by group of American tourists who were interested in what we were doing, where we were going, what we were carrying etc.

We set off down the road ahead of the 4x4s and even on a heavily laden, knobbly-tyred KTM it was a fantastic bit of road. While we’d been having coffee we’d seen a group of three cruiser-style bikes go past heading up the gorge, and we half wondered if they’d be heading over the top the way we’d come, or whether they’d be following us down the surfaced road (silly question!).

The road wound its way down the gorge, and offered some spectacular views:

Our plan for the night was to head to Ouarzazate [Wazzat] and stay at the well known Bikershome. This meant a lengthy, and mostly dull, road ride across the plains. The road was busy, and there were a number of convoys of road bikes going the other way. From the plates I think they were mostly German and guessing from guide at the front of each group, an organised tour. There were a good number of BMW GSs amongst them, but one thing we did notice is that despite the number of them we saw, none of them bore any signs of being used on the pistes. It seems a shame to have ridden all that way and not take advantage of exploring the more remote parts.

Heading in to the setting sun wasn’t much fun, and the dust on our visors (inside and out) left us peering through the shadow cast by the peak of the helmet. Another hazard was the presence of so many tourist 4x4s, mostly Land Cruisers, with their kamikaze Berber drivers having no qualms about overtaking in to the face of oncoming traffic, then barging their way back in-between us to get out of the way.

This was the busiest we saw a road outside of a city, and as usual there were regular Police checkpoints and speed-checks. A new bypass around one town, Skoura, caused a bit of confusion with Ouarzazate being signposted the opposite way to the road shown on the map..

On the way through the city centre we needed to stop for cash, but the presence of a cash machine doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to get your money! It was the one recurring problem, and one that there isn’t a solution to other than take advantage of any working machine you do find! With the delays and detours it was getting dark by the time we wound our way through centre of Ouarzazate to Bikershome.

Bikershome is run by Dutchman Peter Buitelaar and his lovely Moroccan wife Zineb. Pete was out when we arrived, but Zineb made us very welcome, taking their 4x4 out of the garage to make room for our bikes, and cooking us a very welcome meal.

We intended to stay two nights, to allow us a rest-day, but plans change.

The Big Adventure - Part 4

2010-05-25T22:04:00.005+01:00

After a long day, and a few days with not all that much to eat, we were looking forward to a good meal. I'm not an especially fussy eater, although spicy food causes me problems, so I was looking forward to trying some real Moroccan cuisine.

Dinner was included in the price of our room, and started with a thick soup with beans in the bottom (no, not baked beans!), then a lamb tagine with seasonal fruit to finish – washed down with some Moroccan wine.

A tagine is a kind of casserole dish with a conical lid. The meat is put in the centre, with vegetables arranged around it before being cooked in an oven. Simple and delicious.

The local beers were pleasant enough, although in one hotel we had locally brewed Heiniken. And no, it doesn't taste any better than it does here.

The rooms were comfortable, each having a double bed and two singles. One concern about the trip was the law relating to sharing rooms where is illegal for an unmarried lady and gentleman to share a room, and with homosexuality being illegal, the scope for a potential misunderstand was definitely there – although, as with most of our concerns, they were unfounded and sharing rooms, even at one point being expected to share a (double) bed, was never a problem for our various hosts. We did ask for an extra bed though!

Wednesday was out first day together in Morocco, and the day we left the tarmac and headed for the pistes. Breakfast was bread, crepe, apricot jam, cheese, coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice and omelette – some things are much the same all over the world.

We stowed our things, and rode out of the gate…. Well, almost. Mark H's bike had blown a fuse the day before, leaving him with no brake lights and no dashboard lights or speedo (it's a digital one on the KTMs), but this wasn't the problem that stopped him this morning: this time his bike died completely. No lights, no starter, no clocks, nothing at all.

Photo by Gareth Jones

Now we knew that Mark's battery was getting weak, which is why it wouldn't start my bike back in Spain, but we were getting a horrible sense of déjà vu. Thinking it through logically, we started with the rest of the fuses in the fusebox between the two fuel tanks – all present and correct (bar the one that had blown the day before). So what next? Main fuse? Bingo! The 30a main fuse, buried in the sump-guard with the battery and starter relay, had blown. Strange. Then we spotted an unplugged plug through an opening in the side of the bodywork, reconnected it, changed the fuse, and the bike started.

The only way that plug could have been disconnected was by human intervention, because it had to be pulled up out of the socket. Very strange.

With the fuse changed we were back on the road and doing the last few kilometres in to Midelt. There we branched off on to the Cirque du Jaffar, with the intention of getting to Imilchil [Ima-shil] for lunch.

The going was pretty easy: a gravelly track with gentle bends, the odd stream and relaxed uphill gradient. When we stopped for a breather, Gareth said he'd go on ahead and take some video as we rode past and to give him five or ten minutes head start – so that's what we did.

Carrying on up the track we found Gareth gesturing frantically beside a small stream, so we thought he was asking us to go a bit quicker to make it look more spectacular – but that's not what he was meaning at all.

Stopping a little way further up the track for him to catch up, we soon found out that what he wanted us to do was to stop. He'd had a bit of a crash, where the front wheel had hit a rock as he was looking backwards for a good place to film. He'd gone over the bars, and given himself a nasty bruise on his thigh (we took his word for that!). Most seriously of all, he'd hit one of his metal panniers on a rock which had severely dented it, forcing the lid off and popping the bottom out of it too.

Before we could carry on, the pannier needed to be repaired otherwise we'd be collecting his kit as it dropped out the bottom. Of course getting the pannier off the bike was the first challenge because the dents in the back of it obstructed the locking hooks. Once it was off, we needed to bang it back in to something approximately pannier shape – and I came to the rescue with a mallet.

