All Aboard

The Pont Aven. Brittany Ferries.

We made it without having to call on International Rescue, the Red Cross or the UN. Hurrah! A successful expedition, and all we have to do now is negotiate the traffic at Spaghetti Junction and we’re almost home. Another 619 driving miles will see us back in Moray. To put that into perspective, it’s 1007 miles from the top of Spain to the bottom. There are many advantages to living in the Highlands, but access to Europe and sun ain’t one of ‘em.

Northern Spain is a beautiful place and we saw a bit more of it yesterday as we drove the N623 through the mountains from Burgos to Santander. We’d have been more impressed, I’m sure, if the clouds had lifted just a little more to enable us to see more than we did. As it was, the limestone gorge that features large on this route is worth a study in itself, and the possibilities for some really stunning photography are there, just waiting for the bloody rain to stop. It just honked down for the entire drive. As we had no idea how spectacularly picturesque this route would be, the “hill fog” –read really low cloud with a visibility in tens of feet – didn’t leave us disappointed until we popped out of the bottom of it on the northern side and looked back…This valley has got to rate a 5-star rosette in any list of Europe’s “Must See” places, but we’ve not seen it highlighted anywhere we can recall. Think of the Grand Canyon in miniature, but with roads and villages at the bottom, waterfalls, rock architecture that was built tens of millions of years ago and all there to see for free. What we saw of it was through rain-streaked windows and, to our regret, we didn’t stop to take it all in –that which we could see. I remember reading an American author describing this kind of experience as if he was sitting in an Imax cinema watching a wrap-around movie, only the screen was his windshield, the “movie” was him and the film was standing still. If he wanted to experience it “for real”, like Imax tries to imitate, all he had to do was stop and get out. Next time, we will. We owe it to the landscape and ourselves.

Our chosen nightstop was almost uninhabited. It took us ten minutes to get some interest from the Management, who turned out, once they appeared, to be Romanian. We were the only customers, which probably explains the lack of staff at recepcion. Once we’d found someone to talk to, we were invited to pick our place –anywhere. The site probably had space for several hundred people like us, and was pristine – and I mean sparkling. Most sites at ferry ports tend to be a little Spartan, given that the clientele only stay for one night and arrive too late to appreciate anything more than a place to pee into porcelain. Camping Virgen Del Mar is in a much finer category. Recommended. A pity about the dogs though….

Later in the day a German couple in another of those 30-foot plus campervans turned up. We amused ourselves watching their attempts to reverse this battleship into a space designed for a corvette, and then the palaver of levelling, plugging, plumbing, hanging out the window boxes and generally converting a wheeled shipping container into a condominium. Once all this is done they undoubtedly have a Home From Home, but surely the point of leaving home is to….OK, I’ll stop there before someone else tells me “I’m rather negative”.

However, I can’t let this go without saying something about the Sport of Watching Other People Set-Up Camp. We know five-eighths of f*ck-all about campervans, so our opinion on their use counts for nothing. I do, though, recall watching a couple arrive at a campsite in the Netherlands many years ago. They emptied a bag of canvas and steel poles out of their car and then proceeded, not to try to put it together in the shape of a tent, but to set up 2 folding chairs and a table onto which they placed several cans of beer, which they commenced getting on the outside of. After ten minutes or so, a Dutch chap who’d noticed this pile of tent-in-kit-form came over and, to cut a long story short, put it up for them. Helped by three other similarly helpful experts from close by. Lesson learned. Wherever you are in the world, there’ll always be a Helpful Cloggie nearby….rest and be thankful. And if that’s screwed it up for everybody who isn’t Dutch and who hasn’t rehearsed tent erection before leaving home, I’m sorry (but no-one from the Netherlands is reading this….).

As last time, we arrived at the ferry port with plenty of time to spare and put the kettle on. Looking around it seemed that we were the only vehicle in the lines that wasn’t either a smart, shiny and expensive saloon or another of the above mentioned Battlebuses.

