I bought the KTM for this trip and I’ve spent the past year preparing myself and the bike for the trip to Morocco and on Sunday 28th September 2008 saw myself and my two travelling companions meeting for breakfast at the Top o’ Town cafe in Dorchester. I thought I was going to be early but to my surprise Dave was already there and Noddy wasn’t too far behind me.
At 12pm we started up the three bikes and set off for our ferry at Plymouth to take us to the north Spain port of Santander. We stopped for coffee and petrol in Plymouth and then forgot the time, which left us a mad rush to the port with minutes to spare before the check in closed! We got onboard and we were directed to the lower deck with the other bikes. The crew strapped the bikes down and we set off to find our cabins.
While we were onboard the ship we bumped into a guy called Bill from Moto Morocco, he was leading a trip to Morocco and to our surprise he was very free with giving us information on routes. This information made us sit down and reassess some of the plans that we had on time and safety grounds. Bill’s help didn’t stop on the ferry, we swopped phone numbers and as Morocco was currently experiencing some of the worst rain it had seen for a few years there were a lot of landslides etc and he kept us updated via texts as to which pistes were open and which were blocked etc. So, Bill, if you ever read this, thank you for your help, it was priceless. Since writing this, Bill has been in touch with me and it turned out that we both helped each other, but that's a private matter.
The surprises didn’t stop on the ship, while having breakfast the next day I bumped into another friend for the Bournemouth And Wessex Advanced Motorcyclists group. Bob and his wife were off for a trip across the Pyrenees and home via France.
The ferry docked on time at 12pm but because we were in the lower hold we had to wait for the ship to unload before we could get off, finally at 1.20pm we were on our way out of Santander to our first hotel at Avila.
We stopped at Aguilar El Campoo to have lunch with another friend, Paul.
We finally found a hotel in Avila called Hotel Santa Teressa and paid €78 for a room for three people. The proprietor opened his garage and let us park our bikes undercover, although he did watch us as his beer stocks were there as well!
The next day saw us ride 270 miles over the stunning Gredos Mountains to our next stop in Cordoba.
We left Avila and headed down the N502 to our lunch stop at Sevilla de la Jara.
Dave was leading and although he knew the hotel well he didn’t have a waypoint in the GPS which lead to an interesting ride around the town centre. He knew it was near a bridge but couldn’t remember which bridge! We finally found it and paid the €58 they were asking for a room.
Our final stop in Spain was going to be in Tarifa but not before we went to Algerciras to purchase our tickets to Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast.
The route today took us down the A459 to Elija then the A351 to Ronda for lunch. After lunch we rode the fabulous A359 to Algerciras.
At the port we had been advised by Bill to play one agent off against another and as time was on our side we played the game. The price for a bike and rider one way started at €75 and after over two hours of haggling we managed to get the price down to €62. We booked a crossing for 10.30am the following morning on a fast cat crossing.
With our tickets in our pockets we rode off to find a hostel in Tarifa. They just managed to squeeze us in. We paid €68 for a twin room and €35 for a single room. The staff there were really nice, spoke superb English and were very friendly. My room even had a great view from the window as my bike was parked right outside the window!
After having a well deserved shower and a change of clothes we wondered down the road in search of a beer. We found a cafe and with a cold beer in our hands we watch the sun sink slowly into the Atlantic Ocean and wondered what adventures lay ahead for us in the next two weeks as tomorrow we head for Africa and the real start of our trip
On the 2nd October we set off from Tarifa to Algerciras at 8.30am leaving time to get to the ferry this time!
While waiting at the port we bumped into a another guy leading a group of Land Rovers down to the Sahara. Again, like Bill, we found John a mind of information and very free with it. It turned out that the information Bill had been texting us in the last day or so he had got from John. John also told us that if we needed any work done on the bikes while in Maroc we were to ask for a guy called Ali at the Nissan workshop in Zagora, little did we think that we’d actually end up there, but more on that later!
We filled up with petrol in Ceuta and made tracks for the border. Once there we were pounced on by one of the “fixers”, he took all our papers and started to get us sorted out. The whole process was fairly simple and took about an hour. We did plan ahead though with getting a temporary import form printed off at home from this website; http://www.douane.gov.ma/MRE/
Basically, you fill in the immigration form, handed this form and your passport in to get your police number and your your stamp, then you go and hand in your V5, insurance green card, customs papers and your passport to the import window for more stamps, then you hand in the customs papers to another officer who keeps one bit and hands back the rest, then you have your passport checked again by another (more senior) officer and that’s it, you’re in Morocco! I gave the fixer €5 and set off for fun in the sun.
