agfoxx
Registered user
This won't be the usual ride report, in that I won't type a lot of words in one stream of text. I'm taking a slightly different approach. Below is a day-by-day account of all I posted on Facebook throughout the trip, along with some extra pictures.
Can't promise you'll like it, but I think you'll get an idea of what I've been up to!
01/05/16, 21:34, Salamanca, Spain.
The best way to arrive into a new city is, of course, by bike.
After a 400km ride from Bilbao, I am now in Salamanca.
And here's how it works. For three and a half hours, you sit on a Spanish motorway. It's slightly different from your common, or garden, British motorway in that a) the sun is out, b) there's stuff to look at (mountains, rivers, lakes), c) it's virtually empty. Somewhere between Valladolid and Zagora, I had three lanes to myself for about 20 minutes.
But it's still a motorway, dreary and fast, with nothing much more than a selection of Radio 4's podcasts for entertainment. Here's an important piece of advice to would-be long distance riders: the Neswquiz works a lot better than In Our Time. Melvin Bragg can be a bit too soothing.
Eventually, though, you peel off.
The smell of diesel outside a Carrrefour distribution centre overpowers the lovely, rural, soft aroma of cow.
You immediately hit an absolute maze of an industrial estate - complete with what appears to be the world's last Saab dealership. And it's not even boarded up.
As you roll past yoofs on scooters, the city begins to emerge from its bubble wrap of warehouses and shopping malls.
First, it doesn't seem much to look at, a collection of generic continental residential blocks.
But then, after a few roundabouts, it's like a switch is flicked, and you enter Salamanca's historic heart.
You dodge kissing couples, pissing dogs, fleecing street traders and reminiscing pensioners, to emerge just by Plaza Mayor. Which is majestic, as fig. 1 here demonstrates.
Then you remove the helmet, and you're immediately hit by the cacophony of a Spanish town at play, where the weather is nice and everybody is out and about to see and to be seen.
Off to find dinner now. A 7 hour ride to the southern coast awaits tomorrow.
Any podcast recommendations?
P.S. I'm parked next to a beaten-up X reg Honda CBR. The small script on the numberplate proudly states that the bike was purchased from HGB motorcycles in Uxbridge. I bought my first proper bike there. Ah, the nostalgia!
02/05/16, 12:11, Canaveral, Spain
This is Nicole standing next to her vintage Peugeot. Inside the car is her husband Jean. I met them at a petrol station in Canaveral, a tiny town in the middle of Spanish nowhere.
Nicole and Jean are heading to South Africa. They expect the trip will take them about six months. But their first stop tonight will be Algeciras, in southern Spain. The harbour from where the ferry to Tangier in Morocco sails. I'm on my way there, too.
In fact, as you move south in Spain, you start to notice more and more overlanders, all headed in the same direction. There's a plethora of kitted out 4x4s, heavily laden bikes, and yes, classic cars with stickers on them.
As Nicole and I chatted about their journey (they thought about taking their other classic car, a Triumph Spitfire, but decided against it because of its poor reliability), vultures circled overhead, in the air which carried a distinctive smell of citrus.
This is the life.
Next stop, lunch in Seville. And then dinner with Nicole and Jean by the seaside tonight.
02/05/16, 20:22, Algeciras, Spain
So then, from sea to sea. Bilbao to Algeciras is almost exactly 1000km. Not a lot, really. You can fly it in an hour and a quarter.
But, if you travel overland, not in the sterility of a hermetically sealed airliner, you appreciate how the world changes with every mile you travel.
Bilbao was full of post industrial dynamism.
Salamanca partied and sought out the tourist dollar.
Seville, four hours' ride further south, waddled slowly in the heat, dragging along its weight of hundreds of years of history. And because its history is as Moorish as it is Spanish, you start noticing things which appear a bit exotic. A brightly painted wall here; a tiled street fountain there; a prospering palm grove in the middle of a traffic island around the corner.
And then Algeciras. A port city. A melting pot of a port city. A historic centre which looks generically Spanish - tapas, football scarves, promenading couples - slowly cedes ground to the port area.
All shop signs in this part of town are in Arabic. Bearded men stand, frozen, propping up flaking walls.
Dodgy-looking youths offer "weed, girl, watch your bike for you".
It even seems that, as you approach the port area, traffic rules also change, becoming much more relaxed.
My ferry sails at 0800 tomorrow. But I think my transition away from Europe has already begun.
And I could track it, mile by mile, as I rode south from Bilbao.
03/05/16, 05:47, Algeciras, Spain.
Artyom read his ferry ticket properly and arrived at the port two hours before departure, as instructed. Don't be like Artyom.
03/05/16, 12:47, Tangier Med port, Morocco
The Moroccan adventure began with a vengeance.
It's so stormy in Tangier that it took the captain (by the name of Novikov) about 20 minutes to dock. I was so fascinated by the process that missed an announcement about a passport check.
Which meant that when I tried to get off the boat, I couldn't: I was missing a crucial stamp in my passport. The local police boss had to be wheeled in to sort me out. That took about an hour, and the police boss was very annoyed. Clearly.
Eventually, chomping at the bit to carry on, I travelled on to the customs shed.
Which immediately reminded me of a Russian traffic police station from about 10 years ago: lots of men in uniform walking around purposefully, and even more drivers chasing them, all with begging looks on their faces.
The most important thing in such queues is to have a fully charged phone. 10 years ago, Nokia Snake helped. Now, it was 2048. The game of course, not the year!
Anyway, about an hour later, I was given a very important green form and allowed into Morocco.
Just as I stopped to repack, the storm picked up. A particularly vicious gust tore the form out of my hand, and I watched in amazement as it flew towards the sea, and then picked up speed and headed for Gibraltar.
A very helpful customs officer told me to take to the police. I did. They sent me to a place called SAS 1, which should sort me out.
They didn't. SAS 1 told me to return to the police. Which then sent me back to SAS 1. Which sent me back to the police.