We haven’t seen many fellow travellers during our time in Morocco and put this down to the fact that we weren’t using campsites very often and were well off the beaten track most of the time. In fact, I don’t believe there are as many “people like us” this year. I think we’ve seen 2 other 4x4s with obviously - from the kit on board – the same idea as us during the last 6 weeks, and one of those was in the ferry queue at Portsmouth. This was Charles and Yvonne, supporting a Landrover Challenge event, which had, I think, two other participants. The rest had pulled out for reasons that seemed to be security-related. In other words, people are scared they’ll get killed by terrorists. Fair enough, if that’s your view, but we reckon there’s more risk to life and limb in some of our “safe” cities than there’ll be anywhere in Morocco. “But terrorists have come from Morocco” is apparently one reason for avoiding the place. It’s a true statement. So is “and also from Bradford, Birmingham and Leicester.” ...and, as far as I'm aware, the populations of those cities haven't started heading for the hills in terror. Yet. For what it's worth, we were expecting to see a few police/military vehicle checkpoints in the southern areas near the Algerian border but in fact there was a very strong and very obvious police presence throughout the country. At one point we were stopped and given the "third degree" (but very politely) on four occasions in as many miles. The security at Tangier Med port was equally tight with Daphne being given a Whole Body CT scan as well as a physical going-over. To believe that a visitor is at risk in Morocco is to completely ignore the evidence to the contrary. While we were involved in quite a few altercations with the local youths we were never threatened nor felt so. There's more to say on that point and we'll explore our feelings a bit more before we add to this aspect of a "post mortem".

As the queues of cars began to move, one shiny Volvo 4x4 wasn’t. I could see his lights flashing on and off as he tried to crank the engine, but wasn’t making any noise. Last year we towed a crippled VW Campervan onto the same ferry, so I was quite happy to offer the same help to this chap. Unfortunately, he was stuck; the computer chip in the Engine Management System had “detected a fault” with his parking brake. In the “interests of safety”, therefore, it had completely immobilised the ignition until the fault was reset. For which you need another computer. Brilliant. Added to that, the car had an automatic gearbox, so towing him on board wasn’t an option. Well and truly stuffed by the Smart Tech. Another good reason to stick to Meccano technology, apart from the fact that computers aren’t as responsive to big hammers as most of our 300Tdi. As we left the dock he was still where we’d left him, alone in the now empty carpark.

So now we're enjoying a sunny and calm crossing of the North Atlantic with Portugal somewhere off to the right. The ship's wi-fi isn't worth a damn - this is becoming a recurrent theme, innit? - so it may be that this post and the pictures that go with it won't make it off the deck and will have to wait until later. I guess, too, that the point of the blog is now blunted - we're almost home. We did think about closing down a few days ago; after all, who wants to read about a road trip up the M6? There's still a little more to say and obviously Daph is in need of a thorough overhaul, which might be of interest to the other Landrover geek who might still be reading this. We'll also try to add some stuff about the daily minutiae of life off-grid in places that are only just on-grid themselves. Not quite an adventure into the Dark Continent, but the closest we're ever likely to get - short of a weekend in Durness. 

Spanish steps.

 (Composed in Burgos on 23rd but sent from the Bay of Biscay on 26th.....Internet?What's that then?)

Title: Spanish Steps. Quite a few. Wet ones. You need to take more when trying to avoid the puddles.

We’re taking a few days longer to cover the distance between Algeciras and Santander than we really need, just to wind down a little. The motorway hasn’t got a lot of interest and the small diversions from it, to explore possible camping sites, even less. The weather is changing too. A few days ago the temperature was in the mid-twenties, now it’s barely breaking double figures some of the time. The clothes we stuffed “upstairs” some weeks ago will make a re-appearance tomorrow, methinks. Something more appropriate for the Northern European climate in late Spring…thermal underwear and woolly shirts…I bet you buggers in Oz are laughing, but just remember where you came from and who subsidised the cheap ticket, and why we wanted to….

So, back to business. We managed to send the last missive courtesy of the well-appointed and, in many ways, excellent site in the Parc Nacional de Monfrague. The facilities at most European sites are excellent and the Home Market could do with a bit of a wake-up call where this is concerned. Back in the UK, sites charge far too much for too little compared with the EU “mainland”. Last night we enjoyed sparkling-clean washrooms, loos and showers. The internet allowed us to update this blog and the site appeared ideal. Until 02-30, when the resident hound decided to serenade us. For 4 hours. Our complaint this morning (23^rd April) brought forth the excuse that the offender “belonged to the tinkers who are close by”. ‘Scuse my French, as they say, but that’s b*llocks. We saw the offending canine being exercised by the site owners in the carpark. Almost a “Pythonesque moment”, with the staff trying to block out the view through the windows. “Chiens? Oh non, monsieur, pas de chiens ici. Oh, that un? Ce n’est pas un chien, c’est un Shetland Pony, avec le short nose and long hair. Bien Sur!” No “tinkers” within earshot or, in my case, rock-range. And I did consider it at 0400…Despite the window-dressing, all we really need from a campsite that we have to pay for is a quiet night and a hot shower. We got half of that last night.

