"We Are Sailing,

..we are sailing, home again, 'cross the sea". And just like on previous trips, it's pretty calm. Not being what you'd call a "keen sailor", Sue is pretty sensitive to any undue Rock'n Roll but slept eventually despite the serenade from the car deck just below us. You'd think that people would have the wit to disable their alarms if the vehicle is going to be moving about a bit after they've locked it and gone to the bar. After a while the noises faded so hopefully a flat battery will teach the lesson. Please forgive the attitude, but we've had so many nights of interrupted slumbers we're both feeling the cumulative effects and have little tolerance left. We'd have been in bed 3 hours earlier but the ship was late coming in, so we spent our hoped for extra "sack time" waiting in the queue at the dockside, with a voucher for a free coffee and chocolate bar.

Sue cooked dinner while Mike chatted Dirty Landrovers with all comers. We considered going to a restaurant in town but were just too tired to bother, and we wouldn't have met so many interesting people there either.

Thinking back over the past few days, our journey through Spain has been largely uneventful. Nothing To Report, we thought, but then had another. Thought, that is, and actually there might be. Nothing very important, admittedly, but worth recording for any grandchildren, perhaps. Maybe they'll smile when, in the years to come, they read of Sue's visit to the bread shop one morning just after she'd cleaned her teeth.

Since neither of us has looked in a mirror for 6 weeks, she wasn't aware of the white ring around her mouth; with the suntan she looked like an extra from the Black and White Minstrel Show (for those who are old enough to remember).  Nobody said anything, not even Mike, the sod!

A very unusual campsite near Caceres provided a parking spot and our own private loo and shower, water supply, lighting, chairs, table and electricity, all in a little hut with our own key.

Noticeable, now, how many visitors are using the sites that just a few weeks ago were either empty or not-yet-open. Large campervans like the one we saw at Midelt are taking over the world! We've talked about the practicalities and advantages of them over our small version of the same...They are undoubtedly luxurious, by comparison, but some are much too large to go where we go and not rough terrain-capable. And a lot of money, especially if they're going to stand in a driveway for most of their lives. Assuming, of course, that you have a driveway big enough to park a 50-foot monster that's 12 feet high. These really aren't "campervans" in the way most people understand the term, more "mobile home" but not in the way most understand. No static caravans, these, but ocean-going gin palaces. Some of them even have a little garage in the back that'll hold a quad bike! So for the moment, and while we still can, we'll continue to climb onto the roof to sleep, shower from a bucket and enjoy the company of camels at breakfast. They do have a lot going for them as things to spend a warm-weather winter in though, so maybe...one day...

Then there was the campsite faff in Tordisillas. Arriving in the early afternoon we thought we'd have beaten the Five o'clock Follies when all the campervans pitch up and block the entrance, but the girl at reception was in deep negotiation with an irate Frenchman who'd clearly expected VIP treatment as he was a regular customer. Not satisfied, he was making a scene which she couldn't handle and had summoned The Management. In the meantime, nothing else was happening. We managed to persuade her to get on with her job while Frustrated Frenchman fumed in the corner. Having left the chaos of the office we found our allocated pitch was too small and lacked the electricity connection we'd just paid for, so we returned to reception and were forced to wait in a now longer queue. Ten minutes later and after much computer searching for vacant places (why? WTF's wrong with a paper map?) we have a new pitch which, when we reach it, is occupied by a large Dutch campervan with attached Smart car - yes, they do drag them around with them. Back to reception, the inevitable longer queue and an obviously unable-to-cope receptionist. She's now completely out of ideas and her depth and invites us to "go away and find somewhere, then come back and tell me". So, you want me to do your job? And join the queue for a fourth time, presumably...not a chance.
So, after 45 minutes of messing about we've found ourselves a nice grassy spot as far away from the loos and noises as possible, without the assistance of those paid to do so, alongside a German couple from Kiel. As usual, Elly is the conversation starter - a bit like having a dog - but before long we're all sharing stories and alcohol.

