We're two thousand light years from home...

...Seen you on Aldebaran, safe on the green desert sand...

With apologies to the Stones, but that line has been running through my head for the last 3 days. We're only just over 2000  miles from our back door, but it feels like we're in another millenium. Quite apart from the contrast in culture and lifestyles, look up at the stars and you could believe that you're also on another planet... 

I thought that our sky at home was pretty clear, but compared to what you can see in the night sky down here, we live in a fog. No wonder the Arabs got to name most of the stars before the Western cultures got out of bed - the night is just full of them. By way of illustration, just take an A4 sheet of black paper and a thimble-full of table salt. Sprinkle the salt on the paper...Moroccan Sky At Night. I've tried to photograph it but unless you've got some kind of fancy turntable that'll keep pace with the Earth's spin, it's a waste of time. We just sit here and marvel at it all....

We're currently holed up in a campsite (boo...hiss...) in Ouarzazarte, hiding from a howling gale. And taking the opportunity to do the laundry. Given the draught, it won't take long to dry.

We wouldn't be here otherwise. 3 nights of wild camping are behind us, and we've never slept so well. Clear air, tent wide open to the stars, and a silence so profound it almost hurts. It must be like this, being stone deaf. Not a light showing anywhere except overhead, not a sound, not even a breeze for the first 2 nights. Absolute. Total . Silence.

By contrast camp sites, the ones that you pay for, are much overrated in our opinion. It's not the cost - pennies by comparison with home - but the lack of advantages over what we've been doing. With our own electricity generator, hot water shower and barbeque the only thing we're without is a wall around us. Which we don't feel is worth worrying about unless it's blowing a hooligan, like it is right now. And the downside to commercial nightstops? Noise. Dogs, mainly. Never hear them during the day 'cos they're all fast asleep, making up for their evening activities. 

Drive you nuts, they do. So, even though we'd like to put some dosh into the local economy, until they sort out their Canine Chorus we'll sleep in the hills when we can. A couple of nights ago we fell asleep to the smell of the herbs we'd crushed on the way in...

So, our travels have taken us up hill, down dale and everywhere in between since we left Midelt. Having not explored the area too much before, we decided to spend a few days in the Middle-to-High Atlas just wandering about. We started by picking a route from Chris Scott's book but eventually made up our own from what we could find on the maps that tied in with satnav, Wikiloc and anything else that indicated "Fun". We've just transferred 270 photos to this laptop and at some point I'm going to have to trawl through them and find a few, from the many, that'll give a flavour of what we've seen. Here's one or two to get us started:

The fact that we've taken so many is probably a good indication of how awesome this country is for its geology, if nothing else. 

Interesting people, too, if you make the effort.The guys in the photo below had run out of coolant and had stopped at a dry river bed. They'd been digging in the damp sand under the bridge to try to find water. We were the first vehicle along in the 3 hours it'd taken them to get a litre of muddy water out of their hole. We donated the water we'd got from a stream up in the mountains and kissed goodbye to our shower that night.

We've not spoken English except between ourselves since leaving Spain. I can't say that conversation has been easy or fluent (between us and everyone else, I mean!), but it's good fun and the response from the locals is really good. Our French is improving daily but the Arabic is still patchy. All that we learned either is pronounced differently here or they speak more Berber than Darija, so now we're getting our heads - and tongues - around that, too.

Driving has been a mix of good tarmac and typical mountain piste - rougher than a badger's a*se. A massive road building programme is gradually eating up the old tracks, but we've still had 3 very demanding days - for us and the truck - "doing" some of the more well known pistes as well as some of those not in "The Books". We did the first half of the Cirque du Jaffar; only the first half because the famous gorge was blocked by a lot of fallen stones. (Actually, the route doesn't go down the gorge but the Navigator was seduced into believing it did because of another vehicle, who'd turned back. The Driver, in accordance with previous agreements, didn't question the decision and didn't ask to read the guidebook...)

We might have got through, but it's an impossible place to organise a recovery if anything were to go wrong, and the margin for error was just too narrow. It's the first time we've ever turned back from a goal we'd set ourselves, but discretion won this time. We got out and walked it instead...