I got a fair amount of teasing for bringing a mallet, but it wasn't the only time on the trip that it was to come in handy.

Setting off again, and climbing a little more steeply now, the piste remained wide, gravelly and easy to ride – although on one left-hand bend Mark L managed to run wide in to some boulders. Normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem, except that Mark isn't all that tall and rides a 990S which has around an extra inch of suspension travel. He's also fitted a more comfortable seat that's about an inch higher than standard too. The net result is that he can't put his feet down.

I'd ridden past him, but stopped on the next flattish bit to make sure he was OK. By this time he was off the bike and trying to roll it back on to the path – which he didn't quite manage, and gently toppled over.

Climbing off my bike I walked back to help him. We were higher than we thought at this point, and even the short walk down the track was tiring. Between us we rolled the bike backwards out of the boulders and back on to the path. He set off again while I climbed back up to where I'd stopped and took a few moments to get my breath back and take a photo of the scene:

The track gradually narrowed, and took on a sideways slope from the rock face towards the drop. The surface also changed and became looser and much less grippy – even with knobbly tyres.

Coming to a boulder that had fallen down the hillside, I had to ride around it and with the extra weight of my luggage, the slope and the loose surface, the rear stepped out and it was my turn to have a lie-down:

The bike landed on the pannier, which popped off it's mounting without damage (other than a dent in the bottom corner of the plastic), and the rear wheel came to rest right on the edge of the drop:

I decided that trying to pick the bike up on my own probably wasn't the best idea given the loose surface and if the bike had gone over the edge then that would be the end of the bike – although it's worth noting that we never saw an abandoned wreck anywhere in the mountains, and we suspect they get picked clean and carted off by locals in much the same way as ants devour fallen food.

Being the last person in the ride at this point, all I could do was sit and wait until they realised I wasn't with them and it wasn't long before Mark H and Gareth arrived and between the three of us we got the bike up, pointing in the right direction and the pannier re-attached.

The track remained “technical” for another kilometre or so, before widening out, losing the camber and having an easier surface.

When I caught up with the other four bikes I found that I wasn't the only faller on that section. Jason had slipped in much the same way as I had, and in his eagerness not to go over the edge had rammed the rock face with his bike, smashing his Lexan headlight guard, breaking off an indicator and putting a selection of deep gouges in to the fairing.

We rapidly came to the conclusion that if the trail had many more sections like that one, we could be in trouble and we wouldn't reach our intended destination near the Dades Gorge. We subsequently discovered by comparing maps that what was shown as a piste on one map was shown as a donkey track on another... Mapping Morocco isn't easy and you cannot rely too heavily on the maps because the condition can change dramatically, and often actual route of the road changes because of landslides, floods, upgrades etc. A route taking two hours one year can be an eight hour epic the next.

The rest of the route was much easier to ride, and a mixture of wooded sections, rocky outcrops and the occasional hairpin bend kept us entertained. By about midday the track joined a more major track, which was wide, smooth and consisted of a layer of gravel over tarmac. Possibly the worst surface there is to ride on. The track curved around the hills, and we were able to pick up the pace a bit.

A new experience for the day was riding through the many small villages. Invariably you're the day's big event, and people will stop and stare. Kids will run out of their houses and generally do one of three things: Wave and 'Hi-5', demand sweets (bonbon monsieur) or money (Dirham monsieur – or if that doesn't work, “Euro monsieur”), or throw stones.

The biggest hazard was often the number of children all trying to hi-5 you as you rode past – on both sides. The left was fairly easy, but the right was a little more tricky, and care was needed because the very worst thing that could happen was you running over one of the kids. It didn't happen, but I dread to think what they'd do to us if it did. One lesson we all learned very quickly was that the kids put their all in to the hi-5, and it hurts!

As the afternoon progressed, the sky got darker and more threatening with the odd flash of lightening in the distance. Arriving in a village at the bottom of a valley, the road was blocked by an excavator that was rebuilding the road where it crossed the river, and we had to wait for it to stop to let us pass.

As we waited, crowds of children appeared demanding sweets, money etc. and before too long I felt (and heard) something hit my helmet – great, I thought, they’re throwing stones… Except they weren’t. Another couple of pings and something bounced off and landed inside the fairing: a marble-sized hailstone! Not something we expected, but better than stones.

Eventually we took our leave, and carried on through the pouring rain. None of us were really dressed for rain, and it even got cold enough for me to deploy the headed grips. We stopped on a causeway just outside the village to check the map and see where we could change our plans. While we were stopped, a young girl wandered over and asked very politely for a sweet and it made a pleasant change. She was rewarded with a boiled sweet and a Biro.

The whole issue of giving stuff to kids is somewhat contentious. These people have very little, and are desperately poor whereas we are rich and have everything – at least in their eyes. Is it wrong for them to want a bit of what we’ve got? Or does it just promote begging and dependency? Who knows…? I certainly don’t.

From there it was a short ride to Imichil where we planned to refuel and stop for the night. The petrol station there is fairly new, and before it was built fuel had to be pumped from barrels. While the bikes were being filled (petrol stations aren’t self-service) we were surrounded by yet more children all trying to get us to stay in their father’s / brother’s hotel or visit their shop etc. and it was very irritating.

My technique was to say a very clear “no thank you” and then ignore any repeated requests, but some of the group found the constant clamouring for attention to be very wearing – although I had to suppress a chuckle when someone, I can’t remember who, started trying to reason with one of the kids. Needless to say it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference!