So here we are in Burgos, at the same site we used on the way down. An easy drive to the port at Santander. It’s still soggy and the girl at reception advised us to “keep one wheel on the tarmac so you can get out tomorrow”. It’s certainly damp. We haven’t been keeping much of an eye on the northern European weather this past month so the waterlogged fields weren’t expected. No matter; we have a go-anywhere vehicle. Mashi mushkil. We’ve attracted some glances – or raised eyebrows -  as we drove in tonight – all “clarted up” as they say at home, with mud up the doors and over the bonnet, everything looking as if we’d just been around the world picking out the dirtiest bits. Actually, we took a side road a few miles back to explore a camping spot that turned out to be a quarry, complete with deep muddy puddles and lots of airborne slurry –at least it was as we went through it. So now we look as if we’ve just clambered out of the Quattara Depression…all we need is a sticker saying “We’ve seen the Ends of the Earth, and rolled in them”. Still, we’ll play the game for a while. Just about every rig on this site is at least 30 feet long and very Well Appointed. All the comforts of home. On wheels. The ladies on board seem very happy with that, with pot plants in the windows and all the rest of it; the blokes all look at Daphne and you can read their thoughts in their eyes…You feel like saying something like “Pull up a sandbag, mate, and I’ll bore you with a Boy’s Own Story”. I bet they’d listen, too.

Tomorrow we’ll do the last leg up to Santander and wait for the ferry on Monday. The 24-hour “layover” was built into the plan to cater for breakdowns etc so, touch wood, we’ll have some time to clean up and restock with cheap vino before we depart for the UK. If the next site has wi-fi..Well, actually, I don’t give a toss. Tomorrow night is going to be spent in the pub, or whatever passes for it, celebrating our safe return. And if that’s not tempting fate, I dunno what is.

A Week? Has it really....?

...been that long? Sue's just been refreshing my memory using the Ship's Log, and there's a bit of catching up to do! The main reason for our long silence isn't because we couldn't be bothered, even though that might be a natural reaction to being on the Homebound leg. Fact is, we've been denied any decent internet connection for almost a week. A Web Log requires T'Interweb to work, and we haven't had it. This wasn't unusual in the Deep South of Morocco, but we expected to be better supplied with connections as we moved north. While other things might be in greater supply, wi-fi isn't one of them. Nor are wild camping opportunities. With the latter being the case, we were forced to explore commercial campsites. We have a "guide" to these, but a lot have closed since the guide was written. Helpfully, the publishers have decided not to publish an updated edition, but made the amendments to the book available on-line. This, of course, requires T'Interweb access. Which we didn't have. The result is that we spent some time chasing the proverbial wild geese around and about a number of Moroccan towns, finding the objects of our searches abandoned, weed-grown and with gates rusted shut. These might have provided attractive off-grid camping spots, but the usual residents wouldn't have made good company...leave that to your imagination. On one occasion we decided to take a rough track up into the hills but with no positive result other than to practice our Arabic with a rather irate local who was of the opinion that we must be blind. Could we not see that this was a field, not a campsite? I think that's what he said, anyway; we made our excuses and left, as they used to say in the News of the World.

So... we  left the "picnic site" camp on Sunday 17th and made our way north. The roads continued to be what might be described as "requiring sustained interest", with a great view - yawn..not another great view?...around every bend in the road. And there were quite a few. Our plan was to go north along the B-roads as far as Meknes, where the information we had suggested a couple of campsites might be available if other options didn't materialise. We passed through Khenifra and Azrou, stopping for fuel and provisions. As the day went on, the "other options", ie wild camps, seemed to be impossible to spot. In contrast to the landscape on the other side of the Atlas, everything on the northern side seems to be owned, fenced off or impossibly vertical. Oh well...having spent longer than we can remember just stopping somewhere convenient, we're now back to "civilised reality" and will have to behave ourselves.

Being on the "proper" roads now, the traffic hazards we had in the hills and further south have been replacd with others. We're wary of Moroccan traffic habits now, and Defensive Driving is the way to go. The locals don't bother with those niceties, though, but no-one seems to come to much harm so perhaps we're too sensitive. There's still the livestock wandering about and the flocks of sheep and goats are now mixed in with the trikes and overloaded carts, weaving mopeds, staggering Mercedes vans and arrogant taxis. Sometimes on the correct side of the road, sometimes not. As I said before, "requiring sustained interest".

 This poor chap - and I don't mean the guy dozing off - had three passengers, a load of shopping and several items of furniture on board. Try getting Tesco to deliver that lot and give you a lift home to boot.