So I'm now waiting for my friend the police chief. He's busy sorting out a Polish TV crew who were caught filming without accreditation.
03/05/16, 20:18, Chefchaouen, Morocco
Four hours later, I have now checked into my riad - a small hotel - in Chefchaouen.
Here's the rest of today's story.
The police chief reminded me of something I've experienced many times before.
He began by asking me, quite aggressively, why my French was so poor. After fuming for a bit about my language skills, he asked what happened to my customs form.
- Blown away by the wind, - I said.
- The wind should have blown YOU away! You're trouble.
I braced myself for a long bureaucratic nightmare.
But then, suddenly, the whole game changed.
Having vented his annoyance, the police boss spent the following hour driving me around the sprawling port in his Merc. Other policemen saluted us, doors flew open, stamps thumped.
The form was done without further questions - and then I was invited for a "police lunch".
Chicken and fries.
The following three hours were spent on fantastic roads. I dodged mules and potholes, I smiled at waving schoolchildren and looked away from stern men in big hats, I overtook smelly diesel lorries and riders on sleek horses.
I battled the wind - so strong that I had to ride at an angle to the ground to stay upright.
I stopped for pictures and drank a small ocean of bottled water.
I'm now in Chefchaouen.
I can't believe I got here on the same bike which, day in day out, takes me to Oxford Circus.
04/05/16, 13:23, Fes, Morocco
While I'm waiting for lunch, I want to sing an ode to Moroccan potholes. There aren't many of them, but they are strategically positioned. On the R501, for example, they are mostly concentrated in places where the road otherwise would look like something out of the South Downs. You are flying along at 60, enjoying perfect bends and wonderful scenery, and then the road suddenly ends. For a mile or so, you're happy to have an adventure bike rather then a Honda CBR or something similar. And as you slow down, you begin to notice so much more. Poppy fields. Women in bright hats with pompoms. Donkeys. Tony little streams. But then you turn a corner, and the tarmac returns. You could, of course, continue to potter along at 20, in second gear, but the corners are just too inviting to be ignored. Even on a fully laden bike.
04/05/16, 15:26, Fes, Morocco
You know how I said schoolchildren were waving at me?
Well. Turns out, this wasn't some spontaneous expression of friendliness. These kids, so cute as they sit by the roadside and play simple games in the sand, were actually trying to flag me down in order to sell me weed. And I don't mean parsley.
Cynical journalist, 1 - optimistic travel blogger, 0.
04/05/16, 16:15, Fes, Morocco
So I just rode through the centre of Fez. An interesting exercise in to navigating through chaos. Might come in helpful at work one day. My favourite bit was when this lorry jumped the red light to go the wrong way round a roundabout.
04/05/16, 21:11, Azrou, Morocco
Just before I took this photo, I was riding along, waving my left, throttle-free, hand in the air, and shouting: "Africa! I've ridden my bike into Africa!"
I was also thinking about Sam Manicom and his book "Into Africa".
I may have have sung a few songs from the Lion King, but let's not go there.
Technically, these are, I'm told, the northern fringes of the Sahara. Ignore the fact that there are no sand dunes: actually, very little of the great desert is sand. Most of it looks something like this: rocks and even some grass.
I spent about 40 minutes on this road and not a single vehicle went past. Once, I came across a local shepherd and his flock of sheep. No idea where they came from: I could see no signs of human habitation for at least 10 miles in each direction.
Now, look at the sky. It's quite threatening, right? On the horizon, you can, possibly, make out some mountains. As soon as I got to them, the heavens opened. Thunder. Lighting. A solid wall of rain. Side winds so bad I had to really struggle to stay upright.
I persisted for what felt like about half an hour, got thoroughly drenched, and then took refuge in the only building for miles around. The ruins of an abandoned farm. There was no roof, so it wasn't much help. But it was still better than nothing. And the other added benefit was that I didn't feel comfortable being the tallest thing for miles around, sitting astride a large lump of metal, in a raging thunderstorm. Perhaps scientifically I'm not making much sense, but who needs physics when you have gut feelings!
I stayed in my shelter for about 40 minutes. The rain eased up, and, gingerly, I rode on.
About half a mile down the road, I turned a corner and saw a lovely warm hotel with a restaurant serving hot tea.
I pulled in and immediately dropped the bike in the soaking wet gravel carpark. Heroically, I picked it up, rode another 10 feet, and went down again.
I'm fine, the bike will need plastic surgery.
05/05/16, 13:21, Cafe Andaluz, Er Rachidiya, Morocco
I have no idea what this village is, but I've just stopped for lunch on my way to the area around the Algerian border.
I chose to stop here because the café is attached to a hospital, and I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it would be cleaner here.
As I wait for my tagine, I'll try to explain what the last 100 miles meant to me.
It's very difficult to explain a desert. I think the most striking thing about it is that it isn't dead. It looks and feels like it should be devoid of life.
But if you slow down, you start to notice living things in the distance.
A shepherd. Some birds. A clump of trees. A group of women around a water pump.
But blink, and you'll miss it all, instead seeing rocks, dried out river beds and more rocks.
I stopped for a drink near a school in some village. I was immediately mobbed by a dozen kids. They weren't trying to sell me anything, but their interest stretched beyond just curiosity. They wanted a pen.
I was not prepared to give up the only one I had, so I offered them a few of my business cards instead.
I figured they would have a certain exotic value.
They did.
I'm ashamed to say the kids fought over them like sparrows in a city park fight over bread crumbs.
The oldest of the kids told me that his grandfather listens to BBC Arabic, and then informed me that Leicester were "the best".
As I prepared to leave, they formed an orderly and very polite queue to my throttle handle. The boy whose grandfather listens to BBC Arabic took on the role of the steward, making sure everybody has a go, and that nobody twists the throttle all the way to the stop.
No weed was offered to me on this occasion.