Having been defeated, we retraced our route and went down to El-Rich to pick up another line. This was tarmac again but took us through the Gheris gorge
 

A bit of a cheat pic...no other vehicles all day, so the tracks out are ours.

to a wild camping spot ("telling the Thyme?"). Stupendous views in all directions, but surpassed the next day by the rock walls of the Todra Gorge, which we've recorded before in pictures. More Europeans in that last mile than we've seen during the previous week put together - a Must See destination for all the tourist trips, I think. Up onto the Djebel Sarhro via a Scott route which was all tarmac to Ikniounn, where we passed this guy having a rest.... 

...given the increasing wind, we reckon if he's still on the road he's on his side and blocking it, feeding the goats with free hay.

The route eventually gave way to rough track up to the Tizi-n-Tazazert pass (2316m).  A serpentine descent with enough bumps and leaps to completely disorganise the back of the truck. A wild camp near N'kob preceded a venture onto the MH14 because we wanted to refill our wine stock at Ouarzazarte. Working on a trip meter and compass we managed to lose the published route but discovered another which led us in a semi-circle back to the N9 near Agdz.

Parts of this diversion were quite knarly. What you can't see from the picture at left is the almost sheer rock wall to the left and the 1200 feet of fresh air straight down to the valley floor to the right. Nobody was coming the other way, I'm happy to say. In fact, we didn't see a living soul all day. 

 This was Thursday 19th. The gathering clouds suggested a change in the air, and dropping baro pressure confirmed it. The wind picked up and gave us a disturbed night with the tent fabric snapping and cracking like pistol shots in the strengthening breeze. 
 So, the planned "rest day" was abandoned in preference to a run for cover, and here we are. Hopefully the local pooches will be taking Friday off, although I don't think the same will apply to peacocks...we have a resident. Maybe a photo tomorrow if we can corner him.

  And here he is in all his show-off glory. We're now into Saturday and have decided to stay here another day. The main reason for this is the increasing strength of the wind. As we arrived in town yesterday, driving at 50mph, the plastic bags and bottles that litter the roadsides were overtaking us...and last night was the wildest we've spent so far, wind-and-weather speaking. I thought at one point that we were going to have some damage to sort out this morning, but we've got away with a thick coating of pink dust, stuck to everything due to a short rain shower at 4am.

Last night I wrote: "The weather report confirms the low pressure system moving to the north of us, which has dragged in a lot of dust from the Sahara today. As I type this the keyboard is getting gritty and the Moroccan wine we're sampling is getting warm, so time to go. Maybe we'll move on tomorrow to the High Atlas, maybe we won't. Depends on how good the wine is!" Since the plan has changed, we took a dusty, windblown walk into town this morning and did the shopping...

PYO, self-service, Morocco-style. Mud is free.

Mike took his camera and tried to get some shots that would show a bit of local colour, but people were generally reluctant to allow it. This isn't unusual and we always ask permission first. Most folk today refused, and not with an apology, either. The owner of this fruit and veg stall in the souk was obliging, although he didn't want to be in the shot..

..and the owner of this hole-in-the-wall garage wasn't around to ask:

Note the appropriate adherence to Health and Safety regs - the fire extinguisher and hi-vis jacket - and the meticulous tool control. The only advertising for this little business was the "mechanique" painted on the door. That, and the trail of oil stains on the pavement outside.


 

Another victim of last night's weather. This is a shop canopy, or rather, it was. The owner had obviously decided to take the day off rather than fight the wind to set it up again.



The internet forecasts 3 or 4 days of this, but calmer further south, so we may revise our plans again and make for lower latitudes tomorrow. 





Right now, it's a relaxing afternoon in the tent next door, reading and sampling a second bottle of Moroccan Cotes-du-Rhone. That's what it says on the label, anyway.


Oh, and if anyone reading this has left a very expensive roof tent ladder extension (see previous self-satisfied post re a DIY version) behind a tree, let me know the grid reference of where I'm sitting and I'll post it back to you.

Saha!