Hans is a former Sea King pilot so he and Mike were swapping stories in minutes, leaving Sue and Frauke to talk about interesting things, like Oona - the Bear Dog. A lovely gentle creature, but you wouldn't want her on your lap!
The following day we're unable to open the barrier with our exit code. The reason turns out to be that our exit has been "disabled" because we've chosen to camp in "a better place" than we'd paid for. It had a special hole in the ground for us to discharge our waste water, apparently. Oh, and grass. Grass is extra, it would seem. There followed a stand-off with The Deputy Management, she demanding another 8 Euros, we explaining how we'd come to park in this apparently Deluxe spot in the first place. Phone calls to The Boss, unintelligible rapid conversation in Spanish, more demands for money. We refuse. In the end she punches some numbers into The Computer, which is obviously the real boss around here, and we're ungraciously "allowed" to depart. We say "thank you, have a nice day", she scowls, says something in Spanish that wasn't friendly; probably "...and don't come back".

Later the same day...we've stopped for lunch a few yards up a farm track. Mike is doing his usual tour of inspection, kicking tyres, peering underneath and looking for leaks. Sue hears a groan..."We've had a bit of a disaster." We now have 50% of a tent ladder, the rest being somewhere other than the roof, where it's supposed be neatly secured under the tent cover. That morning, Mike packed the tent on his own - not the usual routine - and as a result didn't do up all the straps. The muted "thud" we'd both heard during the late-morning travel up the motorway raised an eyebrow or two but nothing seemed amiss so it was ignored. How many times do we need to relearn that lesson? Anyway, half of our ladder is now due for replacement, and I bet it won't be cheap (actually, just over £90...). Hopefully it's done no damage to anyone else; luckily there's little traffic on Spanish motorways around midday, so fingers crossed that no-one will suffer as result of our carelessness.

Choice of route. With a day in hand we didn't need to rush and decided to take a more scenic drive further to the west, through the eastern Picos de Europa, using the R625 to Riano and then 621. Well scenic it was, put the comma where you like! It was also probably a great route for a biker, full as it was with hundreds of twists and turns just metres apart, and more hairpins than Vidal Sassoon. For the driver of a heavy Landrover, however, it was bloody hard work with constant gear changes, craning our necks to see over the spare wheel and into the bends - a good workout for the core muscles! An unexpected diversion added over an hour of even more tortuous driving. Difficult to really appreciate the scenery, too, as most of it was above the top of the windscreen. So, if you're in a hurry to get anywhere it's a route worth avoiding but if you're driving something a bit more agile than we are, a Big Grin of a ride, we think.

Waiting for the ferry in Santander - a nice spot for lunch.

Our last night in Spain was spent at a clifftop site near Santander, another fine bedroom view.

The site is dug into the side of the cliff and thus heavily engineered with terraces and steep drops, so probably not ideal for small kids. A lot of the pitches are only accessible on foot as there's no room for a road. This is a very unusual site and worth a visit, especially for 2-wheelers or those on 2 feet, since the motor traffic is limited to fewer areas. The pitches you can drive into need care,though.

The sloping ground means there's a bit of a ramp at the entrance to each one which is invisible from the "road" side as one bit of grass merges nicely with the bit a little below it. The numerous gouges and broken bits of concrete are witness to those who've dropped the up-to-12-inch difference, probably with an expensive noise from somewhere underneath.

With the Brittany coast slipping past the window - no portholes on the Pont Aven - and the sun shining, we should be getting into Plymouth about 5 this afternoon. A little later than planned, so a late arrival at our nightstop in Radstock, then onwards to Scotland tomorrow. Sue's spent the morning writing up the Ship's Log and finishing her on-the-go scrapbook. A better minute-by-minute diary than this blog, so one day, when we write That Book, we'll have all the material we need to make us rich. Maybe.

Scottish border, and only 5 hours more to go.

Home. After 6700 road miles, plus the ferries....

After hosing everything down and taking the vacuum cleaner to the inside, a quick inspection showed nothing damaged or worn beyond limits, so the annual MoT test (TUV in Germany) which is due within 10 days shouldn't be an issue. Sue is busy making a list of the Things We Took And Didn't Use. Mike is thinking about the next instalment to this diary....back soon!

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Time to Go Home

 

We left Fes on Thursday with no regrets, but beginning to feel the effects of disturbed sleep and insect bites.

