piedevant
Guest
A Review of Nick Sanders’ DVD “In search of Timbuktu and the Dakar Rally”
By Paul Blezard
“In search of Timbuktu and the Dakar Rally”; is an account of Nick Sanders’ journey with 18 riders from Portugal to Timbuktu which started alongside the 2007 Dakar rally and visited it several times along the way. Overall, it’s pretty entertaining and Nick, acting as cameraman, presenter and voice-over artiste managed to get some great shots of the scenery and the locals and of the riders and their bikes, both riding and broken down! BMWs come in for some stick, because several of them broke down with a variety of problems, including a GS1100 which is diagnosed by some genius to be suffering from mal-adjusted (but non-existent!) carburettors!
Nick has a 4-minute trailer for the film on his website here http://www.nicksanders.com/timbuktu_movie.htm
which gives a pretty good flavour of what the film is like, with great music.
One of the images which really sticks in my brain is of the African guys who’d been stuck at the side of the piste for six days while they stripped their ancient truck’s engine right down to the crankshaft with basic tools. Another is of the Honda Varadero having its alloy rear wheel bashed and welded back into shape after a pothole put such a massive dent in it that the tubeless tyre could no longer hold any air. The intrepid English back-up truck drivers also changed everyone’s tyres with nothing but beefy long levers and muscle power in Mauretania – impressive! Timbuktu itself, on the other hand, looks deeply unimpressive. I would like to have seen some evidence of whatever gives it its “legendary” status. Apart from the tiniest, most fleeting glimpse of the distinctive mosque, from what you see here the town itself could be almost any non-descript town in North Africa. Failing that, a few more words on its history, would have been worth hearing. For example, a quick Google tells me that:
Timbuktu is located at the precise point where the Niger flows northward into the southern edge of the desert. As a result of its unique geographical position, Timbuktu has been a natural meeting point of Songhai, Wangara,Fulani, Tuareg and Arabs. According to the inhabitants of Timbuku, gold came from the south, the salt from the north and the Divine knowledge, from Timbuktu. Timbuktu is also the crossroads where "the camel met the canoe." It is to this privileged position that the city owes much of its historical dynamism. From the 11th century and onward, Timbuktu became an important port where goods from West Africa and North Africa were traded.
I also discovered that Timbuktu was founded at the site of a well and that its name is derived from Tin Abutut which means "the lady with the big navel" in the Tuareg language because such a lady used to look after the well.
(More history here: http://www.timbuktufoundation.org/history.html)
I'm slightly haunted by the yank bikers Nick interviewed just after they’d been excluded from the Dakar rally in Morocco simply because they’d missed their start time through a misunderstanding. There is an interview with one of the Dakar organisers and some pearls of wisdom from Patsy Quick, who was the first British woman ever to finish the Dakar on a bike, at her fourth attempt, in 2006 and this year was doing back-up. There was just one female amongst Nick’s disciples, an intrepid French woman on a Honda Transalp who, like many of the male riders, looks as if she would really have benefited from the sort of brief off-road training that I gave the GS1150-mounted guide, Jason Mardell, just before he left.
What Nick’s film doesn’t show you is what the return journey was like, because it effectively ends as they leave Timbuktu, from which they had to retrace their steps all the way back to Portugal starting with the river boat ride from hell because the riders couldn’t face doing the last 200kms of piste back to Bamako again. For a real warts-and-all account of the trip I can highly recommend Jason’s illustrated diary account here: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/eastleighsc/tbt.htm
If you missed the feature in BIKE magazine about the trip, which mainly consists of interviews with several riders, then it’s reproduced in full in the current Hein Gericke magazine which was given out free with MCN in the September 26th issue. The DVD is also on sale from your nearest Hein Gericke shop or direct from Nick at www.nicksanders.com (£12.99 + £1p&p)
Nick Sanders is doing the trip again in January 2008, but with the big difference that the riders will be flying out from Mali instead of having to ride all the way back to Europe. Mind you, I wouldn't want my bike to be strapped to the roof of the truck cab as some poor sod's was this year. (It might have been Nick's own XT660 of course, when he was driving instead of riding).
Finally, I should add that Nick is a good friend of mine to whom I shall forever be indebted because he introduced me to the lovely Elspeth, my fiancée. However, he’ll tell you himself that I’m one of his sternest critics. If I’d been present at the voice-over recording I would have told him how to pronounce liaison correctly and pointed out that in the intro he says ‘Eastern flank of the Sahara’ when he obviously meant ‘Western flank….because the eastern flank of the Sahara is in Egypt! And so on….. ;-)
© Paul Blezard 2007
PS The Timbuktu DVD has already been shown on Men & Motors as a 6 part series and will no doubt be repeated at some point. Men & Motors are currently screening Nick's Biker Britain series which both Elspeth and I are supposed to be in; her with her Round the World R60 BMW and me with my Quasar. Don't suppose anyone's seen either of us in it?
