Tue Oct 14: Tinerhir-N’Kob
We were woken by a shepherd and his flock staring into the bedroom window…
This was definitely the worst hotel of the trip so far… obviously, the previous clientele didn’t think so…
It was really great putting on wet trousers and boots, luckily it was hot today and we dried out pretty quickly. Bill, Paul+Allan and myself were to re-trace our road route of the night before and go and rescue Allan’s bike. I had a quick blast up the Todra Gorge…
… before making a detour into Tinerhir to buy a load of writing pads and pens to give to the Imam, in thanks for looking after Allan’s bike, we hoped.
By the time I’d done the 110 miles to N’Kob, I hadn’t caught them up, so it was back onto the piste of the day before to rendezvous at Allan’s bike. Going down the steep, rock climb, I realised I had a problem… a flat front tyre. I carried on for several more miles, hoping to see the guys in front… it turns out that they had taken a wrong turn and were behind me. I chocked my bike up to fix the tyre and Paul+Allan carried on to retrieve his bike…
By the time Paul and Allan reappeared, several hours had passed… they’d been “forced” to have lunch etc. with the locals, had been offered the hands of several daughters and drank gallons of sweet mint tea… lucky beggars! Bill and I had taken off my tyre, but could find no sign of a puncture. We couldn’t inflate the tyre as we couldn’t get it to seat on the rim and, unfortunately, no one had a tube we could use as a temporary fix.
Another Spanish “enduro” rider came past on a KTM… he didn’t even stop to ask if he could help. Because of the rains the night before, there were “puddles” on the track… which our hero tried to circumnavigate by riding up a wall and falling off. Paul, being the Gentleman that he is, rushed across to help, and was pushed away. As it had been made abundantly clear that his assistance was not required, Paul let go of the KTM, and it promptly fell off the wall again, with el Macho beneath it. His mates came along just in time to see him picking it up again… pure entertainment!!
As was usual, it was now beginning to get dark. Paul unselfishly lent me his 1200 Adventure… I strapped on my wheel and headed back to N’Kob. After harassing several locals, the apprentice at the tyre shed was found and put to work.. he was in his “going out clothes” but, nevertheless “popped” the tyre onto the rim after about 20 mins of struggle, with the aid of a pre-World War 1 compressor. With the tyre blown up to 45psi, I again hit the trail and the same bit of piste for the 5th time.
I passed Allan coming the other way… he said that Bill and Paul had stopped to guard my bike… I got the impression that they were looking forward to snuggling down in a nice little cave next to where I’d stopped… sorry to spoil the fun chaps… I know that you’d got half a tin of Vaseline left!!
Front wheel back in, we rode the trail, again, in the moonlight, back to N’Kob. A phone call to Ian, back at the hotel, brought news that it had been raining all day there and roads etc. were flooded again. Nevertheless, we decided that we’d go for it.. a couple of hours and we’d be back with the others. I was voted to go in front, my 50W HIDs lit the road for miles.. more importantly, any deep water or washouts would be hit by me first.. OK, Bill did it yesterday, it was my turn tonight.
Out of N’Kob and wound the throttle open… first bend was a right-hander taken at about 80mph… BANG! I slewed onto the dirt before dragging it back onto the road and coming to a standstill.. how I missed the barriers, I’ll never know. The front tyre had come off the rim, obviously there was something wrong with the bead… I was going no further tonight.
We found a reasonable riad just outside of town and booked in. It was basic, and they could only do us a Berber omelette, as it was late… but they had (very hard) beds…
At least we had escaped from “The Valley Of Death”