The remainder of our time in Morocco isn’t worth recording in detail, being mostly a long boring drive to Tangiers and the ferry to Spain. We spotted a couple of useful looking wild camping areas but otherwise it was a bit of a drone although Mike was now hyper-sensitive to the antics of the Moroccan road users.

This wasn’t the best time, then, to make a minor navigational error that had massive implications. Trapped on a motorway going east, not north, we couldn’t get off it until we’d gone a long way in the wrong direction. Then turning north on the only available road, the route west back to our destination would take us along 3 sides of a square, the last one being straight through the centre of the city on the equivalent of Friday afternoon. Had this been the plan, it would’ve been a very bad one. That it wasn’t the plan made it worse, since we had now to rely on technology to get us through, and this, predictably, stopped working at a critical junction.

Now, if you’ve ever driven the Peripherique around the Place de L’Etoile at rush hour, you’ve probably promised yourself that you’ll never do it again. Before you do, though, come and have a go at the equivalent in Tangier city centre (the Makhazine roundabout) during the afternoon, and put the Parisian version of the Wacky Races into perspective! And we took the wrong exit and finished up in the backstreets, trying to work out a compass-derived exit strategy through a one-way system. Fine fun. Not.

Added to all that, the campsite that was our priority wasn’t there. Never had been, from the look of it, with nothing but the beachfront promenade, a strip of grass and an impressive cliff. Whoever dreamed up that set of co-ordinates to plug into our now dysfunctional GPS was having a good joke, given the effort it takes to reach the place. Reduced to map-and-compass, we headed for our Reserve Destination, a site we’d used before. Like Fes, the interval hadn’t improved it. In fact having awarded Zagora our rosette for the Best Campsite In Morocco, Camping Achakkar is The Worst; and given the state of many of them, that’s saying quite a lot.

The site is now little more than an overspill car park for the restaurant next door. The charge is the highest – 130 dirham – of anywhere we’d stayed. The only ablutions boast 2 showers, only one of which has plumbing, no shower rose and a stream of cold soapy (and we were that brave) water that runs out of the door onto the path. 2 smelly lavatories, weeds, litter and builder’s rubble everywhere and a parking surface made up of shards of broken bathroom tiles. Rubbish bins broken and insecure – the one we used was raided by a pack of feral dogs in the middle of the night, who fought over the scraps for 2 hours. Three teenage kids with quad bikes who drove around for an hour creating a massive racket and clouds of dust, completely ignored by Le Guardien. Two blokes who’d parked their cars to visit the restaurant returned near midnight to start their engines – big bore exhausts -  and then proceeded to sit there for 30 minutes having a chat. Prior to eventually leaving they took a leak into the bushes next to where we were parked.

We’d only stayed there in desperation; and never will again. We left at 6am after another night of canine serenades. At least the trip across to Spain was trouble free once we’d found out which queue to join and the weather improved – but not the navigation – and we finally surrendered the day near Cadiz. Camping Playa Las Dunas, The Best Campsite In The World…. Possibly.

I’m not in the habit of hanging around the Gent’s showers with a camera, honest! But…these were worth a photo for those weirdos like me who appreciate a good loo. These are really worth a design award.

 

…and right next to the emptiest beach south of Sandwood Bay, and for different reasons, I think. All the sunbathers are 60 miles sowf on the Costa Lot where the Fish ‘n Chips and Watneys’ is. No lager-swilling Brits here, nor chair-grabbing Huns. No chairs, for that matter. A pity we couldn’t camp on the beach…..

Want ice cream...want donkey ride.

Over 50 bloody years…

…I’ve been driving, and never hit anything more than a tree stump…but today (9^th  May) I’ve hit- or been hit – by 2 cars. Two “accidents” in the space of an hour, FFS!

But it’d taken a few days to get to that point, so to backtrack a little. We’d spent an enjoyable couple of days crossing the Atlas mountains and wild camped last night near the dam at Ouaomana. The day had been a mixture of stupendous views and worsening weather so we decided, having left the views behind us, to take whatever shelter from the rain and wind that was available.