05/05/16, 15:56, Merzouga, Morocco
You know all this stuff I said about the Sahara being full of life? Well, I was wrong. I've now got to the southernmost point of my journey. Beyond here, there is nothing but sand and the Algerian border. I can confirm that there is absolutely nothing here. But still, it's brilliant to have reached this point. I have now covered 1800 miles from Portsmouth. Tomorrow, I'll turn around and start heading home.
05/05/16, 21:21, Merzouga, Morocco
I'm spending the night here in the village of Merzouga, at the foot of massive sand dunes. I went for a walk earlier and found some locals skiing, snowboarding, even sledging down the dunes.
Bizarrely, when I got my camera out, they all started pointing at me and shouting: "Facebook, Facebook!"
Mark Zukerberg should be very proud of himself.
As a sidebar, the desert here is actually very polluted. Discarded shoes, pieces of paper, car tyres.
Shameful, actually.
But even so, it's an incredibly magnificent sight.
06/05/16, 12:43, Midelt, Morocco
Meet Olivier and his Niva. They are taking part in a big expedition across Morocco.
Olivier bought his Niva specifically for such expeditions. It's cheap, goes everywhere, can be fixed with a hammer.... You know the score.
There are 20 drivers on the trip, and there is only one rule: no cars younger than 20 years old or older than 50 years old are allowed.
The expedition is led by a guy who's done the Paris-Dakar three times: once on a bike, twice by car.
Shame I didn't get to meet him. I've always considered people who have done the Dakar to be slightly superhuman.
06/05/16, 17:58, Fes, Morocco
480 Km and seven hours later, I am now in Fez.
I chased a hot air balloon across the desert, for the sake of photography and for some off road fun.
I drank tea with a guy who ran in the Dakar (yes, I did meet him after all).
I waved at bikers going the other way (I recognised a few I'd seen before on this journey).
I listened to almost all the Beatles songs I have on my iPhone (I.e., almost all Beatles songs ever written). It's funny how I still mis-hear lines which I misheard many years ago, as a teenager. "And of course Henry the horse dies in the war" (it's actually "dances the waltz").
Roads in southern Morocco are very straight and very empty. And the novelty of nothingness, of big skies and sand, does wear off.
After a few hours on the road, what I first thought was the romantic, magical, amazing desert, started to look, to me, like an endless abandoned construction site. It's as if somebody graded the ground in preparation for building works, but then forgot to actually do something with it.
For some reason, there are a few Moroccans who drive very slowly. You can have a decent car, on a long straight stretch of road, crawling along at 20 miles an hour. No idea why.
But these people do wake you from the almost meditation-like state imposed by observing nothingness move past you in a straight line.
So I've done some very bspirited overtakes.
I even started playing a game with myself, switching down a year, indicating, opening the throttle, moving out, - all to the beat of the music in my helmet.
"Come to (gear down) gether, right now (indicate) over me (overtake)".
Not the most exciting of games, but still, something to pass the time, right?
Now that I'm heading home, my mood has changed so much. I just want to put the miles behind me.
Colourfully dressed locals? Mules by the roadside? Macaques in the forest near Azrou? They are no longer sights. They are now hazards.
Still, I'll have a look at Fez tomorrow morning. I'm told it's quite remarkable.
07/05/16, 14:38, Fes, Morocco
Right, moral dilemma.
Last night, I arranged for a guide to show me around Fes. Someone who works for the tourism office, so all kosher, above board, certified. Or so I was told.
When the guide arrived this morning, I immediately sensed that something was not right. A very old man and clearly a survivor of the stroke, he could barely walk. Or talk, for that matter.
He set the tone by smoking two cigarettes in the space of the first three minutes of the tour, and demanding that we stop for tea as soon as we left the hotel.
This was pretty much how the walk went. He smoked a packet of cigarettes in four hours, he had endless teas and coffees (I have coffee in this cafe, you look around and come back, nice area, 8th century, take picture).
His explanations of where we were also felt somewhat limited. "Jewish area here, nice artisan shop. I have coffee, you look inside, maybe pretty present".
These are the bad things. Now, for some balance and neutrality.
Everybody in town knew him. He bought me some nuts, with his own money. And clearly the effort he had to make in order to walk about for two hours was massive for him.
Clearly, guiding is his own source of income. And, obviously, being a very sick old man, he needs the money. I'm not sure how he would survive without this income.
Art the end of our walk, he took me to the tourism office. I'm expected to leave a review about him.
I want to say he was beyond awful. But I know if I do, he may well lose this job. And I don't want to be the person who takes away income from sick old people.
What would you do?
Truth or consequences?
08/05/16, 18:27, Salamanca, Spain
Welcome to Europe, or How to Add Insult to Injury.
I woke up this morning with a headache, a sore throat, a blocked nose, and a general feeling of Overnight Onset Manflu.
Serves me right, really: I should not have ridden down Moroccan toll roads, at 75 miles an hour, in a T-shirt, a summer jacket, and summer trousers. By the time I got to the north of the country, the temperature had fallen to +14.
Normally, I would be wearing thermals on the bike in this sort of weather. But I thought that I was in Africa, so it would be okay. Clearly, it wasn't.
So, feeling sorry for myself, I dragged myself out of bed with the promise of breakfast, looked out of my hotel window, and saw a prime example of British November.
Normally, any sort of riding in this weather would be a really bad idea. Especially so given that the tires I bought before I set off from Britain turned out to be rubbish in the wet (for those who care, Metzeler Tourance XP). They happily slide around at the first hint of anything slippery. They did give me quite a few scares.
I left at 8:30 in the morning. For 300 miles, I rode through rain, hail, downpours, drizzle, and even, at one point, about seven minutes of accidental sunshine. I saw taillights of cars in front of me, fog in the mountains, and lit up motorway signs urging extreme caution.
I stopped at some petrol stations, not so much to fill up, as to get some rest and to try to dry out. From one, I was shooed on by a very emotional elderly worker. I couldn't understand his Spanish, but I assume she was talking about wet dirty bikers being a menace for their idyllic rural community. Not that I could see any of the community for the rain, of course.