It’s (not) grim up north – but down south....

We left Santander yesterday, Monday, an hour late due to some kind of "technical problem”, but with so few cars on board we were away from the port pretty quickly. Temperature 16 degrees so looking forward to getting a pleasant trip south.

Pretty soon it was raining. In fact as I write this on Tuesday at the overnight stop near Merida, it hasn’t stopped raining yet. No that’s not true – it has snowed. Quite a bit. In fact the weather has been, shall we say, contrary to expectations. 

I was educated to think that the further towards the Equator one got, the warmer it became. The Lower the Latitude, The Higher the Heat. Except in Spain, obviously. Since we’ve had 180 degrees on the compass since we left Plymouth – give or take a bit to allow us to avoid France, which is always a Good Thing – the Centigrades ought to be in the ascendant.Today we haven’t seen temperatures above single figures and quite often close to zero. OK, we were up at over 1000 metres of altitude at the time but it’s after Easter FFS! When does it get Spring in this country? This is the first trip where we’ve actively sought a nightstop with an elevation of less than 500 metres so we wouldn’t have to sleep with all our clothes on. We left Plymouth in summer temperatures – folk wandering about the Hoe in T-shirts and shorts and Mike even bought himself a very expensive pair of sunglasses as a treat. They cost over £13. As he says, a major expense given that he’ll probably sit on them within a day or so. As it happens, they haven’t been on his face yet….

So, the trip so far, other than wet and cold, is notable for the absence of any major vehicle problems. The work done on the wheel balance, transmission, prop shafts etc has really paid off with a silky-smooth drive.
Other things haven't always been so smooth, though. The Navigator and the Driver have have a number of harsh exchanges. One of especial note came outside Merida in the driving rain, when we missed an important motorway exit. This particular junction went left from the main road rather than the usual right. With the driver committed to the left turn and the barrier 20 metres ahead, a shout of "no, go right, go right" had us reversing direction and nearly broadsiding some innocent Spaniard who'd taken the chance of overtaking on the inside. After a crisis meeting we decided that navigation decisions would now be more equally distributed.

We’ve covered over 450 miles of the Spanish leg with no other problems other than a wet right foot for the driver – and the aforementioned wet legs, of course. The spray, lots of it, is blowing in under the front of the door. Mike’s trainers are now back in the box and the waterproof mountain boots are back on; after all, it is Spain in the Spring….I guess the fields are big and green in drier times, but right now they’re a lot smaller because they’re full of large brown ponds and what look like substantial streams, not to say raging rivers where farm tracks used to be. Last night’s site at Tordesillas became waterlogged this morning and tonight’s choice is equally affected. Of the several hundred pitches that might usually be available, the “residents” have all gathered on the only relatively dry island next to the loos. Not a location we’d normally favour, but Needs Must… 

It looks like a storm’s blowing in tonight. It has stopped p*ssing down at last, and there is the hint of sunshine which is all we really need to make camping enjoyable and not something to be endured as a Means to an End. I might get the shovel out in a minute to divert some of the water that is about to invade us, but other than that, the day’s over apart from Food. Sue’s busy in the back preparing the Usual Gourmet Extravaganza and I’ve a rather attractive looking Rioja to crack…Salut!

...and then, about 6 days after I wrote all that, we've travelled a total of 2000 miles and are having a bit of a Rest Day in Midelt. It stopped raining yesterday. Honestly, this is the worst weather we've experienced in Europe and Morocco in the 3 trips we've done. We haven't had any major dramas caused by the foul conditions but it has made driving quite difficult at times, especially crossing the Rif. We saw 2 major accidents - cars rolled over - within a few minutes of each other as we climbed towards Chefchaouen, with the roads running with water like streams and the streams running like an Olympic White Water course, only brown and much angrier. Like Spain, the whole place appears waterlogged.

 As usual, snapshots taken from the car don't do justice to the scene, but there was no chance that we were going to get out to do a better job. Staying dry and warm is a greater priority.