Having eventually got rid of all the kids, we planned out next course of action. None of us wanted to go back through the village, so the remaining option was to carry on until we found a hotel – which is exactly what happened, just a few metres up the road.

Photo by Gareth Jones

The hotel was built on a rise just beside the road, and as we rode up the driveway we were greeted by what seemed like (and probably was) the whole family from Grandpa through to granddaughter. Of course they had rooms; would we like to eat? Yes please – what? Lamb tagine? Lovely – thank you.

Next thing we knew, Grandpa was given some money and sent in to town for supplies, returning half an hour or so later in the cab of a truck. Tea was prepared for us, traditional Moroccan tea with mint and lots of sugar. I can’t stand tea, but for good manners I had a glass (which wasn’t too bad) and a couple of biscuits.

The hotel was fairly imposing affair inside, with a large atrium with rooms arranged around the edge, and rooms off the ground floor with sumptuous carpets, for meals and tea. Custom is to remove your shoes before going in to someone’s house, but as we stopped to remove our boots we were hustled politely inside saying that it did not matter. But with light coloured carpets throughout, we did feel somewhat guilty with our dusty boots and luggage.

Our rooms were on the first floor, with a connecting door. There were three beds in one room, and a double in the other. Hmm… We asked for another bed and it wasn’t a problem – the beds were layers of foam mattresses, a bit like caravan seat cushions, so it was a simple matter to re-arrange them in to two singles from one double. The pillows were very solid and heavy, and we had to check to see if they were sandbags or sacks of concrete; neither would have been a surprise but they weren’t, just very solid pillows.

While we waited for dinner, we went and stood on the porch to watch the approaching storm. The whole sky was repeatedly split by shards of lightening and, when it came, the rain was torrential. We felt sorry for Grandpa who was going to sit on the porch all night to watch the bikes. When it came, the lamb tagine was delicious, with seasonal fruit to follow (a fresh orange). No alcohol here, just a chilled bottle of water.

The bathroom was enormous, not far off the size of my lounge, with a marble floor and beautifully tiled walls it had both a bath and a separate shower cubicle. There was also plenty of hot water, and we made the most of it before a sound night’s sleep with not even the rain drumming on the windows keeping us awake.

Next time: American tourists and bars of chocolate.

KTM Forum Welsh Weekend - May 2010

2010-05-24T22:49:00.000+01:00

Normally I would have been in Arromanches this weekend, but after my Morrocan trip in April I'm a bit short of holiday so I went to Wales instead. The KTM Forum's Adventure Wing had a fund raising trip for the Welsh Air Ambulance, because in the past they've had cause to use its services.

The plan was to go through to Rhayader on Friday evening, ride all day Saturday and again on Sunday morning before heading home. A friend, Craig, picked me up in his van on Friday en route from Norfolk (I know, I should have ridden) and we arrived just in time at the campsite - last arrival is 22.30, and we got there at 22.28!

We pitched Craig's tent in the darkness, and I went in search of my B&B - which turned out to have a four-poster bed! Never slept in one before, but I can't say it made much difference to the sleeping experience.

Saturday morning arrived and I set about getting me, my bike and my riding apparel in the same place at the same time ready to meet the others at 09.00.

There were three groups: two normal and an advanced group. I opted for the second of the normal groups partly because I'm a wimp, and mostly because the guys in the advanced group really are good riders.

We lost our first rider six miles in, before we even got to a lane: Craig misjudged a junction and toppled over at less than walking pace owing to the camber of the road. He stuck his leg out to catch himself, and pulled his ham-string in the process, putting him out of the ride. Not a good start, and it was Craig's first trip out on his new KTM 950 Super Enduro which he bought to replace his stolen 690 Enduro.

Still, onwards and, this being Wales, upwards. The lanes were an interesting mix of green, slightly rutted routes to rocky paths and the odd stream to ford.

On one lane, rising up from near a quarry, I had a bit of a crash. The surface was stony but firm and fairly smooth, except at the top of a climb there were two ruts with a knife-edge strip between them. I got cross-rutted and went down at about 20mph. I somehow managed to abandon ship while the bike slid along on its side, slewing round across the track.

Having heard an ominous 'ping' I was hoping that the damage wouldn't be either expensive or annoying - it would be too bad to have to stop with a bust footpeg, or a holed engine casing.

The sum total of the damage was a snapped engine bar where one of the welds gave-way. Damage to me, none - I even managed to stay on my feet :)

Lunchtime saw us arrive in Clyro, and one of the guys in the other group flapping fit to take off because he'd lost his wallet (or thought he had).

From there, our ninth lane of the day was a steep climb up to a gate. It was a pretty nasty one with a deep, single rut up the middle of the narrow lane. The gate had a foot-high step, albeit steeply sloped, which made for an entertaining time as people tried and failed to get through the gate.

The lane is obviously very lightly used because the surface was so loose - think freshly turned soil - and hadn't been packed-down by vehicles, horses or even pedestrians.

Attempting to escape from the single rut was futile, because the angle of the embankments ensured you just slipped straight back in.

With all the bikes finally up, we carried on through some wonderful scenery (we don't have hills in Cambridgeshire!). We stopped at one point for a rest and had a visit from a National Trust ranger making sure we were behaving. He checked his map, but even then wasn't sure of we were allowed to be where we were (which of course we were).

Some of the group was starting to tire, so while most of them set off back to Rhayader, three of us carried on. We were all tired, and on one lane my coordination abandoned me and I just couldn't ride along a fairly easy track. Time to stop, reset and try again :)

We caught up with the other group, and just we did, one of us got a puncture - and as it happened the leader of the other group's bike decided to have a bit of a fit and put on its oil light. And someone came prepared in case I had battery problems...