Unbeknownst to me, my waterproof trousers developed a tiny hole on the left hip. Cold water, of course, seeped through, drenching some of the most sensitive parts of my anatomy.
I stopped at a motorway services about halfway through and, for the first time in my whole life, decided to use their showers, just to warm up.
As I got off the bike, my phone rang. It was the ferry company, saying that their ship had broken down, and that tomorrow's sailing would be cancelled.
I was supposed to sail on Pont Aven, the flagship of Brittany Ferries, and one of the most advanced cruise ferries in Europe. I read about it quite a lot, including last night, when I was waiting to board the boat from Morocco to Spain and had nothing better to do.
Turns out, Pont Aven has quite a rich history of technical trouble.
Perhaps by reading about it and wondering what it would be like to be stuck on a broken down ferry in the Bay of Biscay, I brought it on myself....
The only option I have been offered was to sail from Caen, in France, on Tuesday morning. This means another 800 miles. The weather forecast remains interesting.
In summary, I feel rather sorry for myself, sick with manflu, hungry and thus annoyed, but still very excited about this whole adventure biking thing. I presume this is exactly what people mean when they talk about stepping out of the comfort zone.
09/05/16, 09:32, La Chamorra, Palencia, Spain
As I ponder the forthcoming 800 mile motorway run, I want to take issue with people who say they hate motorways.
These people simply don't know how to use them.
Motorways are a great way to learn new things. You can have podcasts, audiobooks, recordings of TED talks, whatever. I, personally, have a great collection of podcasts in my phone, - happy to share details if anybody is interested.
I believe I've learnt more over the last three days of motorway riding than I did in the whole of the last year.
I think the psychological feeling of partial isolation from the world also helps. On the one hand, when you're on the bike, you still remain at one with your environment, much more so than when you're driving. All your senses are so much more active: sight, yes, but also touch, balance, smell, even.
On the other hand, when you have a voice which sounds oh so intimately in your helmet, it creates a much greater impact than when you have the same voice on a car stereo. It feels a lot closer to you. So you remember more.
Unless, of course, the voice is your own. In which case you probably need help.
09/05/16, 19:18, Villars-en-Pons, France
On this trip, I've turned riding in the rain, and sitting out the rain in various protective structures, into an art form.
Currently enjoying the warm (and, crucially, dry) welcome of a motorway services about an hour's ride away from my planned overnight stop at La Rochelle.
I have a suspicion that I may have been dealing with the same cloud throughout: in Azrou, in Morocco, a few days ago, then in Spain yesterday, and now, today, in central France.
If my assumption is correct, this rain will probably accompany me all the way home.
09/05/16, 23:17, La Rochelle, France
Rain, rain, go away etc.
The deluge ended about two miles further north. I'm so glad I pushed on.
I was treated to the best sunset I've ever seen. Hands down, no contest.
Imagine this.
The southeastern half of the sky is pitch dark. Almost. The uniform, menacing black is broken in two by a rainbow, its edges so well-defined that it looks photoshopped. Even more so because it's madly saturated. If I ever published an image with so much saturation, I would be called a cheat.
Now turn around to face the north-west. There, the sun is just beginning to find the first breaks in the cloud. As it does so, the rain cloud is burnt away, leaving behind thin, pathetic, powerless wisps.
These wisps are bright pink, - again, unrealistically pink.
They sit at different heights, and they get moved about by the wind. Weirdly, the wind appears to be blowing in different directions at different heights. So the movement follows a complicated pattern, as clouds cross each other's paths, combine, then separate again.
All of this looks a bit like a computer game, a clone of Mario or similar platformer.
I wished I could have stopped and got the camera out. Sadly, I was on a motorway. And I'm not sure a good photographic opportunity is enough of an emergency to pull up on the French hard shoulder.
But what I could do was open the visor and drink in the smell of ozone, of fields, trees and Tarmac freshly washed by the rain, of a distant sea.
And also, of course, the smell of my own riding gear. After so much rain this smell is not easily ignored.
Now having coffee in La Rochelle, facing the marina. I'm sitting next to a group of elderly, well-dressed, pampered Turks. I understand a few words from their conversation: catamaran, diesel, GPS. I wonder which boat is theirs.
10/05/16, 07:17, La Rochelle, France
This wasn't a dream. There really is a Jim Morrison graffiti on the wall of my hotel.
10/05/16, 16:16, Le Mans, France
Rode down public roads which form part of the Le Mans 24 circuit. What a weird feeling.
You're sharing the Tarmac with vans, lorries, bicycles even - and all around you are all the tell-tale signs of a race track. Stan Hawrylak will know their proper names, but I'll just call them, for the purposes of this, sand pits, rumble strips on corners, and information displays.
If you're in Le Mans, don't bother with the museum. It's rather lame. Instead, pay for 15 minutes on the simulator. Surprising, how hard it is to control even a virtual race car.
Suddenly hit by how tired I really am.
It's only two hours from here to the ferry port. My boat home sails at 2300. I really hope it doesn't break down.
10/05/16, 22:16, Caen Ouistreham port, France
I've always enjoyed talking to other bikers queuing for the ferry home. I love hearing stories of people's travels.
This time, most motorcyclists on the ferry were in the same boat as me (pun intended) - forced to travel home from Caen because the Santander ship had broken down.
And we all had similar stories: a lot of rain, a lot of motorway miles, a burning desire to get home.
A bunch of guys who'd spent two weeks riding around Portugal said it had rained every single day.
A chap who from Valencia told me he was going to Scotland to dry out.
A man from Belfast was walking around the car park looking for a cloth to wipe his seat, - it was so wet, he said, he was sliding off it all the time.
But, for all the misery, it was such a lovely group of people. We swapped stories, we talked bikes, we discussed future trips, we exchanged Facebook details. All in great humour. All in the pouring rain.
Incidentally, should I be concerned about always being by far the youngest biker on these ferries?
11/05/16, 09:08, Tunbridge Wells, UK
Honey, I'm home!
3819.6 miles.