We had a pretty hard time actually getting into Morocco this time, too. While it usually takes a while for the customs folk to do The Necessary, this time we were delayed for over 2 hours. That's on top of a delay with the ferry. It left 90 minutes late and took over 2 1/2 hours for the normal 55 minute trip as the weather was so bad. Mike watched as the ferry took an hour to get far enough upwind of the harbour before the captain could risk the "ferry glide" into port at Tangier Med. They'd even called in another tug which came racing up through the swell and the spray to help us in. Sue watched the wall and tried to think of flatter things.

Arrival at Tangier Med

At the customs post, all was chaos. We stood patiently waiting under the sunshades, which are about as much use as a toast rack for keeping the rain off - and it was bucketing down. All and sundry were much taken with Elly...and not in a good way. For the first time, we experienced a "going over". Everything out of the back and opened, "do you have maps?", "do you have pistol?", "do you have Talkie-Walkie?", "why/where/when are you going, who with?", "what are these books?". That's just a small sample of the quizzing, all conducted in the slashing rain with me trying to explain in halting French and smile a lot, even though everything was getting soaked. They even summoned the Chief - a guy welcomed with much saluting and handshaking - who asked all the same questions again. Not unpleasantly, I must say, but probing and very inquisitive. 

I'd better not say too much about the vehicle inspection but it seemed to be more about a display of power by one particular individual who wouldn't make eye contact but just shouted a lot at the rest and sneered at me. I got the impression that his colleagues were all a bit embarrassed by the whole charade and they did their best to help me keep things dry and repack when I could. Despite having covered Elly with typical "4x4 enthusiast" stickers and hidden everything vaguely "military", they still seemed to think we had some kind of hidden agenda, and the careful examination of Mike's passport seemed to be the reason. Lots of short-visit visas for a country they seemed to be a bit suspicious of, and one very recent. What was I doing there? What is my profession? Why do you....etc etc? Luckily they didn't find the toolbox...I shudder to think what might've happened if they'd read the old lettering on the side..."400 cartridges 7.62 ball link". I seem to recall that another - better known - expeditioner had a similar problem with a military-looking Landrover and ended up having to paint it pink before they'd let him in. Wonder if they knew what a "Pink Panther" is/was?

Once away we were now running about 4 hours late on the plan so made for a campsite we'd used before at Martil. We arrived just as it was getting twilight so avoided having to negotiate the town in complete darkness. This at least allowed us to get through the foot-deep flooding without driving into a storm drain or some other submerged tank trap. For once, the snorkel was probably worth fitting.

Our original plan was to work our way along the Med coast but having got fed up with the weather we decided the only course was South, and the quicker we got there the better. A number of equally wet and cold days were to follow, but yesterday dawned with a clear blue sky, which we predicted when the overnight temperature dropped to close to freezing. The day's journey was interesting, not to say unusual, for North Africa in mid-April:

 To be fair, these shots were taken at over 2000 metres of altitude, but still a bit unexpected for so late in the year. The locals obviously thought so too and they were out in force with toboggans! Never thought I'd see that here.



 Once off the hills we began to see more of what we remember Morocco to be like, on the road, at least...

...with our first Interceptors...

...and at the campsite, the usual suspects...

I think that'll be enough for now. There's maintenance to be done - the spout has broken off the tap and while it can still produce a sparkling fountain, it ain't much good for filling the kettle any more. 

Some surgery to the broken bits will restore normal service. Hopefully.
Finally, this edition of O-T4 is brought to you courtesy of Maroc Telecom and the 4G dongle and SIM card we bought this morning. That and the proximity of the transmitter mast to where I'm sitting. 

It's generously decorated with wildlife - huge storks and their young - who don't seem at all bothered by the microwaves bouncing off their heads.

The next event will be the crossing of the High Atlas, via some dirt track that should provide a bit of a challenge if there's still some snow about.

Hoist the Mainsail, Set the Rudder!

Outbound and southbound. Ferry on Sunday from Plymouth, which is 2 days and 850 miles away. Roughly. We're making 2 night stops to visit family in Glasgow and Ascot. The journey gets tedious and painful if done "in a one-er" so the intermediate stops are welcome.