And what weather! We’d watched the skies get ever darker since midday. By mid-afternoon we were looking at a deep, forbidding blue – almost black – which forecast a lot of wet. The lightning dropping out of it confirmed that we were trapped under a succession of big Cumulo-Nimbus that were about to “unleash hell”. So it was. As we drove – or rather surfed – through Beni-Mellal the streets were awash.

They say that more people are killed by flash floods in this country than any other, and when you see what happens when it rains, you can believe it.

The water was up to the wheel rims in 5 minutes, and up to the axles of most cars after 10. The roads weren’t roads any more, but torrents of brown water that cut off one side of the streets from the other. Not a trickle – a raging flood. Now, it’s all very well having a vehicle that can cope with that, but progress is only going to be at the speed of the slowest, and when that’s a Peugeot van which is up to it’s door sills in water, that ain’t gonna be quick.

We searched for a spot to camp which, north of the mountains, isn’t so easy. Most flat land is cultivated or otherwise “claimed”, but we found a note in the back of our camping guide that brought us here:

A quiet spot with a great view. Obviously little used as a campsite, it did have the usual canine residents close by, and one that Sue found deceased under a small pile of stones. Hadn’t been there long – a little whiskered nose poking out of the rocks….Sue writes up the menu at each camp, and tonight’s special has been christened Dead Dog’s Dinner…

The 9^th was clear and sunny, though, and we moved northwards towards our planned nightstop at Fes. Passing through Khenifra and in heavy traffic, there was a crunch from the back end…It sounded worse than it was; a little scuffed paint on the edge of the rear corner, barely visible under the mud. The other guy wasn’t so lucky. A new and very expensive Range Rover Evoque. Immaculate glossy black paintwork, apart from the bit now decorated in Elly Yellow. In backing away from us he’d also hit the car behind, so altogether a Bad Day for him. We pulled over to the roadside to check the damage. This meant we were blocking a lane at traffic lights, so were now not the most popular tourists in town, as the honking of many horns was suggesting. Quickly making our minds up that 1. It wasn’t our fault and 2. there wasn’t any significant damage, took some photos, commiserated with the Range Rover driver and we were about to drive off when The Law arrived in the person of a very attractive female cop. Unfortunately she had the feeling that despite the obvious – and admitted –circumstances she needed to check all our paperwork, and then report the incident to her supervisor, who insisted we wait for him to come along. This took 30 minutes, with the local drivers getting increasingly irate and the Range Rover driver getting more agitated by the minute, waving his arms about and pointing at his watch. We had a cup of tea, the advantage of carrying a kitchen.

Eventually Inspector Clouseau arrived, very smartly uniformed and with lots of rank and gold braid. It took him 30 seconds to decide we had “no case to answer” and wish us Bon Voyage.

Less than 45 minutes later and we’ve made the close acquaintance of Mr Said B….a, a Peugeot driver whose lane discipline is as loose as most but who chose his moment to wander from his appointed lane as we were overtaking him. Crunch.

The result was, once again, no damage to us but a scraped wheel arch and wing mirror for him. It took an hour to do the paperwork for that, with Mike doing all the writing as Mr Said didn’t seem able to understand the form written in French. Luckily we’d found the forms and downloaded them at home, which saved a lot of grief. We parted friends, in fact. Mr Said gave Mike a big friendly hug and an apology as we parted, and we followed him towards Fes for the next 2 hours….with his lane discipline clearly not improved by his recent experience. We’re still trying to contact our insurer, though. Annoyingly the web address doesn’t work and the answerphone multi-choice questionnaire is in French. Having selected what seemed to be the correct option, we’re promptly cut off….ho hum.

So, Wednesday night in Fes. The site we used some years ago had not improved. The same wolf pack prowling the boundary and the same cold showers. Promised as “chaud” but, once again, the boiler is inexplicably not working today. A pity, as with a little TLC it has the potential to be a great site. We assume that because Fes is such a popular tourist town, and Camping International is the only one in town that’s accessible, no additional effort is required to generate a profit. Arriving after a visit to the first Marjane in 4 weeks, it left us time to do some housekeeping:

British Army issue desert boots, the finest quality money can buy, obviously.

Onwards and Upwards

Leaving the Zagora site.