Riding through northern Morocco is very similar to southern Spain, just a bit drier and a few more pot holes in the roads.
We had been advised to keep drinking lots of water during the day to stay hydrated and alert, this we tried to do as much as possible and a break from riding was always welcome in the heat of the day.
Myself and Dave both used water bladders so that we could drink as we rode but we were also mindful that Noddy didn’t and we made sure we stopped every hour so he could have a drink. This break also gave me time to take a few pictures! This particular road to Chefchaouan wasn’t full of corners but it was quite picturesque.
We had lunch of bread and cheese in Ouazzane, bread and cheese was going to be one of the main things that we ate on this trip, as long as there was cheese and bread available!
Our first night in Maroc was in Meknes and we thought we’d play it safe and booked ourselves into the Ibis Hotel. A man in the car park introduced himself as “The Guardian” and told us where to park the bikes. I paid 499MAD for a room (14MAD = £1) less a discount for using my Accor Club Card;-)
The following morning the guardian came over and asked us for some money, not being used to this we gathered a few coins and gave it to him, he muttered something about “too little”, looked at it in disgust, shook his head and spat on the floor, maybe we hadn’t given him enough I thought? We decided to give the next one 10MAD each per night after this which seemed to do the trick.
Today our route takes us from Meknes to Midelt. We left Meknes on the N13 towards El Hajeb and stopped for coffee in a very modern town called Ifrane. The best way to describe this place is a version of a new town designed by an Austrian. It’s a weird experience riding across miles of open and barren countryside to then ride into Ifrane with modern houses, shops, schools and office blocks etc.
We then took the R707 south before joining the R503 to Boulemane. At the junction we had our first taste of riding off road as the road had become an annex to the large lake and we were sent on a diversion across a very broken track. We had lunch in Boulemane and again we had bread and cheese, partly because I was the only one who spoke french and I could ask for “pain et fromage” and partly because that was all they had anyway!
The road out of Boulemane was again very long and straight but kept us awake as it was very broken up and also quite wet after all the rain that had fallen in the last couple of weeks.
As we approached a town called Boulejoul there was a very sharp corner and a car on its roof after a high speed tumble, although we didn’t stop there was a few other off road riders there who we met again a couple of days later and they told us that the driver wasn’t paying attention and swerved to miss them and the what we saw had been the result. They told us that the driver and passengers had got out of the car and thankfully no-one had been seriously hurt in the crash.
We had consulted a guide book for somewhere to stay in Midelt and they had recommended a hotel called the Hotel Kasbah Asmaa, for located it a few kilometres south of the town. When we asked about secure parking we were told to bring the bikes in and park them in the garden. The price here was 300MAD per person including an evening meal of meat Tajine and breakfast of bread and cheese - yummy!
While staying at the hotel we met some French bikers who had been all over the place and enthusiastically produced their maps and started waving their arms around and with wide eyes started saying “piste, non piste, piste, non piste”. In the morning they were gone in a rev of an engine and a cloud of dust.
Today was going to be our first proper day on the piste with our final destination being the highest town in the High Atlas Mountains, Agoudal at over 3000mtrs over sea level.
We left town on a really nice piste made of hard packed dirt and stones through an olive grove. After this the piste started to break up a bit and the going started to get a bit tough. Due to a couple of landslides we managed to lose the piste on a few occasions and we had to turn around once or twice and change our route. I know Dave and Noddy were quite enjoying the technical bits but as a new coming I found the going quite rough and hard work and by mid morning I was starting to question the sanity of the trip.
After lunch we hit some nice roads but we were soon stopped by a massive land slide that had only recently happened and it stopped us dead in our tracks. Going over it wasn’t an option and neither was going around it as it was straight down into a deep gorge.
As we stood there discussing the situation we noticed two 4x4’s driving along the river and knew that we had to get ourselves down there and do the same.
We finally got ourselves down to the river and started to make our way along the river and were thankful that the water wasn’t too deep.
As you can see by the picture the landslide in the centre of the picture was something quite special and I’m sure will keep the road blocked for quite some time to come.