And if you want to see proper (big, artistic, nice) pictures from that mammoth trip, they are all here:
<table style="width:194px;"><tr><td align="center" style="height:194px;background:url(<a href="https://picasaweb.google.c...t of damage to bike: I don't want to know....
Can't promise you'll like it, but I think you'll get an idea of what I've been up to!
01/05/16, 21:34, Salamanca, Spain.
The best way to arrive into a new city is, of course, by bike.
After a 400km ride from Bilbao, I am now in Salamanca.
And here's how it works. For three and a half hours, you sit on a Spanish motorway. It's slightly different from your common, or garden, British motorway in that a) the sun is out, b) there's stuff to look at (mountains, rivers, lakes), c) it's virtually empty. Somewhere between Valladolid and Zagora, I had three lanes to myself for about 20 minutes.
But it's still a motorway, dreary and fast, with nothing much more than a selection of Radio 4's podcasts for entertainment. Here's an important piece of advice to would-be long distance riders: the Neswquiz works a lot better than In Our Time. Melvin Bragg can be a bit too soothing.
Eventually, though, you peel off.
The smell of diesel outside a Carrrefour distribution centre overpowers the lovely, rural, soft aroma of cow.
You immediately hit an absolute maze of an industrial estate - complete with what appears to be the world's last Saab dealership. And it's not even boarded up.
As you roll past yoofs on scooters, the city begins to emerge from its bubble wrap of warehouses and shopping malls.
First, it doesn't seem much to look at, a collection of generic continental residential blocks.
But then, after a few roundabouts, it's like a switch is flicked, and you enter Salamanca's historic heart.
You dodge kissing couples, pissing dogs, fleecing street traders and reminiscing pensioners, to emerge just by Plaza Mayor. Which is majestic, as fig. 1 here demonstrates.
Then you remove the helmet, and you're immediately hit by the cacophony of a Spanish town at play, where the weather is nice and everybody is out and about to see and to be seen.
Off to find dinner now. A 7 hour ride to the southern coast awaits tomorrow.
Any podcast recommendations?
P.S. I'm parked next to a beaten-up X reg Honda CBR. The small script on the numberplate proudly states that the bike was purchased from HGB motorcycles in Uxbridge. I bought my first proper bike there. Ah, the nostalgia!
02/05/16, 12:11, Canaveral, Spain
This is Nicole standing next to her vintage Peugeot. Inside the car is her husband Jean. I met them at a petrol station in Canaveral, a tiny town in the middle of Spanish nowhere.
Nicole and Jean are heading to South Africa. They expect the trip will take them about six months. But their first stop tonight will be Algeciras, in southern Spain. The harbour from where the ferry to Tangier in Morocco sails. I'm on my way there, too.
In fact, as you move south in Spain, you start to notice more and more overlanders, all headed in the same direction. There's a plethora of kitted out 4x4s, heavily laden bikes, and yes, classic cars with stickers on them.
As Nicole and I chatted about their journey (they thought about taking their other classic car, a Triumph Spitfire, but decided against it because of its poor reliability), vultures circled overhead, in the air which carried a distinctive smell of citrus.
This is the life.
Next stop, lunch in Seville. And then dinner with Nicole and Jean by the seaside tonight.
02/05/16, 20:22, Algeciras, Spain
So then, from sea to sea. Bilbao to Algeciras is almost exactly 1000km. Not a lot, really. You can fly it in an hour and a quarter.
But, if you travel overland, not in the sterility of a hermetically sealed airliner, you appreciate how the world changes with every mile you travel.
Bilbao was full of post industrial dynamism.
Salamanca partied and sought out the tourist dollar.
Seville, four hours' ride further south, waddled slowly in the heat, dragging along its weight of hundreds of years of history. And because its history is as Moorish as it is Spanish, you start noticing things which appear a bit exotic. A brightly painted wall here; a tiled street fountain there; a prospering palm grove in the middle of a traffic island around the corner.
And then Algeciras. A port city. A melting pot of a port city. A historic centre which looks generically Spanish - tapas, football scarves, promenading couples - slowly cedes ground to the port area.
All shop signs in this part of town are in Arabic. Bearded men stand, frozen, propping up flaking walls.
Dodgy-looking youths offer "weed, girl, watch your bike for you".
It even seems that, as you approach the port area, traffic rules also change, becoming much more relaxed.
My ferry sails at 0800 tomorrow. But I think my transition away from Europe has already begun.
And I could track it, mile by mile, as I rode south from Bilbao.
03/05/16, 05:47, Algeciras, Spain.
Artyom read his ferry ticket properly and arrived at the port two hours before departure, as instructed. Don't be like Artyom.
03/05/16, 12:47, Tangier Med port, Morocco
The Moroccan adventure began with a vengeance.
It's so stormy in Tangier that it took the captain (by the name of Novikov) about 20 minutes to dock. I was so fascinated by the process that missed an announcement about a passport check.
Which meant that when I tried to get off the boat, I couldn't: I was missing a crucial stamp in my passport. The local police boss had to be wheeled in to sort me out. That took about an hour, and the police boss was very annoyed. Clearly.
Eventually, chomping at the bit to carry on, I travelled on to the customs shed.
Which immediately reminded me of a Russian traffic police station from about 10 years ago: lots of men in uniform walking around purposefully, and even more drivers chasing them, all with begging looks on their faces.
The most important thing in such queues is to have a fully charged phone. 10 years ago, Nokia Snake helped. Now, it was 2048. The game of course, not the year!
Anyway, about an hour later, I was given a very important green form and allowed into Morocco.
Just as I stopped to repack, the storm picked up. A particularly vicious gust tore the form out of my hand, and I watched in amazement as it flew towards the sea, and then picked up speed and headed for Gibraltar.
A very helpful customs officer told me to take to the police. I did. They sent me to a place called SAS 1, which should sort me out.
They didn't. SAS 1 told me to return to the police. Which then sent me back to SAS 1. Which sent me back to the police.
So I'm now waiting for my friend the police chief. He's busy sorting out a Polish TV crew who were caught filming without accreditation.