…we can go back to the need to cross the High Atlas, and the question of “how?” We could’ve just driven around them, effectively, on the Route Nationale, but where’s the challenge in that? On top of that, we still had to visit our “target” – the village remote enough from anywhere that our self-imposed task of delivering a little bit of medical kit would make a larger bit of difference to someone else.

We 'd had a good day's rest in Zagora. A walk around the local area stretched the muscles a bit, and a very pleasant evening, sharing our beer with two German kindred spirits from Friedrichshaven who shared their last bottle of wine with us - what sacrifice!

'Hannes and Brandt - thank you for a great conversation! They were going south to Mhamid, we north to the mountains again...

So on Monday afternoon (7^th) we set out on a little-used route recently published by Chris Scott. It promised to take us across the mountains via some interesting scenery. We looked up as we approached from the sun-drenched, nay parched, plains to see lowering clouds, rain and on the upper slopes some snow. Not an appealing prospect but this is an adventure, right? We started the climb…

After several hours it’d become clear that we weren’t going to make it “over the top” by nightfall, so we found a camping spot in a dry oued at the end of an impressively narrow gorge.

 We’d normally avoid places like this since, in the mountains, you never know what’s going on a few thousand feet above you. A sudden rush of water at 3 in the morning isn’t going to help you sleep, and might well kill you. See below. Tonight, though, we found a place well enough above the bed that we’d have some notice of impending doom…we hoped, anyway.

It didn’t take long before we had our first “guests”. After that the number of casual visitors increased so that we became aware that far from camping in a remote spot, we were on the main thoroughfare between villages and fields, and everyone for a mile around was coming to inspect The Visitors.

 Jordan’s muesli bars always go down well.

Darkness, though, saw them disappear but not before we’d been made to feel like the newest exhibit in the zoo. We offloaded one of the First Aid kits to some locals who appeared, displaying a number of ailments that they hoped we could cure. This has happened a lot on previous visits to Morocco; luckily Sue has enough medical knowledge to diagnose most obvious things and produce something to help. This time it was burn cream and bandages.

After a very quiet night we woke to see a procession of folk, on horseback, donkey and “Shanks’s Pony” making their way up the oued to work, or wherever. Overnight the rain on the tops had produced a fair stream of fresh, clear water right past our bedroom. Not close enough to be an embarrassment, but easy to see how things can change with no warning. A quartet of riders passed us, and the last shouted out something that Mike heard to be “Have you any bread?” Not wanting to share our breakfast with 4 others he replied that we didn’t and they shrugged and rode on. It wasn’t until a few minutes – and thoughts – later that he realised the guy was asking if we’d broken down. The difference between “du pain” and “depanne” was lost over the intervening 50 yards…ignorant Brit! We caught up with them some hours later – they’d obviously taken a short cut!

Once back on the track and above the area we'd camped in, we could see the extent of the work the locals had done to produce fields of crop varied enough to display every shade of green imaginable. Not only that, the procession of people we'd seen earlier, some apparently dressed for the mosque, were all busy cutting, carrying or stacking. 

Moving swiftly on, and up, we were presented with one impressive view after another, just like on previous high altitude days. Each turn in the track revealed a new and unexpected vista that we just had to stop to photograph. 

 

...going up...

This route would be a nightmare in a group - it'd take hours to get anywhere with everyone wanting to stop to take pictures. Although it hasn't made the latest edition of the guide, it's well worth the effort to download the directions (even of the vital northbound start point is hidden in the blurb at the end of the notes).The climb was long, the track narrow, the air gradually colder, the altimeter slowly winding up until we reached the top of the first pass at 10,000 feet of altitude - a record for Elly, and with no mechanical problems at all. 

 

...looking back down...

We found a group of mountain bikers there too, gearing up for a spectacular descent, who’d been delivered there by a 4x4 tour company…cheating, in our opinion! On the descent we were surprised to see a runner, complete with race number, suddenly appear from the steep slope at the side of the track, jogging along, clearly pretty fit and heading upwards. We wondered what was going on, and later passed the reason:

Given the terrain, it makes our Mountain Marathons at home look a bit tame!

The road stretched back behind us into the last valley and the sunshine, but on down into the next one in murky gloom and snow.