A new tube, and a bit of poking and prodding and we were off again. This lane had a number of water troughs, which gave some people an opportunity for a swim... 950 Adventures don't like swimming, and after a lot of fiddling around the bike still wasn't having any of it, and as it was around 19.00 we then towed it the three miles back to the road to be collected later.

We got back to Rhayader eleven hours after we left, had covered just 90 miles but had a great day out.

A few drinks seemed a good plan, and after a quick shower we made it in time for last food orders.

Sunday morning, with Craig unable to ride, we set off home again.

I've now got a very grubby bike, a broken engine bar and I ache a bit, but it was great fun - and much easier going than in January's snow. And we raised a good few hundred pounds for the air ambulance (which wasn't required this time). And I got more sunburnt in one day in Wales than 2 weeks in Morocco!

The Big Adventure - Part 3

2010-05-14T19:50:00.001+01:00

It was to be a marathon ride, and Morocco’s roads were an unknown quantity: How good would they be? How busy would they be? Will there be good signage (in roman script)?

As we soon discovered, the main roads are in pretty good order, although mostly single carriageway. Speed limits are up to 100kph outside of towns, and typically 60 or 40 within them. The standard of driving is, as you might expect, poor. This caused some of the group a lot of stress, but I decided that there was no point getting fussed by it, to just accept it, and work with it – and in the main, it worked quite well. There were no collisions between any of us and other motor vehicles.

Our route was along the N13, and traffic was light by British standards. Overtaking was easy, although staying alert was essential because the use of mirrors obviously isn’t in the driving test. Worst of all were the long-distance “grand taxis”, mostly elderly Mercedes, who would use both sides of the road, stop (and pull out) at random and engage in kamikaze overtakes at unexpected moments.

If you think we’re heavily Policed in the UK, then Morocco will come as a shock. Police check-points are common, as are speed-checks – especially on the approach to towns, and crossing bridges or causeways which often have much reduced speed limits on them. The officers aren’t clad in yellow either, just their grey uniforms. That said, we were only stopped once in the whole time we were there and that’s because we were the only traffic on the road and I suspect the officer was bored! As in France, oncoming traffic was generally pretty good at warning of speed-checks with flashed headlights – although we also got flashes because of having our headlights on. Driving with headlights on in Morocco, even at night, is not the done thing.

Unleaded petrol is plentiful, and slightly cheaper than in the UK at around 100d per litre (80p), although few filling stations accept card payments. Our first fuel stop was on the outskirts of Chefchaouen, where we drank more Red Bull with some biscuits from the shop. The picture on the packet looked promising: two biscuits with a generous chocolate cream filling, but the reality was two thick, dry biscuits with a thin scraping of something brown in the middle… Not really living up to the “Max” name on the wrapper. Still, better than nothing.

Back on the road, and getting more familiar with the Moroccan way of things, we hopped past lorries, wove around mopeds and kept a watchful eye for oncoming grand taxis! About half-way between Chefchaouen and the next city, Meknes, we stopped for a comfort stop. With lush green vegetation and rolling hills we could be almost anywhere in Europe and I had to keep reminding myself that this was Africa!

Roadworks, of which there were many, are a very different proposition compared to the UK. The general absence of cones, flashing lights, signage and the like makes them interesting and sometimes challenging affairs. At one point we came to a four-way junction where they were building a new roundabout, and as a result none of the roads were connected to each other, and the signs had been taken down too. Fun. Two of the roads set off in generally similar directions, so we took one and hoped for the best. A few hundred yards down the road we spotted a pedestrian and asked if this was the road to Meknes – and of course is wasn’t, thus adding further weight to adage that if there’s a fifty percent chance that something will go wrong then nine times out of ten it will.

Doing a U-turn on an off-camber, gravelly road, with heavy luggage and other traffic travelling in random directions was interesting as we returned to the junction and picked the other road. Care was needed to avoid other traffic, the workmen, the plant and the piles of gravel and other materials strewn around, but both of us made it through safely – even stopping to re-direct a confused local who’d also got the wrong road.

The road offered a mixture of terrain, from plains with long, straight sections to mountainous areas with entertaining twists and turns, as well as steep climes and descents. Slow moving lorries were a regular sight as the struggled up hills, and when I say slow I mean little more than walking pace. Even when they were travelling in the opposite direction you had to be aware of them because traffic behind would overtake without much attention to other traffic – especially when the overtaking vehicle was another lorry that didn’t want to lose momentum up the hill.

Arriving in a village with a sign pointing to Meknes: simple. Next junction with left or right choices and no signs: not so simple.

It's times like that where a sense of direction helps – and a map. We had maps and also an electronic version on our Garmin GPS receivers. Unfortunately the electronic version didn't allow automatic routing, but at least it gave us a pretty good idea of where we were. As it happens, we didn't use any of that to decide the direction – just instinct, which proved to be spot on. Result!

Meknes, christened Milton Keynes by one of the Marks in a moment of confusion, is the largest town that Gareth and I rode through. It was much busier and more chaotic than any of the small towns and villages we’d been though, and there were Police officers, some of them female (which came as a surprise), directing traffic at junction, as well as roundabout and traffic lights. Traffic lights in Morocco have four phases: green, flashing green, amber and red before returning straight to green.

Meknes is also the home of some of Morocco’s alcohol producers, with wine and beer being produced there. We knew that there was alcohol available in Morocco despite it being a Muslim country, but we were less prepared for how readily available it was. As long as you were reasonably discreet about it, nobody paid any attention either.