Keeping an eye on the traffic sometimes takes the attention away from other things, though, and we were stopped by a young and very smart Gendarme who, it transpired, had clocked us speeding - 68kph in a 60 limit. I thought that this was a little "enthusiastic" of him, but as we presented all of our "papers" it became clear that he thought Sue was the driver. I'd handed over all my documents, pre-packaged for such an event as this. He didn't see his mistake until, having demanded the "driver licence paper, not this one", I looked suitably apologetic as I tapped the steering wheel in front of me...he let us off with a finger-wagging. We're not left-hand drive!

With weather and now time against us we decided to kiss off the planned exploration of central Meknes for a campsite that might not exist, and made for a "banker"; one that we'd used before near Moulay Idriss. The guardien remembered us, we recalled the fact that the last time we'd seen him was as we paid the bill the day we'd left and he was, in between doing the invoice, alternatively turning himself inside out over a bucket having contracted some bug or other. This was our first contact with "civilised" camping for nearly two weeks, and we both appreciated the hot water and porcelain sinks, amongst other things...It was so comfortable that we decided to declare a "Sunday" on the following morning and have a day off, our first since Figuig nearly 3 weeks before. Don't time fly when you're having fun? In fact, we'd have done this much earlier if we hadn't been fighting the desert wind so much.

This really was a dried camel pat - and they burn red hot!

With over a day to relax, we had the chance to do some overdue maintenance on Daphne, sweep out some of the dust from inside, and use the woodburning stove for the first time. We brought this little beast along because it was useful on previous trips and gives a nice homely feel to a camp. Provided you're not being blown off the surface of the planet, that is, when the last thing you wanna be doing is messing about outside - shemagh, goggles or not. So the prize for Most Useless Item We Should've Left in the Shed goes to our little stove, but we'd probably bring it again 'cos when you can light it, it's just brilliant! I can't say the same for the windbreak, though. This much-trialled feature works well back home, but it needs the awning poles for support. If it's too windy for the awning to stand up, you don't get a windbreak...doh! Anyway, we cooked supper on the stove and had to stand well back from the heat.

One of the major advantages of wild camps is that you get to choose, pretty much, who your neighbours are. Ideally none within a large number of miles. Not only does this remove the likelihood of Fat Frenchmen snoring all night, but also the chance of packs of feral dogs shouting at each other all night too. The FF was boxed up in a hard-shell rooftent (equals lots of vibrato) and I knew he'd be noisy so we parked as far from him and his mates as we could. It wasn't far enough. The dogs, too, displayed their usual ignorance of human sleeping requirements and gave it max all night. It does have a pattern though. At about 11-30, Fido starts an argument with Towser. They wrangle loudly for a minute or two, then Spot joins in. The stakes now raised, so are the voices, and the occupants of the next lair, Rover and Rex, add their opinion. This escalates into a full-blown Loose Women, Let's All Talk At Once shouting match until, suddenly, they stop. This is almost as if either 1. they've all been struck by lightning or 2. you been suddenly struck stone deaf. In your half-awake state you sigh with relief and begin to drift off to sleep....Then there's a tentative, barely audible woof........woof......and then.....wait for it.......
BARKWOOFWOOFGRRRSNARLBARKWOOFBARKHOOWWWLLLL and the whole cacophony begins again. Until 0430, then it suddenly and reliably stops. Dead. Two minutes later the first cockerel starts up and by the time he's in full song the muezzin, with four tape-fed loudspeakers per tower, gets the Muslim day going. I tell yer, if they don't use alcohol to get some sleep, I'd like to buy some of the alternative....Then the thunder started.

Our Rest Day didn't include access to the internet, so Mike got bored after doing the greasy jobs on Daph and set up a radio mast in an attempt to snare some broadband. We managed to get something, but not enough to be useful. We spent the evening huddled around the stove - we're now in a much cooler climate with rain and overcast cloud - and listening to an argument going on in the team of French off-road racers that arrived earlier. Sue wasn't impressed to find a bunch of pot-bellied hairy frogs in the ladies showers, but once she'd seen off the pond life the French blokes were still in there, shouting at each other.