These first few miles are normally the worst of the trip, what with increasing traffic density the further south we get. It really makes us appreciate the relative remoteness of where we live as by the time we get to Mum's at Ascot we always seem to be in a permanent traffic jam.
The motorways were clear, more or less, and apart from being charged double on the M6 toll "because of the height of your vehicle"  - I knew I should've got rid of the 2-inch lift - we had an unremarkable transit from North of the border to the Thames valley. Wet, though, and another unexpected little snag...after about 3 hours of driving rain outside it began to rain inside as well. Big fat drips onto the driver's knees. Sue remained dry and sympathetic, trying to stem the flow with the chamois leathers we keep for such emergencies. We rescued the maps from the overhead stowage and did what we could to mop things dry but with the "lean" always towards the driver's side, Mike was always going to be at the deep end of the bath. No idea where it's suddenly sprung a leak and probably too difficult to trace now the rack and everything is on. Just have to wear a mac.
The ride from Ascot to Plymouth we did yesterday morning. Sunday. Little traffic and we allowed  lots of time since the roads into the south west are often clogged with traffic. Not so today, possibly because it wasn't "seaside weather". Generally dank, the tops of the trees in the base of the clouds. As we'd decided to avoid the major motorway route and taken the A-roads the countryside was more interesting to drive through. Mike has always loved this part of the country and we're debating whether it might be a retirement option, eventually. The hills are green and rounded, not grey and rocky, and the whole environment is much gentler and welcoming. Driving the A303, it's easy to imagine how things would've been a couple of centuries ago; a muddy single-track Turnpike road, winding through sleepy villages cuddled by the folds of the hills, chocolate-box cottages with their thatch pulled down around their ears like a wooly hat against the weather. A curl of smoke the only way to tell if anyone's at home. Timeless scenes. Would've been better if we could've seen more than a few feet! Passing Stonehenge, Sue managed a shot of this famous landmark through the window...and the fog.

 Not the best of days to be standing guard.

Plymouth, though, was basking in sunshine and 18 degrees. 

 One reason for allowing extra time was to visit a chandlery to improve our astro-nav kit. The DIY quadrant is OK for playing about but if we want to make even a half-decent stab at doing the thing properly we need proper equipment. If we'd have had the idea a bit earlier we might've picked something up from e-Bay but with no options left we decided to invest some cash in a "student" sextant.

Not hugely expensive for the fun we might have with it and considerably more accurate than the previous option. Should be good enough to get us a fix within a few miles of where we really are....

We'll be  in Santander in a coupleof hours. The beasts in the Bay of Biscay have left us alone for yet another voyage, and it's been flat calm all the way. Glorious sunshine for our departure from Millbay dock and a celebratory glass or two...and some more photos to follow. Unfortunately the ship's wi-fi is as slow as we predicted and the laptop battery is about to die, so gotta go now. I'll try to publish this now but it might not work....Back soon.

The Last Minute preparations...

...are always more of a rush than they should be, given the months of planning. This morning (Easter Monday) I set out to re-sync our Satphone/Tracker, which I thought would be a 10 minute job. 

Two hours later and I was still fighting with the menus, having discovered a load more fancy functions that have appeared since we last used it and felt I needed to play with. Notable amongst these is the ability to link the InReach base unit to an Android tablet via Bluetooth. This combines the tracking, map, topography and position information into one display that is now actually useful for navigation. 
 

OSM mapping - very detailed and easy to use.

The display has the topo information that I can't get to work in OSM - not enough memory on my old Galaxy 3, apparently - so this might be very useful. I also spent a long time trying to figure out how to delete the route we took in 2016 since it was cluttering the screen. I did eventually get rid of it but there must be a quicker way than the one I used. However, we now have a "clean screen" to drop our track onto and make it easier to decipher later.
The messaging and general admin are a lot easier as well since it can all be done on the tablet instead of trying to type anything more complex than "Is there anybody out there?" using the keyboard that pops up on the base unit's tiny screen. We can pre-form the routine messages, of course, which is a 2 or 3 button process to send, but it's always nice to be able to include a bit more detail.