Heading south out of Meknes we came across the most bizarre roadworks I’ve ever seen. A new dual carriageway is being built, and much of it is finished and in use. Some sections were only partly complete with a contraflow arrangement, and it was this that came as a surprise. Instead of a formal, marked cross-over the closed side was fenced off, with traffic carrying on around the roundabout and turning in a dog-leg on to the other carriageway with no cones, markings or any other indicators that there’s two-way traffic. When it’s time to cross back, a row of three rocks across one side of the carriageway and a bloke in a chair vaguely pointing at the central reservation is the cue to cross back – but not everyone noticed it and runaway lorries were observed still on the wrong side some distance further on. Imagine that on the M25!

It was on this stretch that we found a convoy of British registered Land Rovers and we got a cheery wave and toot as we rode past. British registered vehicles were few and far between, with French and Spanish being the most numerous, although there were quite a lot of German bikes – including, on our return journey, a long procession of Harley Davidsons, complete with Police escort, support vehicles and recovery trailer (with only one space – optimism!).

Once the road quietened down, Gareth and I rode side-by-side for a while, sharing the realisation that not only were we in Africa but that we had the biggest hurdles behind us, and with huge grins we knew we could do it and catch the others.

We’d been keeping in touch with the others via text message, and updating them on our progress. Actually, that’s not quite true: Gareth had been sending texts but was deliberately ambiguous as to whether I was there or not.

Coming to the first of the more mountainous areas, I was surprised to see a very modern variable message sign that wouldn’t have been out of place on a British Motorway. As in the UK, it’s there to show traffic information – principally whether the mountain road is open. The main difference was the provision of substantial height-bars each side of it to stop overloaded trucks from hitting it – and you could understand why when you see the amount of stuff people piled on to trucks: A triple-deck sheep carrier for example, based on a 7.5 tonne truck – and no, they don’t look all that stable.

For a hot country Morocco gets a lot of snow, even on lower ground, and snow barriers were a common sight along the route. Looking at the Atlas Mountains ahead, there was still a lot of snow visible on the tops, and later in the trip when we were riding through the mountains, rounding a corner to find a bank of snow in a shady spot was not uncommon. The temperature varied quite a lot, and you could feel the change from warm to cool and back again – although it was never actually cold.

The trouble with riding through such spectacular scenery is that you can’t appreciate it fully whilst riding, so on finding a suitable lay-by with a stunning view on the top of one of the hills we made out final comfort-stop of the day and spent a few minutes drinking in the view and taking photos.

Aware that time was marching on we pressed on towards Midelt, and hoped that we could find the hotel that the others were going to be staying in. Our third fuel-fill of the day, at a tiny Shell branded station, would see us through the last leg of the day’s journey in terms of both fuel and water.

Buying water at filling stations became a habit, as none of us were all that keen to drink the tap water (although we all did, unknowingly, at one of the places we stayed thanks to the refilled bottle trick!). A 1.5 litre bottle cost around 6d and a couple of those would fill my water-pack.

As the shadows started to lengthen, and we dropped out of the mountains for the last time that day along some wonderful sweeping bends, we drew closer to Midelt. We spied a group of three big bikes ahead and, wondering if they were the others, pressed hard to catch up. They weren’t, and keeping up the pace we soon passed them.

About 20km north of Midelt we saw a sign for an auberge ahead, and as we drew closer we spotted a bike parked outside the gate. A blue bike. A blue and orange bike. A blue and orange KTM Adventure S. We’d done it!

The look on the faces of the others that we were both there was one of astonishment, because they weren’t expecting me to be there at all, and they weren't expecting Gareth to make it there so early because they’d had a lot more trouble with the border and insurance than we had.

It was 17.15 as Gareth and I rode through the gate and parked up next to the other bikes. We’d been on the road for thirteen hours, ridden 525km, negotiated ferry and border crossings and done in one day what the others did in two and a half.

Still to come: pistes, crashes, desert and storms...

The Big Adventure - Part 2

2010-05-12T20:02:00.003+01:00

Watching the three bikes ride off was quite a sad moment, but we had slightly more pressing issues to deal with – namely how feed ourselves for the next couple of days. Spain does Sunday in a big way, and virtually nothing is open. We walked back to the supermarket: closed. Walked in to the next village and found a restaurant: closed.

We eventually found a newsagent that was open (run by Brits, see) and they said that there was one shop that did open on Sunday and we wandered off there to see what we could muster: sliced Chorizo, bacon, a (still warm from the oven) baguette and two apple pastries.

Back at the house, via a cup of coffee and slice of carrot cake at a café we had missed earlier, we tried to keep ourselves amused: it was too cold to swim, there was nothing worth watching on TV and a bike-ride was obviously out of the question – so we played croquet on the (billiard-table smooth) lawn. We didn’t know the rules, so we made it up as we went along; sort of golf with mallets and hoops!

Photo by Gareth Jones

All the while we were making plans: Dealer on Monday? What if it isn’t just the battery? How long will spare parts take to arrive? How do we get the bike to the dealer?

New KTMs come with KTM Assist, which provides breakdown insurance in the whole of Europe (and Morocco) while the bike’s under warranty. My bike isn’t under warranty any more, but I thought I’d give them a call anyway to see if they could help – and they could. For a fee of £250 (plus VAT), plus any costs incurred including call-out fees, recovery fees, labour charges and any parts used – ouch!

They did provide the details of two local KTM dealers, one in Marbella and one in Cadiz. They also told me there was a dealer in Ceuta [Soota], so that if I managed to get it to the ferry I might be able to get help there.