03/05/16, 20:18, Chefchaouen, Morocco
Four hours later, I have now checked into my riad - a small hotel - in Chefchaouen.
Here's the rest of today's story.
The police chief reminded me of something I've experienced many times before.
He began by asking me, quite aggressively, why my French was so poor. After fuming for a bit about my language skills, he asked what happened to my customs form.
- Blown away by the wind, - I said.
- The wind should have blown YOU away! You're trouble.
I braced myself for a long bureaucratic nightmare.
But then, suddenly, the whole game changed.
Having vented his annoyance, the police boss spent the following hour driving me around the sprawling port in his Merc. Other policemen saluted us, doors flew open, stamps thumped.
The form was done without further questions - and then I was invited for a "police lunch".
Chicken and fries.
The following three hours were spent on fantastic roads. I dodged mules and potholes, I smiled at waving schoolchildren and looked away from stern men in big hats, I overtook smelly diesel lorries and riders on sleek horses.
I battled the wind - so strong that I had to ride at an angle to the ground to stay upright.
I stopped for pictures and drank a small ocean of bottled water.
I'm now in Chefchaouen.
I can't believe I got here on the same bike which, day in day out, takes me to Oxford Circus.
04/05/16, 13:23, Fes, Morocco
While I'm waiting for lunch, I want to sing an ode to Moroccan potholes. There aren't many of them, but they are strategically positioned. On the R501, for example, they are mostly concentrated in places where the road otherwise would look like something out of the South Downs. You are flying along at 60, enjoying perfect bends and wonderful scenery, and then the road suddenly ends. For a mile or so, you're happy to have an adventure bike rather then a Honda CBR or something similar. And as you slow down, you begin to notice so much more. Poppy fields. Women in bright hats with pompoms. Donkeys. Tony little streams. But then you turn a corner, and the tarmac returns. You could, of course, continue to potter along at 20, in second gear, but the corners are just too inviting to be ignored. Even on a fully laden bike.
04/05/16, 15:26, Fes, Morocco
You know how I said schoolchildren were waving at me?
Well. Turns out, this wasn't some spontaneous expression of friendliness. These kids, so cute as they sit by the roadside and play simple games in the sand, were actually trying to flag me down in order to sell me weed. And I don't mean parsley.
Cynical journalist, 1 - optimistic travel blogger, 0.
04/05/16, 16:15, Fes, Morocco
So I just rode through the centre of Fez. An interesting exercise in to navigating through chaos. Might come in helpful at work one day. My favourite bit was when this lorry jumped the red light to go the wrong way round a roundabout.
04/05/16, 21:11, Azrou, Morocco
Just before I took this photo, I was riding along, waving my left, throttle-free, hand in the air, and shouting: "Africa! I've ridden my bike into Africa!"
I was also thinking about Sam Manicom and his book "Into Africa".
I may have have sung a few songs from the Lion King, but let's not go there.
Technically, these are, I'm told, the northern fringes of the Sahara. Ignore the fact that there are no sand dunes: actually, very little of the great desert is sand. Most of it looks something like this: rocks and even some grass.
I spent about 40 minutes on this road and not a single vehicle went past. Once, I came across a local shepherd and his flock of sheep. No idea where they came from: I could see no signs of human habitation for at least 10 miles in each direction.
Now, look at the sky. It's quite threatening, right? On the horizon, you can, possibly, make out some mountains. As soon as I got to them, the heavens opened. Thunder. Lighting. A solid wall of rain. Side winds so bad I had to really struggle to stay upright.
I persisted for what felt like about half an hour, got thoroughly drenched, and then took refuge in the only building for miles around. The ruins of an abandoned farm. There was no roof, so it wasn't much help. But it was still better than nothing. And the other added benefit was that I didn't feel comfortable being the tallest thing for miles around, sitting astride a large lump of metal, in a raging thunderstorm. Perhaps scientifically I'm not making much sense, but who needs physics when you have gut feelings!
I stayed in my shelter for about 40 minutes. The rain eased up, and, gingerly, I rode on.
About half a mile down the road, I turned a corner and saw a lovely warm hotel with a restaurant serving hot tea.
I pulled in and immediately dropped the bike in the soaking wet gravel carpark. Heroically, I picked it up, rode another 10 feet, and went down again.
I'm fine, the bike will need plastic surgery.
05/05/16, 13:21, Cafe Andaluz, Er Rachidiya, Morocco
I have no idea what this village is, but I've just stopped for lunch on my way to the area around the Algerian border.
I chose to stop here because the café is attached to a hospital, and I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it would be cleaner here.
As I wait for my tagine, I'll try to explain what the last 100 miles meant to me.
It's very difficult to explain a desert. I think the most striking thing about it is that it isn't dead. It looks and feels like it should be devoid of life.
But if you slow down, you start to notice living things in the distance.
A shepherd. Some birds. A clump of trees. A group of women around a water pump.
But blink, and you'll miss it all, instead seeing rocks, dried out river beds and more rocks.
I stopped for a drink near a school in some village. I was immediately mobbed by a dozen kids. They weren't trying to sell me anything, but their interest stretched beyond just curiosity. They wanted a pen.
I was not prepared to give up the only one I had, so I offered them a few of my business cards instead.
I figured they would have a certain exotic value.
They did.
I'm ashamed to say the kids fought over them like sparrows in a city park fight over bread crumbs.
The oldest of the kids told me that his grandfather listens to BBC Arabic, and then informed me that Leicester were "the best".
As I prepared to leave, they formed an orderly and very polite queue to my throttle handle. The boy whose grandfather listens to BBC Arabic took on the role of the steward, making sure everybody has a go, and that nobody twists the throttle all the way to the stop.
No weed was offered to me on this occasion.
05/05/16, 15:56, Merzouga, Morocco
You know all this stuff I said about the Sahara being full of life? Well, I was wrong. I've now got to the southernmost point of my journey. Beyond here, there is nothing but sand and the Algerian border. I can confirm that there is absolutely nothing here. But still, it's brilliant to have reached this point. I have now covered 1800 miles from Portsmouth. Tomorrow, I'll turn around and start heading home.