The temperature dropped 12 degrees in minutes on this northern slope and the previously dry track was now a slippery ribbon of red mud. We passed through a succession of small villages with a population as sullen as the weather...

 but eventually reached our target:

The Headmistress

...and some of her students.

We found "our" village after a couple of false starts, mainly due to the fact that the centres of habitation don't always have a "You are now entering XXX" sign on the outskirts, and if they do it's often either in Arabic or mis-spelt so making it difficult to work out exactly where you might be. It makes you realise how effective the WW2 anti-invasion strategy of removing all the road signs in southern England would've been. Anyway, by 1100 we'd made it.The most remote village we could find that we could easily reach.

We'd thought about how to "deliver" our packages...we didn't feel comfortable with the idea that we could appear to be a pair of wealthy people playing missionaries, but knew the need was there...Mike opened the conversation with the Headmistress of the infant's school...

"Is there a doctor in the village?"

"No. The nearest doctor is in Asilah"

"Asilah? That's a long way!" It's actually over 70kms of tortuous, potholed mountain road,

"Yes, it's a problem, sorry! We have nothing here to help you"

At this point we opened our bag of First Aid kits and....

So, for those kind souls who could be bothered to respond to our requests for support, the results are plain. Well, perhaps not so plain as, as usual, if we ask for someone to pose for a photo they adopt a very formal face...once the shutter has fired, they're very different people. We left feeling that we had - all of us involved - made a real contribution to the medical needs of these folk. They were genuinely surprised and delighted that people so far away should care about their welfare. Thank you, on their behalf, to everyone who contributed either in support or material. 

So, out of the mountains and into the foothills - and the rain.

Givin' it some beans!

Zagora. 6th May. A pretty full-on few days behind us and we're having a rest. Another one...well, it is a holiday. Mike would prefer to be driving and looking around the next corner, Sue wants a lie-in and a chance to catch up with Other Stuff. So, we're loafing about in Probably The Best Campsite in Morocco.

We arrived in town late yesterday afternoon after 2 long days drive from Tata via Lake Iriki and Erg Chegaga. The run up to Tata was an "easy day" on tarmac and we decided to drop in on a site we've used on previous trips to do the laundry properly and have a hot shower to get rid of the now almost-ingrained dust. With the weather now calmer and warmer we're beginning to relax into a more comfortable routine that isn't driven by the wind direction.

Having driven from Mhamid to Foum Zguid on the "northern Iriki" route before, we wanted to get into the dunes and along the Lake using the more interesting-and unexplored by us - southern route. This took 2 full days to accomplish. The conditions on the track - corrugations, hamada, some deep sand sections and 37 degree temperature made for a bit of a challenge. Navigation was pretty straightforward most of the time as we were following the cairns built by the Dakar rally teams.

"...don't rely on the waymarks"..if there are any. Lake Iriki.

The tracks had moved from the original plot by a little, but not enough to make a difference as long as you don't rely on the "waymarks" - painted stones, vehicle wrecks etc, as all of these have apparently disappeared -unless our GPS reads differently to Chris Scott's when he wrote the guide 10 years ago! Sue was getting quite frustrated that her DR nav was getting us to the correct coordinates but the promised landmark was nowhere in sight. This can be a little worrying....but with a bit of encouragement from the Driver to use the "bigger picture" we got along just fine. But it was hot.

Crossing dry Lake Iriki was a dream drive compared to the washboard surfaces of the tracks. This has got to be our Least Favourite surface to travel on - everything shakes itself to pieces if it isn't made to industrial standards or firmly bolted together. Elly vibrates and rattles like a can of spanners, the compass spins like a top and is completely useless, things fall out of the overhead racks and electronics stop working. Altogether unpleasant. Last trip it was this that fractured a brake pipe and we lost all the fluid from the back brakes. There are 2 methods of dealing with it, apparently; either go as fast as possible and try to reduce the vibration by getting away from the "natural frequency" or go very slowly to reduce the intensity. We've tried both, but with the potential for further tyre damage we opted for the slow speed "solution". This gave us an average over the 2 days and 300km of about 20 kph...not exactly supersonic.