All our contingency plans for breakdowns revolved around being in Morocco, because with less than two days in Spain on the itinerary we thought that if we couldn’t keep it together there then we really would be in trouble – so we really were in trouble.

After many calls to the UK to get technical support, make requests, share problems etc. (O2 have done very well from me!) we discovered that local Ixie, Lee Bell, was back in the UK, the prime suspect was the battery, and if necessary people were willing to send parts to get me up and running.

Sunday night’s supper was an eclectic mix of what we’d bought, what we could scrounge from the cupboards in the house and some of the emergency rations we’d brought for the desert (not dessert). Bacon and cheese flavoured crisps, green olives, slices of Chorizo and bacon, some leftover cheese from the night before and a tin of baked beans (Heinz, of course). A call from the advance party confirmed their safe arrival in Morocco and that they were staying in a hotel in Chefchaouen [Chef-show-wen] – which is where we’d intended to be on Saturday night!

Monday arrived, and I called RAC’s European call centre in France who said they’d send help – but felt it necessary to explain that it wouldn’t be a RAC patrol (I was quite glad about that, for it would have taken a long time to drive to southern Spain in a Transit!). They assured me that help would arrive within 1h30. As is traditional with breakdown assistance, two hours later nobody had arrived so I called back to be told that the fax they’d sent (fax FFS!) to Barcelona hadn’t actually gone through, so they would re-send it now – and that help would arrive within 1h30. Ho hum.

Eventually, as promised, a recovery truck arrived – but how do you explain that there’s an electrical problem and you want the bike taken to Marbella when you don’t speak Spanish? I’m still not entirely sure, but the bike was loaded on to the truck, which had obviously had a very poorly car onboard recently because the deck was slick with oil, and we set off to KTM Marbella with Gareth following on his bike.

Arriving at the dealer, in a much less trendy area than the one in Malaga, and shortly before lunchtime (and the famous Spanish siesta), we managed to convey the problem to the mechanic and they wheeled the bike in to the workshop, past a very sorry-looking Bimota that had been down the road on both sides, and started checking the electrics and putting the battery on charge.

Time for the siesta, and two hours for Gareth and me to kill until the dealer reopened. Food, coffee, a stroll along the seafront, then finally back to the shop to find some interesting news: the battery had plenty of volts, so it should be able to start the bike. So what was the problem? Images of expensive electronic black-boxes, only available from Austria, ran through my mind.

Photo by Gareth Jones

After further investigation, the battery was pronounced dead and a new Yuasa battery (140€) was fitted – but of course this needed charging too. Time crept slowly onward, and we’d looked at all the bikes in the showroom several times, watched the brand new Sherco demonstrator bikes being delivered, gone to the café next door for Coke and pastries… At long last, K2 was pronounced fit and well, so with my credit card considerably dented (although labour was only 21€ per hour), and lighter hearts, Gareth and I set a course for Sotogrande. By now it was after 20.00 and we’d heard from the others that they were now in Fes (which wasn’t in our original plan at all). We had another tin of beans and a bit of left-over bread before turning in for the night with the intention of being on the first ferry of the day to Ceuta.

My alarm woke me at 05.30, and with tired excitement we downed half a (very large) can of Red Bull and a chocolate doughnut each, stowed our luggage and, with a degree of trepidation, I turned the key in K2, pressed the starter and SHE STARTED!

There’s very little traffic in Spain at that hour, and we made good time to the port at Algeciras where we tracked down some tickets for the 08.00 boat with Acconia Trasmediterránea. It was only just 07.00 so we had plenty of time to spare, and we watched the Tangiers ferry loading including a very large orange, Dutch registered, desert truck on to the very small catamaran. It was the last to be loaded, and the boat definitely shifted in the water as it drove up the ramp!

Photo by Gareth Jones

By this time someone had appeared in the Acconia check-in booth, so we rolled up, presented our tickets and boarded the seacat, Alboran, strapped the bikes down ourselves (they were the only two on the crossing), watched a couple of cars forget their roof rack loads as they drove on to the upper car-deck, and climbed up to the lounge with a serious need for coffee and food! The world’s strongest coffee con leche and most meagre chocolate muffin kept us going. The ferry was very lightly loaded, and just over half an hour later we were docking in Ceuta, which is a Spanish city in Morocco (think Gibraltar!) so it was a domestic ferry with the minimum of fuss or formality – at least on the outward crossing.

What’s “Morocco” in Spanish? We weren’t sure, but after a lap of the port, and another of the city’s one-way system, we finally worked it out and set off towards the Moroccan border – which is exactly how you might imagine an African border-crossing to be: lots of people, vehicles, animals, touts, officials, lost-looking tourists, impatient locals…

In the event, it was surprisingly painless. We enlisted the help of a chap with a (homemade-looking) ID badge, and for 20€ he pointed us at the right booths, supplied the right forms, looked after the bikes, and got us to the front of the right queues. I’m loathed to pay people unnecessarily, but we had a lot of miles to do and time was of the essence if we were to catch up the other three, who were heading for Midelt today.

Importing a vehicle in to Morocco is a serious affair: the details are recorded against your passport and you cannot leave without the vehicle you brought in. Import tax is very steep (someone mentioned 200%) so you really don’t want to have your vehicle stolen or left so that you cannot get it out again (more of that later). You are also assigned a Moroccan ID number, which is stamped in your passport and used on all the official paperwork, including your vehicle import forms and insurance paperwork, and is yours to keep for future visits.

The next challenge was finding vehicle insurance. The insurers in most European countries automatically extend cover to Morocco, but for some reason not many British insurers do. Our new friend offered to take us to the insurance office in Tetuoan [Tet-twan] – and with hindsight I’m quite glad he did.