05/05/16, 21:21, Merzouga, Morocco
I'm spending the night here in the village of Merzouga, at the foot of massive sand dunes. I went for a walk earlier and found some locals skiing, snowboarding, even sledging down the dunes.
Bizarrely, when I got my camera out, they all started pointing at me and shouting: "Facebook, Facebook!"
Mark Zukerberg should be very proud of himself.
As a sidebar, the desert here is actually very polluted. Discarded shoes, pieces of paper, car tyres.
Shameful, actually.
But even so, it's an incredibly magnificent sight.
06/05/16, 12:43, Midelt, Morocco
Meet Olivier and his Niva. They are taking part in a big expedition across Morocco.
Olivier bought his Niva specifically for such expeditions. It's cheap, goes everywhere, can be fixed with a hammer.... You know the score.
There are 20 drivers on the trip, and there is only one rule: no cars younger than 20 years old or older than 50 years old are allowed.
The expedition is led by a guy who's done the Paris-Dakar three times: once on a bike, twice by car.
Shame I didn't get to meet him. I've always considered people who have done the Dakar to be slightly superhuman.
06/05/16, 17:58, Fes, Morocco
480 Km and seven hours later, I am now in Fez.
I chased a hot air balloon across the desert, for the sake of photography and for some off road fun.
I drank tea with a guy who ran in the Dakar (yes, I did meet him after all).
I waved at bikers going the other way (I recognised a few I'd seen before on this journey).
I listened to almost all the Beatles songs I have on my iPhone (I.e., almost all Beatles songs ever written). It's funny how I still mis-hear lines which I misheard many years ago, as a teenager. "And of course Henry the horse dies in the war" (it's actually "dances the waltz").
Roads in southern Morocco are very straight and very empty. And the novelty of nothingness, of big skies and sand, does wear off.
After a few hours on the road, what I first thought was the romantic, magical, amazing desert, started to look, to me, like an endless abandoned construction site. It's as if somebody graded the ground in preparation for building works, but then forgot to actually do something with it.
For some reason, there are a few Moroccans who drive very slowly. You can have a decent car, on a long straight stretch of road, crawling along at 20 miles an hour. No idea why.
But these people do wake you from the almost meditation-like state imposed by observing nothingness move past you in a straight line.
So I've done some very bspirited overtakes.
I even started playing a game with myself, switching down a year, indicating, opening the throttle, moving out, - all to the beat of the music in my helmet.
"Come to (gear down) gether, right now (indicate) over me (overtake)".
Not the most exciting of games, but still, something to pass the time, right?
Now that I'm heading home, my mood has changed so much. I just want to put the miles behind me.
Colourfully dressed locals? Mules by the roadside? Macaques in the forest near Azrou? They are no longer sights. They are now hazards.
Still, I'll have a look at Fez tomorrow morning. I'm told it's quite remarkable.
07/05/16, 14:38, Fes, Morocco
Right, moral dilemma.
Last night, I arranged for a guide to show me around Fes. Someone who works for the tourism office, so all kosher, above board, certified. Or so I was told.
When the guide arrived this morning, I immediately sensed that something was not right. A very old man and clearly a survivor of the stroke, he could barely walk. Or talk, for that matter.
He set the tone by smoking two cigarettes in the space of the first three minutes of the tour, and demanding that we stop for tea as soon as we left the hotel.
This was pretty much how the walk went. He smoked a packet of cigarettes in four hours, he had endless teas and coffees (I have coffee in this cafe, you look around and come back, nice area, 8th century, take picture).
His explanations of where we were also felt somewhat limited. "Jewish area here, nice artisan shop. I have coffee, you look inside, maybe pretty present".
These are the bad things. Now, for some balance and neutrality.
Everybody in town knew him. He bought me some nuts, with his own money. And clearly the effort he had to make in order to walk about for two hours was massive for him.
Clearly, guiding is his own source of income. And, obviously, being a very sick old man, he needs the money. I'm not sure how he would survive without this income.
Art the end of our walk, he took me to the tourism office. I'm expected to leave a review about him.
I want to say he was beyond awful. But I know if I do, he may well lose this job. And I don't want to be the person who takes away income from sick old people.
What would you do?
Truth or consequences?
08/05/16, 18:27, Salamanca, Spain
Welcome to Europe, or How to Add Insult to Injury.
I woke up this morning with a headache, a sore throat, a blocked nose, and a general feeling of Overnight Onset Manflu.
Serves me right, really: I should not have ridden down Moroccan toll roads, at 75 miles an hour, in a T-shirt, a summer jacket, and summer trousers. By the time I got to the north of the country, the temperature had fallen to +14.
Normally, I would be wearing thermals on the bike in this sort of weather. But I thought that I was in Africa, so it would be okay. Clearly, it wasn't.
So, feeling sorry for myself, I dragged myself out of bed with the promise of breakfast, looked out of my hotel window, and saw a prime example of British November.
Normally, any sort of riding in this weather would be a really bad idea. Especially so given that the tires I bought before I set off from Britain turned out to be rubbish in the wet (for those who care, Metzeler Tourance XP). They happily slide around at the first hint of anything slippery. They did give me quite a few scares.
I left at 8:30 in the morning. For 300 miles, I rode through rain, hail, downpours, drizzle, and even, at one point, about seven minutes of accidental sunshine. I saw taillights of cars in front of me, fog in the mountains, and lit up motorway signs urging extreme caution.
I stopped at some petrol stations, not so much to fill up, as to get some rest and to try to dry out. From one, I was shooed on by a very emotional elderly worker. I couldn't understand his Spanish, but I assume she was talking about wet dirty bikers being a menace for their idyllic rural community. Not that I could see any of the community for the rain, of course.
Unbeknownst to me, my waterproof trousers developed a tiny hole on the left hip. Cold water, of course, seeped through, drenching some of the most sensitive parts of my anatomy.