On the chott of Iriki this speed quadrupled. Like driving on tarmac by comparison. No need to follow a track, just set a heading and drive it. This is what we wanted so we could practice the astro nav, a decent horizon, no constraints on where to point the wheels and be able to hold a steady speed, more or less. We had a good play with our gear again and got better results this time.

We set up an overnight camp well away from the edge of the lake as we didn't want to be disturbed by early risers racing past us at dawn, as this vast flat surface seems to be used as a race track by all the dune buggies and Rally Raiders, of whom there's more later.
We stopped a little earlier than usual to clean up. Hot and getting hotter. Nice to relax at the end of a day like that.

 

Another great bedroom window vista

A cooling breeze and, later, cooler beer. Life, and the view, is good.

The clear horizon across the lake made life easier for the sun shots, but we did have some success with the "artificial horizon" method of a bowl of water with a drop of cooking oil in it. This needs a steady platform to work so was useless when it was really windy, but the oil damped down some of the ripples to give a clearer reflection.

Pouring oil on troubled water....

The Soup Dragon needs to remain absent from the kitchen during the process, though. With the arithmetic and sun-spotting being done on the bonnet, the rest of the vehicle needs to be dead still! The method also doesn't work beyond about mid-morning or before mid-afternoon as the angles get too great - the shot is made using the sun's reflection in the water.

Since the angle of the reflection equals twice the angle of the sun above the horizon, anything more than 50 degrees is too much. With the noon sun at about 80 degrees up, we need to see the edge of the earth properly to make a decent shot. So far we've managed to get within about 8 miles of the GPS position which isn't bad for the non-precision plastic sextant we're using. Can probably get it closer with more practice.

The astro compass is a different animal with much better manners.

Fiddle about a bit so it looks like you know what you're doing

This is, or ought to be, quick and simple to use. We've got consistently good results with it, getting within 10 degrees of the vehicle compass most of the time, and sometimes - see below - much better than that. Given the variation in all of the elements involved, this ain't bad at all!

The result shows a true heading of 006-and--bit degrees

The biggest problem we've had in getting consistent results is actually mounting the hardware so it stays level during the calculations. It's designed to fix to a solid, specially shaped mounting, not the bit of ally tube that otherwise serves as a wheel brace lever. This ally tube is, in turn, fixed in place temporarily to the light bar with a bungee loop...not exactly rock solid. If I was doing this properly I think I'd have to make a decent mounting point for it. However, the results have proved that cheap boat compasses with adjusters, properly "swung" can be reliable enough for what we need them to do.

Honest, this wasn't a "fixed" shot. Compass heading is, with 8 degrees of Variation subtracted, within 5 degrees of true.

...and while on the subject of compasses and navigation in general, yesterday we met these chaps...

They overtook us in a storm of dust and noise. Some 10 minutes later we stopped for a cup of tea, and they reappeared. At first, Mike misunderstood what they said - he thought they were offering advice because they thought we were "perdu" - lost. No, the opposite. They were lost. Not only that, they had no map, almost no water and no idea where they were or which direction to go to their destination. We got the map out, showed them our position, refilled their Camelbacks and pointed out the track to follow to get to Mhamid. "It'll take you about  two hours, watch out for the soft sand. Just keep heading East". That advice ought to work, provided they had some idea where "east" was...they had no compasses, either. People die that way. Shouldn't be allowed out on their own.

The dunes and soft sand of Erg Chegaga kept us entertained for most of the second morning, having dropped the tyre pressures to about half the previous afternoon as the going got sandier. As anyone who's driven in deep sand knows, momentum is the key to progress, so when we got into the dunes we were trying to keep the speed up to a maximum without breaking anything. Driving in soft sand is like driving on snow - steering takes a lot longer to have any effect and it's not very precise, but the "ride" is as if on silk - no vibration or road noise. Since you more "slide" around corners than "steer", if you meet someone coming the other way in a hurry, things can get interesting. The "someone" yesterday was a French rally "Raid" doing their sand section, and obviously against the clock! They were hammering along, in the opposite direction, and with just as much - or as little - directional control as you'd expect. Mainly Peugeots, Toyotas and things that looked like mini-HumVees, all belting past in a cloud of dust. Our first inkling that this was all about to burst upon us was the sight of 3 trail bikes with race numbers parked in the middle of the narrow track like they owned it. Riders were having a chat a few yards away, but still in the middle of the road. We skittered past the bikes and slid almost sideways to avoid their owners, giving them a good dusting down in the process. These guys were the lead element of twenty or so 4WD mates, all driving their vehicles like they'd just nicked 'em.