Once out of Camping Belle Vue the next day, we debated the merits of another nightstop in Morocco and the early ferry on Thursday, but with no campsites within striking distance of the port we decided to catch the late afternoon boat and be in Spain a day earlier than we'd planned. Oh, and the campsite we'd planned to use had tumbleweed and rusty gates, again. Arriving at the ferry check-in we found the ticket office for our carrier closed, with two of the uniformed employees lounging about outside. There was also a small group of other hopeful travellers loitering. The Uniformed Blokes suggested that the office would be open in 15 minutes. That's a Moroccan 15, of course, so Mike returned to Daphne and Sue for a cuppa. A return visit, 30 minutes later, produced an estimate of "5 minutes".
Watching the queue from Daphne some 30 minutes later, it's obvious that Something Is Happening in the office. The former queue has dispersed in disgust from the looks on their faces (they were Germans, after all) and the Uniformed Blokes are still there. One of them is now sitting on the railings outside the office, having a fag. His mate apologises for the delay, says the office is now open but would I mind waiting while the other Uniformed Bloke - the one who can write, presumably - finishes his cigarette, having just had a demanding five minutes work to issue the Germans their tickets? How shall I put this....? The suggestion was declined and we got our tickets toute, as they say, sweet.

Now we're in Spain, again. Not much to say except that it's a bit warmer than the last time we were here, although nothing else has improved. My pet hate this trip has got to be the Free Wi-Fi trick. You get what you pay for, they say, and we've no problem with paying for something we need, like a hot shower. And wi-fi. Now, if the tariff advertises these things are extra, we pay and expect to get what we pay for. If, on the other hand, they're advertised as "free" you can bet your backside that they exist, but only for 20 minutes a day or with a bandwidth so narrow you couldn't slide a piece of paper between the endstops. Sideways. Pah! I'm just off for a shower, and it's better be 'ot, or there'll be bother.

Eastbound

Alcohol. We need a resupply, at least, some of us do. The rest of the team has a reserve supply in the form of Fourby. Remember him? Barry the Bloody Beer Barrel. Tonight, we punched his head and pulled out his tongue, having given him a good chilling all day as we tootled along. I can announce with confidence that at least some of us are content that our needs have been met. Not a bad pint, considering what it’s been through over the last month. Sue is finishing the San Miguel and looking forward to a visit to the wine shop in Ouarzazate tomorrow. I hope to God it’s open…

Today’s been a relaxing bimble along the backroads, with spectacular views over the valleys towards the High Atlas. You’re probably getting a bit bored with all the superlatives, but there’s not a lot that compares with this place, given that it’s all so close together. We’ve seen deeper gorges, twistier roads, higher mountains, bigger dunes but never all within 3 hours drive of each other. Today we squirmed our way up and down over miles of mountain roads, going 5 miles side-to-side to make one mile of real forward progress. The trouble, though, with all this scenery, is that eventually it starts to become a bit repetitive. You can have only so much of a Good Thing. The Law of Diminishing Returns. I did that at “O” – Level. Gives away a lot, right? It also makes picking the best shots for this blog a time-consuming process, so be prepared for revisions when we have more time to be selective. In the meantime, here’s a cross-section of what we’ve seen today:

You’ll perhaps notice how, if we don’t include a bit of Daphne in the picture, there’s nothing from which to get scale or perspective. Take the picture of the “big rocks” for instance. These boulders were just lying about by the side of the road. And they were bigger than the average house. Not cliffs, mind, but just bloody huge stones, just lying about. So, if you’re getting fed up with seeing apparently gratuitous views of a wasp-coloured Landrover or bits of it in every shot, like That Annoying Bloke at the office party, it’s for a good reason.

Once again, though, the need to shelter from the wind became a focus of attention as we approached the time when we’ll start arguing over nothing because we’re both knackered. Mike’s been driving all day on roads that require constant attention or we’ll just overshoot a bend and undershoot our retirement dates. Sue’s been navigating and doing the en-route housekeeping – feeding the driver sweets and water, mainly, as well as some knitting. (What?) And the Ship’s Log, of course, without which this record would be much harder to complete.

So, a generally uneventful day. Not so for one unfortunate in a sporty black hatchback who roared past us on a long uphill stretch this morning. We stopped for lunch and caught him up some miles down the road. He was (the car, that is) upside down on the wrong side of the road. The two occupants – or rather, former occupants - were sitting rather dejectedly alongside while a local chap who’d stopped to help was on the phone. It had obviously happened just before we arrived on the scene. We offered help, but none was required. An expensive end to their Day of Rest. It’s Friday, right? The roads and village streets were full of people in their “Sunday” clothes, taking the air, going to the mosque, generally socialising. Normally we can drive through a village and see no-one, and very few in some towns. On Friday, it’s like someone’s kicked over an anthill…

Saturday morning, and we notice Daph’s rear end is leaking from another place now – the aft differential gearbox. Nothing much, but there’s a trail of oil coming from the filler plug and now wetting the bottom of the housing. It’s not possible to tell how much has gone, but probably, looking at the casing, very little. We upsticks and drive into the nearest town to get some EP90. No, monsieur, it doesn’t come in a plastic bottle with a handy pull-out filler tube like you ‘ave at’ome. If it’s difficile, vous avez besoin d’un mechanique et deep pockets.