Tetuoan is about 20km from Sebta, the Moroccan name for Ceuta, so our new friend jumped on the back of Gareth’s bike and off we went – him holding on to his cap with one hand and the bike with the other!

Before you visit a new place you often don’t know quite what to expect, and this was the case with Morocco. The main road from the Sebta border was a wide, two lane dual carriageway along the coast, with manicured lawns and flower beds, decorative street lights, and smart-looking houses, hotels and apartments. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. New places often have their own special smell, and the air was lightly scented with a fragrant fruity spicy smell, with just a hint of sewage.

All the guidebooks tell you that the official insurer is Axa, and to look for their blue sign – but obviously they lost the contract, because we discovered when they opened at 09.00 (Morocco stays on GMT all year, so in the summer is two hours behind Spain) that they couldn’t help.

We also made out first schoolboy error. The Moroccan currency is the Dirham. It isn’t a traded currency, you cannot take it out of the country, and the exchange rates are fixed by the government. But how much is a Dirham worth? We went to a cash machine and withdrew 300d each before discovering that insurance for a month is 950d…

Back to the cash machine then, and this time we took out 1000d each – which is £81. I also slipped up in that you are supposed to present your vehicle registration document to buy insurance, but all I had was my D16 import documents, passport and driving licence. Our friend had a word, and all was well!

The insurance is basic, third-party only, cover as required by Moroccan law, and makes in itself a nice memento. Again the cost of insurance is set by the government, as are the periods of cover available: one or two weeks, a month or three months. We were going to be there just over two weeks, so we took the month option.

Paperwork done, and the certificate neatly folded in to a wallet by the lady (I’m sure she must be a black-belt in origami), which was just the right size to hold your passport and D16 too, we set off back to the bikes. We’d left them in a secure, semi-underground car park, for the princely sum of 1€. When we arrived at the car park and our guide told us to ride in, we wondered what we were letting outselves in for – a very steep, curved concrete ramp and heavy bikes is an interesting combination, but there were plenty of vehicles in there, and they moved a couple to make sure the bikes were out of harms way.

The insurance office, banks and parking were in the old part of town, the Medina, with narrow streets and alleys, lots of people, shops, cars and very little in the way of directional signage. The two languages of Morocco are Arabic and French, plus Spanish in the north. Whilst I have a fighting chance with reading and understanding French or Spanish I really have no hope with Arabic, and whilst most signs are bilingual many are not. Wandering around the city centre as it woke (and warmed) up was a bit daunting. We both stuck out like sore thumbs, and not just because we were European.

Sweating profusely, we got back to the bikes, gave our new friend another 20€ and made ready to leave. We asked if we could take a photo, and he initially refused because he’s a Muslim, then he relented – as long as we didn’t put it on the Internet!

So with the border formalities out of the way, insurance purchased, Dirhams in our wallets and the rest of the day ahead, we set off in hot pursuit of the others.

To be continued…

The Big Adventure - Part 1

2010-05-12T19:37:00.006+01:00

It's May 2009 and the idea of trip somewhere on the bike takes root. My holiday calendar is already full for the year, but that means there's plenty of time to plan a trip in 2010.

The question is where to go? There are lots of interesting places to see and ride though but doing it on a hired bike just isn't the same as your own machine. Mainland Europe is convenient, but much of it has been done before. The 990 Adventure is a capable off-road bike, and wherever we went we wanted to be able to take advantage of that – why have it otherwise?

Gradually the idea of a trip to Iceland took shape: it's not too far away, many of the roads are marked as suitable for 4x4s only, it's not a particularly common destination and with volcanoes it was bound to have some amazing scenery.

Time passed and the big day dawned in April 2010: We boarded the aircraft and headed to collect the bikes... in southern Spain; destination Morocco!

Two weeks earlier we delivered our bikes, five KTM Adventures, to Southampton where they were to be taken to Cómpeta, not far from Malaga, on the Mediterranean coast. Between us we had the full range of KTM Adventure twins: A 950, two 990s, one 950S and one 990S. The S models have longer-travel suspension and, in the case of the 990, lack ABS.

The five members of the team were Gareth, Mark H, Mark L, Jason and me, Gordon. We knew each other, vaguely, through the UK KTM Forum but weren't what you might call best mates.

So to D-Day: our departure from Cómpeta, ride to Algeciras, ferry to Ceuta and ride to the Moroccan border.

The day dawned (eventually – we had an early start from our hotel at the airport) bright and sunny as we wound our way up in to the mountains. The bikes were in the care of local trail riding firm Redtread Honda, whose owners I've known for several years, and all five were there along with a mountain of luggage. Knowing that there are no KTM spares dealers in Morocco we decided to take some of the more commonly required parts with us: wheel bearings, fork seals, spokes etc. because it would be too bad to get stranded in Morocco for the want of a basic part.

As we shuffled things in to panniers, clipped them in place, got changed in to riding kit and wheeled the bikes out on to the drive, there was an air of quiet excitement.

Photo by Gareth Jones

I slotted the key in to the ignition, turned it, waited for the fuel injection and engine management systems to do their self-checks, pressed the starter, and nothing happened. Flat battery.

With all the people present, and a long downhill drive, bump-starting the bike seemed the easiest solution – so that's what we did. Unfortunately the bike had other ideas, and even once it was running it was clear something wasn't right. For some reason there wasn't enough power to run the fuel injection and keep the engine running, let alone put some extra charge in to the battery. It was a brand new battery too after similar problems in a very snowy Wales back in January.

We took the battery out, put it on charge, then did what any sane person would do in the circumstances: put the kettle on.