Quite a high-profile event, we presumed, as they even had a helicopter at the checkpoint.
Once clear of this mayhem, we had a bit of our own. With the flat midday light it's difficult to make out the contours of the ground, and we hit one particular bump quite hard. Elly's front end flew up and was on the way back down when the rear wheels hit the leading edge of the bump. This threw the back end up faster than the front end was coming down...I'm sure you can imagine the result. Front wheels hit. Hard, and dug deep into the sand. Back wheels followed and we almost stopped dead. A rapid flooring of the gas pedal kept us from digging in but we flew upwards out of our seats; Mike's head hit the padding on the roof, Sue - uncharacteristically not strapped in - got a bit of whiplash, a bruised elbow and rid of some choice expletives. Contents of overhead lockers and storage nets all over the place. No other damage, luckily, but a bit of rearrangement had taken place elsewhere:

Later, when we removed the spare wheel in Zagora we found that we'd parted company with our small pickaxe. This is used for digging "catholes" - a spade is useless most of the time - and was secured from falling "down" or "off" but not "up". It must've been catapulted from its stowage and is probably now stuck in some poor unfortunate "Raiders" tyre. Je suis desole!

A large party of French tourists joined us for tea.

We stopped for a tea break to sort that out, and while we were doing it a local turned up with a flat tyre. "Did we have a pump?" I thought about lending him our footpump...but no, that'd be no joke in this heat. We used our compressor to get him sorted out, and learned some more vocabulary in the process. A nice guy with a sense of humour.

Mike at the wheel of the Most Photographed Landrover In The World

Having decorated the wreckage above with some stickers of our own, we didn't go to Mhamid but took the track north to Tagounite and the road to Zagora. We went straight to Garage Iriki who've looked after us before - despite the attempts by several interceptors to divert us to alternative purveyors of garage services - and they repaired our punctured tyre and dented rim while we waited. 

And while we waited, the place was bedlam. Pretty much the entire street is a garage workshop and the dozens of French rally cars we'd met earlier had beaten us there and were being sorted out for the following day. Like a pit lane at a Grand Prix. Shouting, arms waving, revving engines with no silencers, air wrenches rattling like machine guns, hissing blasts of compressed air, high pressure water hoses, horns, radio chatter, yelling into telephones, taxis honking their way through the chaos, some nutcase playing a bongo drum and mopeds racing about taking parts like our tyre off to other shops. "Our" bloke just put the tyre onto the seat, climbed on top and off he went, legs splayed out like he was riding a water buffalo. 90 minutes later and we have another serviceable spare wheel at a cost of 150 dirham, about £12.50.

"Luvly Jubbly" - The Zagora Mechanics' catchphrase

While we waited, Sue got on with some Other Stuff, and Mike talked Man Stuff with Les Frogs. And his friends.

They all looked the same from a distance - Mike included. Dirty shirt, shorts too short, boots too big, wristwatch too large and one suntanned arm. His right, theirs left.

Lots of other locals about, too. Obviously the kids had cottoned on to the fact that the street was always full of foreigners with money. So they were trying to capitalise on that buy "giving" us "cadeaux". Once accepted, these little gifts would turn into a bit of leverage.."Et pour moi? Quelque chose pour moi?". The acceptance of a model camel woven out of grass will cost you dear. More worrying is the initial approach: "My names Monique, what's yours? You look nice. Can I give you a little present? A present, you don't have to buy. Because you're nice". All this from a pretty girl, smartly dressed. Aged about 5.

We also got the obligatory approach from carpet merchants, fossil sellers, a guy making model Landrovers out of palm trees and hotel "runners" all looking for customers. We did manage to sort one gem out of all this - the address of Probably The Best Campsite in Morocco. It isn't advertised as that, but it's so good we decided to stay another day. Camping Palmeraie d'Amezrou, if you're ever passing through. N30.18'51.4 W005.49'46.8. Tell 'em we sent you.