We  - that is, Mike, gets underneath with the oil, now in the bottle previously used for brake fluid and the best – in fact only – kitchen funnel. This has been pronounced perfect for the job, and the oil – not a lot, as we expected – is added.

 Now the fun bit:

As Mike is replacing the filler plug, it screws in a bit farther than normal. Ever curious, he screws it in a little further, expecting it to come up against resistance as it gets tight. It doesn’t. Instead, it screws “itself” right out of the other side of the casing….Mike is now left with the socket extension bar, with the plug loosely attached to the end of it and basically hanging free inside the box. If it comes off, it’ll drop into the diff gears and we’re, as they say, stuffed.

Mike says that at this point he felt like a Bomb Disposal Officer must feel when he realises he’s just lifted a pressure switch on a booby trap, and the day is about to be spoilt. Without being able to see clearly inside the hole, he now manages to reverse the screw-in to a screw-out, engaging the thread in reverse without pulling the plug off the socket bar. If it'd come off inside the casing.... A very delicate operation which is unusual for a Landrover. This takes a very tense few minutes as the thread binds – does he turn it back “in”, or hope for the best and carry on turning “out”….? He was, of course, successful, but it was a knifedge thing. Big sigh of relief!!!

We’re now in Ouarzazate and have performed the promised raid on the Pop Shop. Fifty quid lighter but we’ve earned it….I don’t think I’ll be doing any of this writing stuff tonight, somehow. Hic.



24 hours on.

A new day. 17th April. 24 hours later and we’re sitting by a river below a dam, having crossed the Atlas Mountains via a number of tortuous, steep and single track roads. The upper parts of these are obviously being bombarded by rocks the size of garden sheds from several hundred metres above, and the results are plain to see in that the road surface, once smooth, is now like the face of a teenager – scarred, full of holes and with the odd patch of makeup to disguise the damage beneath. On occasions we’re back onto an unmade surface and working around bits of road that are now just air, with a drop of almost 2000 feet to the next hard bit.

There are two major passes through the Atlas, which we – predictably, I suppose – ignored, and decided on a less-used but equally scenic alternative. The problem with routes like these is that they tend to cling to the edge of the hillsides with little option for taking a side-road and camping. There are no flat bits. Sue noticed a comms mast and correctly guessed that there would be an access track and a “flat bit” where we could park up, and so it was. A little closer to the road than we’d like, but good enough at a pinch. After all, we had the benefit of some wine to ease the pain, and once the sun went down there was little, if any, traffic. For the first time in many nights there was no wind so we slept well apart from a momentary awakening at about 3 am as a rain shower passed through – yep…we’re back in a European climate. A night at about 7000 feet above sea level, and it’s a bit chillier than we’ve been used to.

Today we decided to take a slower drive through the scenery, taking in the Sunday Souk at Demnate and the famous waterfall at Ouzoud. The latter was a typical –by any standards – tourist “tick” with all the trappings that you’d expect. As it was Sunday, the World and his wife n'kids were having a day out, and we met them all at the falls. These were indeed a spectacular sight - the little brown "blobs" than you can see at the centre left of the picture are boats full of people, quite a way below us. The way to the bottom was a winding and very steep path, lined the whle way with kebab stalls, trinket shops and the equivalent of our seaside postcard shops. Since they were all selling much the same stuff it makes you wonder why they bother, or maybe it's another one of those fabled "co-operatives", where they all pool their takings at the end of the day...? No, I don't think so, either.

But the souk was a revelation, in that the Moroccan way of markets is a bit different, to say the least. How the individual merchants compete with each other is hard to understand…there’s a site covering perhaps 3 acres, with stalls selling pretty much everything and all grouped together according to what’s for sale. This means that all the fruit and veg is in one area, all looks the same in quality (variable) and is all much the same price. How do the locals decide where and what to buy?

And what to buy? If you want a chick to raise as a chicken, you choose your own, of course. But what criteria do you use? There is clearly a yardstick, but having watched a number of savvy housewives making their choices, we couldn’t see that there was any difference.

This contrasted with some of the stuff for sale at the roadside. The twisting mountain roads would suggest that there’s no habitation within walking distance, but on every hairpin bend there’s a kid or maybe several, all trying to sell a bunch of flowers, or herbs, or a bag of nuts. Apparently miles from anywhere. Have these waifs been dropped off by a parent in order to drum up a few Dirham from the “passing trade”, or is this their way of making pocket money? Whatever, the abuse we get as we pass by without stopping suggests they’re no strangers to the game. We have some views on this, and perhaps in a future post we’ll expand on these, but at the moment it’s just p*ssing us off! The result is that we are inclined to avoid any contact with the locals we meet, which, of course, is the complete opposite of what we want. The kids are the main culprits along the road, but we've had some interesting exchanges with adult visitors to our desert camps, too.