Again we were back on some tarmac but sadly not for long as it soon ran out and we then had to return to a very wet and slippery muddy trail. On this part of the ride I was starting to get quite tired and my mind was starting to tease me with thoughts of a warm shower, hot food and a comfy bed, this was lethal as only a couple of miles from the Auberge where we were going to spend the night I lost the front end of the bike in a large and deep puddle and over I went.Somehow I had managed to cave the side in of one of my panniers and I managed to fill it with water and red mud, luckily it was the one with my tools, spares and water proofs in and not the other side with my clothes and sleeping bag in. Noddy was first in to help lift my bike up and Dave sat on his bike laughing and shaking his head.
We found a small Auberge in the village and were shown into a small room with some mattresses on the floor and a pile of blankets in the corner, this was ours for 140MAD for the night including the meat Tajine we were given. This meal was the most welcomed of the trip, my body ached all over and it wasn’t long before I was asleep in my sleeping bag dreaming of the 120 miles we had ridden during the day and most of it off road.
In the morning we found that we had a new group of four Dutch guys staying, they had turned up during the night after driving up the Dades Valley in a 4x4. They explained that they had never driven off road before and they thought it was great fun. What they hadn’t realised was that they had driven over one of the most dangerous tracks there is and had done it at night!
How I wished it was dark when we rode along the Dades Valley! The path sloped towards the edge and to our left was a drop of thousands of feet, I don’t mind admitting that my buttocks clenched the seat tighter than they’ve clenched anything before. The views from the top though were more than worth the nightmare of the ride there. By the time we were at the top we felt that we had really deserved a drink and a bite to eat.
We stopped for lunch and had some bread and jam, I thought I had asked for “jambon”, ham in English, as they had no cheese, but the strawberry jam was just as nice and was a nice surprise!
We finally made it to the bottom of the gorge at 3.30pm and found another hotel from our guide book in Tinerhir. It had said that all the rooms were en suite and so we booked a room and then rode off down the road to visit the Todra Gorge
This was one place that I wanted to visit and I have to say that although the place is stunning after seeing some of the views of the previous couple of days I was a little disappointed by the place because I was expecting something a bit bigger.
We stayed there for a while and had a looked around and also chatted to some tourists who seemed to be more interested in our bikes than the gorge so maybe they felt the same as I did?
Riding up through the gorge for a while I was also satisfying the little boy inside me with the sound of my Akrapovic exhaust reverberating off the slab sides of the rock face, I never tire of hearing the warble and popping of the exhaust note.
After behaving like kids in the gorge we headed back to the Hotel Des Gorges in Tinerhir and the owner had cleared the front porch so we could get the bikes in and hired a night watchman to frighten the kids away. As we were shown to our room we realised that en suite actually meant “on floor” in this case with one shower and one WC serving the five rooms on that floor. As it was only for one night we stayed there and the food we were served that night more than made up for the room so I guess, we were up overall.
The next day we wanted to ride one of the pistes that Chris Scott lists in his book “Sahara Overland” which heads south from Tinerhir, goes over the Tizi-n-Tazazert and finishes at Nekob. Finding the start of the piste proved to be difficult as someone seems to have built a house on it! After a bit of going backwards and forwards we found it and started on the trail.
After a couple of river crossings we were starting to make some good progress and then we hit a patch of sand. I was leading and powered through it the best I could and then realised that I only Dave behind me and there was no sign of Noddy.
Dave went back to find him and after a while they caught me up, telling me that Noddy had taken a tumble in the sand and as there was a Land Rover behind him when it happened the couple inside had got out and helped him pick up his bike but not until they had taken a picture or two.
The great thing was, that later on the trail while stopping for a drink they caught us up and stopped for half an hour and had a chat. They explained that they were part of a four vehicle convoy from Holland and they were working off a road book and were heading to the same place we were than night.
The views at the top of the past were stunning and it gave us a chance to have a breather and chat with a few other travellers. The most impressive was a bunch of French cyclists who had peddled up there.
The ride down the other side took us most of the afternoon, is was steep and very rocky and it just seem to go on and on, full concentration was called for all the way to the bottom.
We finally came out at Nekob and seem to ride the village green (well, it would have been if there had been anything other than dust and sand there!) and onto the main road, the R108 which we took west to the N9, down the Vallee du Draa to Zagora.
Again, we gave the guide books another chance and came up with the Hotel Kasbah Sirocco and this time it came up trumps.
We had to ride through the town and keep heading south to a small piste and it was about 500 mtrs along the piste.