As the morning progressed, our plan to spend the first night in Morocco faded and we hatched another plan to spend the night near Algeciras and cross the Straits of Gibraltar the following day.

A few hours later, and (we hoped) with some fresh sparks in the battery, we tried again. It still needed a bump-start, but at least this time it kept running. We had already located the nearest KTM dealer (Malaga) and decided to call in there to see if they could give my bike the once-over.

The road down to the coast is one I have done many times in hire cars, and this time I was riding down it on my bike. The holiday had begun!

Rolling up outside the dealer, in an apparently trendy part of Malaga, we discovered that the workshop wasn't open on Saturdays. However my bike was now starting normally after a run along the Motorway, so we decided to push on and head for the ferry next morning.

Gareth's relatives own a villa in a gated development not far from the Gibraltar border and about an hour from Algeciras. After a very windy (alarmingly so at times) ride along the coastal Motorway, we found the house eventually, tucked away behind a tall hedge, and parked the five bikes in the garage before setting out to the supermarket for some dinner.

Spanish supermarkets aren't all that big on convenience foods, so we settled on a sort of pasta bolognaise with bread and beer for dinner. As the only proper meal of the day, it did the trick and we took an early night ready for tomorrow's sprint to the port.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, and still windy, and we packed ourselves away, wheeled out the bikes, I pressed the starter and... nothing happened. Bother.

For over an hour we pushed the bike up and down the road attempting to bump-start it, we took a battery from one of the other bikes and we also tried jump-starting it, but all to no avail. My 990 was going nowhere.

So what did we do? Wait for the dealer to open on Monday? Leave me in Spain while the others went ahead? Keep trying to get it going and carry on to Morocco?

In the end we split-up: Gareth very kindly agreed to stay with me in Spain in the hope that we could get my bike up and running at the local dealer on Monday, while the two Marks and Jason set a course for the ferry.

Feeling rather downhearted by this point I was coming to terms with the fact that this could be the end of my trip. Months of planning, and not a little money, gone to waste. Even if we did get the bike going again, would we be able to catch up the other guys? Had I inadvertently ruined Gareth's trip too?

Freelander Trial

2010-04-03T18:40:00.000+01:00

“A Freelander isn’t a proper Land Rover” is a comment I am sure we have all heard from time to time, and whilst we know they are very capable not everyone seems to be able to accept it. So of course I could not refuse the challenge issued by a friend, with several “proper” Land Rovers, to take part in a trial in my “beginners” Land Rover.

I suspect the intention was to prove that the Freelander cannot compete with other Land Rovers, so it was with a degree of apprehension that I headed off to Dunmow in Essex on a sunny Easter Saturday to join the Lea Valley Land Rover Owners’ Club for their Novice & Junior Trial.

A trial consists of a number of courses, eight in this case, laid out over rough terrain, each with ten gates, marked by pairs of poles, numbered from ten to one. The aim is to pass through all the gates in the correct sequence without touching them and without stopping. You score the number of the gate you either hit or do not reach: for example hit a pole at gate five and you score five points; clear gate five but get stuck before gate four and you score four – lowest score wins and a clear round scores zero.

The ground the courses were marked out on was mostly clay with a variety of humps, water-filled ditches and other features to challenge us. The clay in particular gave traction problems for all of the entrants and led to people running wide in places, or sliding downhill in to awkward corners (or gates!).

You are given the opportunity to walk the course before you drive it so that you can work out your strategy. In my case, never having done a trial before, I just tried to remember which way I was supposed to go, because stopping or losing forward motion ends your attempt.

Course one consisted of a series of axle-crossing humps, a water-splash, a couple of tight turns and finally a cross-camber climb over a mound. I was driver three, so at least I had the chance to watch a couple of people do it first. The humps were easy, the water-splash was very slippery but no problem for the Freelander, but the flat turn towards the final mound was also very slippery and I ran wide, clipping gate four.

In order to be fair to everyone, the sequence of drivers moves up two places for each course so that everyone gets to drive first as well as last. A fresh course is generally easier that one that has been chewed up by other competitors.

For the second course, that meant that driver three, me, was first to go and somehow I managed to miss everything until the last gate. There is a rule that as long as the hub of the front wheel is through the gate then that is enough to count as clearing it, and I stopped with my front wheel diagonally through gate one – unfortunately the clay came in to play and I slid forward just enough to touch one of the poles robbing me of a clear round. Bother!

By the end of the day I had a total score of twenty-three, which put me firmly in the middle of the rankings, earning me a Cadbury Crème Egg (well, it was Easter). James, a friend of mine who drives a Ford Ranger and gets even more grief than I do, was also driving my Freelander in the trial and he scored a lot less than me, putting him in the top five.

The other competitors in the Novice class were driving a mixture of Discovery, Series and Defender Land Rovers, and all the entrants in the Junior trial (for those under seventeen) drove the same Discovery. Being beaten hollow by boys and girls who have trouble seeing over the steering wheel and who are not yet old enough to hold a driving licence is rather humbling.

The talking point of the day though was how well the Freelander performed. Most people did not expect it to be able to complete the courses, but when it climbed effortlessly up a slope that had defeated a couple of other Land Rovers its off road ability was well and truly proven – although it did need rescuing at one point where a series of dips got a little too deep, leaving it beached on its sills. A slightly different line through them, as James later demonstrated, would have made all the difference.

My Freelander, a 2005 Td4, has been modified with a two-inch lift, rock sliders, Mantec sump-guard, twin front recovery points and is fitted with General AT² tyres.

This story has also appeared in the June 2010 issue of the Freelander Club magazine "Freelandering".