In the meantime, we're getting used to the other stuff that makes driving here "interesting". Given that the roads are generally pretty rough - the tarmac, if it exists at all, is potholed, crumbling at the edges and generally dodgy. At best, it's only one vehicle width, so passing traffic has to move over a bit - half on, half off; and if your half happens to have a sheer drop down one side, that's just too bad. So, one would expect that drivers would treat this hazardous situation with appropriate respect, right? Wrong. At least, not the respect that we expected.

 The truck shown above was a one-off, or rather, a one-on. Most of them had at least three blokes riding on top, and one we passed had about ten, plus the rather loose-looking load tied on with ratty string - no pussy ratchet straps here!

Now we're into the mountains - the Middle-Atlas - and making progress is slow but always interesting. We looked out for a good camping spot for an hour but there was nothing flat enough for a bivi-bag, let alone our set-up, so we felt driven to find a "proper" campsite for a change. The only one on the map was miles up a winding mountain road and turned out to be closed. Luckily we spotted an olive grove many hundreds of feet below us in which there seemed to be a lot of cars and picnickers...eventually we found a way down to it and had a very pleasant night next to a stream that trickled out of the tailraces of a huge dam. The gorge we were camped in must've been really impressive before the top half was filled with water.

As it was, we were spared the normal nightly gale and once the Sunday strollers had packed up, we were virtually alone. I say "virtually" because there was one old chap wandering about who stopped for a chat. We had a good natter in a mix of languages and Sue felt really pleasd that we'd managed to have a "civilised" exchange with someone without being asked for a donation to his personal enrichment fund. Later, while eating supper, the Old Chap turned up again...
Having turned down his request for "Wahed Uro" (one euro) "For what?" we couldn't get an answer to, he stomped off into the darkness, muttering under his breath. Sigh....Oh well!

14 April - Ait Mansour gorges

Another slow connection, so the pictures for this post and the next will have to wait until later - Inshallah!

It’s still bloody windy. That’s mainly the reason why this post will be a bit “compressed” in terms of a diary, because we just haven’t been able to do anything in the evenings because of the howling gale that whips past the campsite every night. I’d hoped that, when the sun went down, things would get a bit quieter – hurricane-wise – than during the day, when it seems to be blowing 40 knots all the time. This gets a bit wearing after a while, but if we’re mobile it doesn’t much matter. It’s only when we stop that it becomes an immediate issue….is the open door into wind? If so, will it blow the gas flame out? Parking for lunch now has an extra element to be considered – not just a great view, no other traffic, no inquisitive local colour…now it’s “and where’s the wind coming from?”.

The argan tree lunch stop. No goats. They climb them for the fruit and spit out the (valuable) nuts, apparently.

Anyway, back to the saga. We travelled up from Smara on the tarmac to Layounne, then back into the wilds around Sabkhat Tar. You got that bit, I hope? Escaping from that area the following day took ages. The scale of the map hid the enormous size of the salt lake, and we spent all morning getting back to the road, having gone right around the eastern side of it.

Every time we crested a ridge we expected to see some sign of our destination – the tarmac – but it was just like one of those convex hills you might walk up – and up – and up – and the summit seems to be ever just out of sight. The track was interesting and quite demanding at times, with a varied content – some dunes, some gnarly rocky descents, some fast sections of sand where we hit 60 mph, where other bits had us crawling along at 5.

Eventually making solid ground, we had a quick check over the truck. The “cap and condom” fix to the oily wheel appears to have worked. Either that, or the diff has run out of oil. A bolt that holds the kitchen in place has sheared off flush with it’s nut, so not much we can do except hope it doesn’t all fall apart – the kitchen, that is. I was quite pleased that I’d managed to design a system that was only held in by two bolts. Easy to take out. Easy to bust, too. A redesign required, methinks. I greased the door catches as they were beginning to get difficult to open. Sue is now moaning that the bedding is getting greasy marks from when we hang them over the doors to air. Can’t bloody win! The fridge was dead when we parked yesterday; a fuse had blown in the split charge system so this was a quick fix. What I must do, though, is have some kind of remote telltale on the dash that the fridge power has failed. Warm beer would be a disaster!