I stopped at a motorway services about halfway through and, for the first time in my whole life, decided to use their showers, just to warm up.
As I got off the bike, my phone rang. It was the ferry company, saying that their ship had broken down, and that tomorrow's sailing would be cancelled.
I was supposed to sail on Pont Aven, the flagship of Brittany Ferries, and one of the most advanced cruise ferries in Europe. I read about it quite a lot, including last night, when I was waiting to board the boat from Morocco to Spain and had nothing better to do.
Turns out, Pont Aven has quite a rich history of technical trouble.
Perhaps by reading about it and wondering what it would be like to be stuck on a broken down ferry in the Bay of Biscay, I brought it on myself....
The only option I have been offered was to sail from Caen, in France, on Tuesday morning. This means another 800 miles. The weather forecast remains interesting.
In summary, I feel rather sorry for myself, sick with manflu, hungry and thus annoyed, but still very excited about this whole adventure biking thing. I presume this is exactly what people mean when they talk about stepping out of the comfort zone.
09/05/16, 09:32, La Chamorra, Palencia, Spain
As I ponder the forthcoming 800 mile motorway run, I want to take issue with people who say they hate motorways.
These people simply don't know how to use them.
Motorways are a great way to learn new things. You can have podcasts, audiobooks, recordings of TED talks, whatever. I, personally, have a great collection of podcasts in my phone, - happy to share details if anybody is interested.
I believe I've learnt more over the last three days of motorway riding than I did in the whole of the last year.
I think the psychological feeling of partial isolation from the world also helps. On the one hand, when you're on the bike, you still remain at one with your environment, much more so than when you're driving. All your senses are so much more active: sight, yes, but also touch, balance, smell, even.
On the other hand, when you have a voice which sounds oh so intimately in your helmet, it creates a much greater impact than when you have the same voice on a car stereo. It feels a lot closer to you. So you remember more.
Unless, of course, the voice is your own. In which case you probably need help.
09/05/16, 19:18, Villars-en-Pons, France
On this trip, I've turned riding in the rain, and sitting out the rain in various protective structures, into an art form.
Currently enjoying the warm (and, crucially, dry) welcome of a motorway services about an hour's ride away from my planned overnight stop at La Rochelle.
I have a suspicion that I may have been dealing with the same cloud throughout: in Azrou, in Morocco, a few days ago, then in Spain yesterday, and now, today, in central France.
If my assumption is correct, this rain will probably accompany me all the way home.
09/05/16, 23:17, La Rochelle, France
Rain, rain, go away etc.
The deluge ended about two miles further north. I'm so glad I pushed on.
I was treated to the best sunset I've ever seen. Hands down, no contest.
Imagine this.
The southeastern half of the sky is pitch dark. Almost. The uniform, menacing black is broken in two by a rainbow, its edges so well-defined that it looks photoshopped. Even more so because it's madly saturated. If I ever published an image with so much saturation, I would be called a cheat.
Now turn around to face the north-west. There, the sun is just beginning to find the first breaks in the cloud. As it does so, the rain cloud is burnt away, leaving behind thin, pathetic, powerless wisps.
These wisps are bright pink, - again, unrealistically pink.
They sit at different heights, and they get moved about by the wind. Weirdly, the wind appears to be blowing in different directions at different heights. So the movement follows a complicated pattern, as clouds cross each other's paths, combine, then separate again.
All of this looks a bit like a computer game, a clone of Mario or similar platformer.
I wished I could have stopped and got the camera out. Sadly, I was on a motorway. And I'm not sure a good photographic opportunity is enough of an emergency to pull up on the French hard shoulder.
But what I could do was open the visor and drink in the smell of ozone, of fields, trees and Tarmac freshly washed by the rain, of a distant sea.
And also, of course, the smell of my own riding gear. After so much rain this smell is not easily ignored.
Now having coffee in La Rochelle, facing the marina. I'm sitting next to a group of elderly, well-dressed, pampered Turks. I understand a few words from their conversation: catamaran, diesel, GPS. I wonder which boat is theirs.
10/05/16, 07:17, La Rochelle, France
This wasn't a dream. There really is a Jim Morrison graffiti on the wall of my hotel.
10/05/16, 16:16, Le Mans, France
Rode down public roads which form part of the Le Mans 24 circuit. What a weird feeling.
You're sharing the Tarmac with vans, lorries, bicycles even - and all around you are all the tell-tale signs of a race track. Stan Hawrylak will know their proper names, but I'll just call them, for the purposes of this, sand pits, rumble strips on corners, and information displays.
If you're in Le Mans, don't bother with the museum. It's rather lame. Instead, pay for 15 minutes on the simulator. Surprising, how hard it is to control even a virtual race car.
Suddenly hit by how tired I really am.
It's only two hours from here to the ferry port. My boat home sails at 2300. I really hope it doesn't break down.
10/05/16, 22:16, Caen Ouistreham port, France
I've always enjoyed talking to other bikers queuing for the ferry home. I love hearing stories of people's travels.
This time, most motorcyclists on the ferry were in the same boat as me (pun intended) - forced to travel home from Caen because the Santander ship had broken down.
And we all had similar stories: a lot of rain, a lot of motorway miles, a burning desire to get home.
A bunch of guys who'd spent two weeks riding around Portugal said it had rained every single day.
A chap who from Valencia told me he was going to Scotland to dry out.
A man from Belfast was walking around the car park looking for a cloth to wipe his seat, - it was so wet, he said, he was sliding off it all the time.
But, for all the misery, it was such a lovely group of people. We swapped stories, we talked bikes, we discussed future trips, we exchanged Facebook details. All in great humour. All in the pouring rain.
Incidentally, should I be concerned about always being by far the youngest biker on these ferries?
11/05/16, 09:08, Tunbridge Wells, UK
Honey, I'm home!
3819.6 miles.
And if you want to see proper (big, artistic, nice) pictures from that mammoth trip, they are all here:
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