 I've also wasted an hour of my life trying to upload some video to this blog...Once I'd got the camera to record in a reasonable level of quality, and for that I mean "pretty poor or it takes a week to upload", I waited 30 minutes for 30 seconds of moving picture to appear. Since Blogger video upload clearly moves with the speed of a comatose sloth and the internet upload speed in Morocco will be similar I think we'll forget about that particular media enhancement. This is a pity as quite a lot of writing could've been saved. Maybe there's another way, but a few minutes' research suggests that the Rest of the World suffers the same problem.

Talking of uploads, worth mentioning here that we've had a lot of success with the in-country internet provider, Maroc Telecom. The basic dongle-and-sim package lasts for 30 days and has enough data allowance for everything except regular video streaming, hence the comment above.

The orange-and-blue MT shops are in most large towns although a lot of small independent shops seem to sell them too, but without the advice available from the "expert" if you need help understanding how to set it up.

So, with Zero Hour approaching, what are the Objectives? What do we hope to do or see? We don't feel that a trip like this should be done without some reason. While some might argue that the journey is a reason in itself, we like to have a "motivator" - a reason to keep going when others might turn around and find an easier way. So:

1. Part of this year's motivation is the delivery of the medical and dental kits. Since a number of people have become involved in this we now have an obligation to make every effort to deliver them. From a purely personal perspective, though, we want to experience some things that can't be had anywhere but the North African desert. 

2. One such experience - or encounter - might be with one of these creatures:

This is a Sand Cat. They've recently been identified in the area we'll be passing through. Elusive, rarely seen, etc etc...it'd be quite a personal coup to catch sight of one of these.

I see a lot of time spent waiting and watching to come. They don't leave tracks or bits of their last meal to identify where they've been, so finding one will be down to luck and torchlight, I think.

3. We'll also be experimenting  - or re-acquainting ourselves - with the basic style of navigation that has gone out of fashion since the advent of GPS. Celestial nav isn't dead and a lot more fun and rewarding, as long as we don't get too lost, than just following the "green writing" - the GPS-derived directions. 
We've got an astro compass and a DIY quadrant (for measuring the Sun's altitude):

since we can't justify the cost of a sextant. I wanted to use a sun compass again but this really needs a vehicle like a Jeep with the top chopped off to make any sensible use of it. We decided this fell into the Too Difficult category. The kit we've got ought to be good enough to at least prove that Man can find his way around the planet without the use of batteries and satellites, although Sadler/SAS-type precision isn't very likely since the quadrant was made using an old school protractor, a biro tube, a map pin, a piece of scrap metal and a bit of string....if we get latitude accuracy better than 50 miles I'll be amazed although it would've been good enough for Columbus to hit America.This is how it works:

 The sun shines down the tube and when a circular shadow appears on my thumb it's directly lined up and we can read the altitude (angle) under the string. A bit of arithmetic and we have our latitude. Longitude will come off my watch and another bit of maths. All we need then is a decent map with a lat/long grid overlay, which is the most difficult bit of the problem to solve. Decent maps of Morocco's desert areas aren't easy to find. Sue wants to learn how to use it all, which promises to be a challenge! She might be a recently-qualified Master of Forensic Science (there were footprints across the garden pond when I got home recently...😆) but sums and spherical trig aren't her favourite subjects. Nor mine actually, so maybe time for a bit of revision. It'll be more fun, though, than trying to learn Calculus and Statistics, which was the activity on the ferry the last time we went. Sticking pins in our eyes would've been more fun, too. Good job it wasn't stormy.
4. And we want to get a selfie here:

By Andrew Szabo - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5336367

This sign is apparently next to the road south of Dakhla, but since the line moves a bit every year we'll probably draw our own Line in the Sand.
5. Throw a stone over the border into Mauretania. I hope we won't get arrested for the illegal export of real estate.

We leave tomorrow (Friday 6 April) so this will be the last entry, probably, until we get to Spain. I would've said "until we get onto the ferry" but experience suggests that the ship's wi-fi moves even slower than the previously mentioned sleepy tree ape....