At Tarfaya, we took to the tracks again and looked for somewhere to sleep. This was an aborted attempt. The wind – given that we were on the clifftop – was “fresh”, and we’ve had enough of that, and the air was cool and damp. We wasted 40 minutes on this experiment, then cleared off inland, looking for a gentler breeze and drier air.

Eventually we made it to Tan Tan, now from the opposite direction from which we’d seen it on previous occasions.

On the way, we’d picked up the coastal highway and had a good sniff of ozone – and local garbage.

At home, picturesque views of the sea are generally policed by a local government parking attendant who’ll ensure that not only you’ll Pay Per View but also take your litter home with you. The locked gates deter the flytippers and even though we might object to having to pay, at least we don’t have to pick our way through old beds and dead dogs to get to the beach. Here, no such controls are in place, so the view is free. So, apparently, is the right to dump the contents of your picnic hamper on the ground before you go home. Or your old shoes, tin cans and any other detritus you might feel is surplus to your requirements. In short, everywhere we looked there was rubbish. We’ve got used to the fields of “blue flowers” – plastic bags – that grow downwind of every town – but when you get up close and personal with this stuff, you don’t want to hang about.

Refuelled with diesel and in need of a beer, we left the road just north of the town in an area we’d explored last year. The wind didn’t drop until we’d made an early night of it and closed the hatches at 9pm. 

Another minor fix - a tent peg reinforcement to a bent strut.

I threatened Sue that I’d be waking her at 5 to see the Milky Way. Back home, it’s visible as a barely-definable smudge in the night sky. Here, it’s as if some giant hand has taken an aerosol and sprayed a pale grey stripe across the sky. It’s really clear and bright, as is everything else up there. We brought our Radio Times Sky at Night pull-out-and-keep souvenir with us, and used it to identify the things that Prof. Brian Cox talks about but nobody really has a clue where to find them. And when you see it all as clearly as we did the other night, you realise how much more is Out There.

We spent today (Thursday 15 th April) making our way northeast via as much scenery as we could join together. The first couple of hours was boring blacktop; boring in terms of “select 5^th gear and point it straight”, but as usual there was lots to see and comment on along the way. The three hours between Tan Tan and Guelmin was spent marvelling at the ability of the local truckers to pile more stuff on their vehicles than would ever be legal at home. We spotted, way ahead of us, what was either a two-tone double-decker bus or a removal van. White on top, blue lower down. As we got closer it revealed itself to be a Ford Transit van – or the Peugeot equivalent – finished in Grubby Blue, with a rectangular load on the roof retained by a white tarp. The load was bigger than the van, and with the beam wind, he was having to keep a lot of rudder on to counter the tendency to leave the road on the downwind side. This meant we spent an amusing – no, make that frustrating – ten minutes trying to get him off the middle of the road.

There wasn’t a single petrol station for the entire distance of 110 kms. There was one tiny village that seemed to exist purely to offer for sale diesel in 5 litre plastic former water bottles – every roadside establishment in the entire place was selling “gaswl”. The closest we got to seeing a “proper” service station was this:

 Overload truck

Into Guelmin for shopping – groceries and poultry for the next 3 days in the Wilderness. A successful foray, mildly upset by the reaction of a shopkeeper who noticed from 30 metres away that Mike was photographing the street in which his shop stood, amongst many others. While we couldn’t hear what he was shouting at us over Daphne’s grumbling 2500cc, it was clear that he objected. To what? That he happened to be in the focal plane of a tourist doing what tourists do? It wasn’t as if we were making a portrait of him without permission, for which he might well be justified in his objections. “Man with an ego problem”, we thought. We’ll take our money elsewhere, perhaps?

After a late lunch, hiding under an Argan tree (no climbing goats to be seen) We managed to tie some off-road tracks to the tarmac and made it to the Gorges of Ait Mansour for the night, via a dry river bed that made Mike grateful he’d invested in some bash plates for Daphne’s vulnerable bits.

These gorges are quite spectacular in all sorts of ways. There are two other gorge systems that are much more well known, but we’ve been to both and were reminded of the sort of Tourist Traps that places like this can become. Todra Gorge, for example, is a procession of souvenir stalls and touts. Not so here. If you wanted to sum up Morocco in ten miles, this is the place.

 Palm groves, sandy tracks, mountain scenery, mud brick buildings in villages clinging to the rock by their fingernails….Sue described it as “Disneyland”, as there’s everything here that you’d ….b*llocks! The bloody wind has just blown my beer over, and there’s only three left! Right, that’s enough of this for one night. There’s only so much I’m prepared to suffer for the sake of this blog, and I’ve just reached the limit. Good Night.