By Paul Blezard
“In search of Timbuktu and the Dakar Rally”; is an account of Nick Sanders’ journey with 18 riders from Portugal to Timbuktu which started alongside the 2007 Dakar rally and visited it several times along the way. Overall, it’s pretty entertaining and Nick, acting as cameraman, presenter and voice-over artiste managed to get some great shots of the scenery and the locals and of the riders and their bikes, both riding and broken down! BMWs come in for some stick, because several of them broke down with a variety of problems, including a GS1100 which is diagnosed by some genius to be suffering from mal-adjusted (but non-existent!) carburettors!
Nick has a 4-minute trailer for the film on his website here http://www.nicksanders.com/timbuktu_movie.htm
which gives a pretty good flavour of what the film is like, with great music.
One of the images which really sticks in my brain is of the African guys who’d been stuck at the side of the piste for six days while they stripped their ancient truck’s engine right down to the crankshaft with basic tools. Another is of the Honda Varadero having its alloy rear wheel bashed and welded back into shape after a pothole put such a massive dent in it that the tubeless tyre could no longer hold any air. The intrepid English back-up truck drivers also changed everyone’s tyres with nothing but beefy long levers and muscle power in Mauretania – impressive! Timbuktu itself, on the other hand, looks deeply unimpressive. I would like to have seen some evidence of whatever gives it its “legendary” status. Apart from the tiniest, most fleeting glimpse of the distinctive mosque, from what you see here the town itself could be almost any non-descript town in North Africa. Failing that, a few more words on its history, would have been worth hearing. For example, a quick Google tells me that:
Timbuktu is located at the precise point where the Niger flows northward into the southern edge of the desert. As a result of its unique geographical position, Timbuktu has been a natural meeting point of Songhai, Wangara,Fulani, Tuareg and Arabs. According to the inhabitants of Timbuku, gold came from the south, the salt from the north and the Divine knowledge, from Timbuktu. Timbuktu is also the crossroads where "the camel met the canoe." It is to this privileged position that the city owes much of its historical dynamism. From the 11th century and onward, Timbuktu became an important port where goods from West Africa and North Africa were traded.
I also discovered that Timbuktu was founded at the site of a well and that its name is derived from Tin Abutut which means "the lady with the big navel" in the Tuareg language because such a lady used to look after the well.
(More history here: http://www.timbuktufoundation.org/history.html)
I'm slightly haunted by the yank bikers Nick interviewed just after they’d been excluded from the Dakar rally in Morocco simply because they’d missed their start time through a misunderstanding. There is an interview with one of the Dakar organisers and some pearls of wisdom from Patsy Quick, who was the first British woman ever to finish the Dakar on a bike, at her fourth attempt, in 2006 and this year was doing back-up. There was just one female amongst Nick’s disciples, an intrepid French woman on a Honda Transalp who, like many of the male riders, looks as if she would really have benefited from the sort of brief off-road training that I gave the GS1150-mounted guide, Jason Mardell, just before he left.
What Nick’s film doesn’t show you is what the return journey was like, because it effectively ends as they leave Timbuktu, from which they had to retrace their steps all the way back to Portugal starting with the river boat ride from hell because the riders couldn’t face doing the last 200kms of piste back to Bamako again. For a real warts-and-all account of the trip I can highly recommend Jason’s illustrated diary account here: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/eastleighsc/tbt.htm
If you missed the feature in BIKE magazine about the trip, which mainly consists of interviews with several riders, then it’s reproduced in full in the current Hein Gericke magazine which was given out free with MCN in the September 26th issue. The DVD is also on sale from your nearest Hein Gericke shop or direct from Nick at www.nicksanders.com (£12.99 + £1p&p)
Nick Sanders is doing the trip again in January 2008, but with the big difference that the riders will be flying out from Mali instead of having to ride all the way back to Europe. Mind you, I wouldn't want my bike to be strapped to the roof of the truck cab as some poor sod's was this year. (It might have been Nick's own XT660 of course, when he was driving instead of riding).
Finally, I should add that Nick is a good friend of mine to whom I shall forever be indebted because he introduced me to the lovely Elspeth, my fiancée. However, he’ll tell you himself that I’m one of his sternest critics. If I’d been present at the voice-over recording I would have told him how to pronounce liaison correctly and pointed out that in the intro he says ‘Eastern flank of the Sahara’ when he obviously meant ‘Western flank….because the eastern flank of the Sahara is in Egypt! And so on….. ;-)
© Paul Blezard 2007
PS The Timbuktu DVD has already been shown on Men & Motors as a 6 part series and will no doubt be repeated at some point. Men & Motors are currently screening Nick's Biker Britain series which both Elspeth and I are supposed to be in; her with her Round the World R60 BMW and me with my Quasar. Don't suppose anyone's seen either of us in it?