This oasis cost us 360MAD each per night and included our meals.
The guardian looked very put out the following morning when we tried to explain to him that would give him something when we left, we asked one of the staff to explain and he went away happy.
You’ll remember that when we met John on the ferry to Ceuta he had said that if we needed any work done to the bikes we had to talk to Ali at the Nissan dealer in Zagora? Well, Ali was in the car park that morning touting for business! Dave had noticed that his pannier frame had snapped and needed welding and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get it fixed so we made our way into the town.
Within minutes they had the bike stripped down and welded the frame back together, and painted and all for the sum of 30MAD (about £2).
They seemed to know what they were doing and also offered to fix Dave’s burst fork seals but he wasn’t too worried about getting them done.
After getting the work done we set of for M’Hamid and the start of the Sahara Desert for some pictures in the sand.
As we rode over the Jbel Bani mountains the views that stretched out infront of us were stunning and took my breath away.
The road was quite narrow and as a motorcyclists you seem to rate quite low on the food chain and you find yourself playing chicken with some very large trucks as they hurtle towards you and you dive for cover and safety at the last moment. It’s a sick sort of game when you do it for mile after mile!
After taking a few pictures we decided to head back to Zagora and a cool swim in the hotel’s pool, we also took the chance to have one or two very cold beers.
The next day we decided it was time to hit the piste again and after looking at the maps we found a piste that comes out of Zagora to the west and then heads north west to Tasla. Very easy, or so we thought! Finding the start again had us going in circles for an hour, we thought it was good to start with but then realised we were on the local air field.
After a while and few shepherds shouting at us we find the correct piste but this soon starts to catch us out and we had to brake hard at one point as it just disappeared into a dried out river bed. From the piste it looks like it goes straight on as you can see from this picture but if you look closely at the colour of the sand between the two mounds of rocks in the centre you can see the colour change very slightly.
Viewed from the other direction you can easily see the shear drop on the other side!
The ride from this point was great and we soon got into the swing of things but this was one of the hottest days we had experienced while in Morocco and we made sure we were in the shade whenever we stopped for a drink.During this day I think I drank in the region of 6ltrs of water. Even though I was suffering from a dodgy tummy I also took a couple of packets of Dyrolite which helped replace vital salts and sugar lost through sweating.
Towards the end of the day we followed a river bed and had to cross it time after time which got me used to riding on shingle and sand. We finally came out onto the R108 and followed this back to Agdz and the then the N9 back to Zagora.
The next day, which was day 12 of the trip and the 9th October, we set out for Ouarzazate via a piste from Zagora to Forum Zguid. The start of the piste had been tarmac’d but this soon turned into an unsurfaced road and then finally disappeared as it entered a village under a lot of deep sand. We used GPS mapping to try and follow the track and after a few kilometres the track re-appeared from under the sand but then split into three!
So, it was a choice and luckily we chose the right one after a look at the maps, the topography information I had on my GPS and the use of a compass.
The strange thing was that this track met with the one that we had been on the day before but on the maps we had it showed it as a totally separate track. It was still a good trail and we carried on.
Towards the end of the piste we met a German rider who was heading to M’Hamid to sleep in the desert for his 50th birthday, he explained that his girlfriend had gone home because of a family crisis and left him on his own, but he seemed happy with his lot and rode of in the direction we had just come from but not until he had told us to watch out for the corrugations in the road ahead. What he didn’t tell us was that they went on for about 40kms! We finally made it to Forum Zguid very shaken and slightly stirred and then headed north on the R111 to Tazenakit and then the R108 to Agdz and north onto the N9 to Ouarzazate and our base for two nights, the Ibis Hotel.
There was a piste to the east which we had been recommended and we decided to do this the next day after a lazy breakfast. We headed out of town on the N10 to Skoura and then headed north to Toundout where the piste started. This piste was a great day out and if it were in the UK would be a perfect day out trail riding. It was hard, compacted mud and stone and made for some great riding.
There was also one very interesting river crossing which had a scratching our heads for a while!
It all looks easy from here but when we were on the bank we weren’t so sure.
Anyway, we finished the ride and headed south to Tidrheste and then back to Ouarzazate and our hotel. On the way back we decided to stop for a bite to eat and stopped beside the road at a cafe that had loads of tables and chairs all over the pavement. When we asked for a menu, we were told, “no food, just drink” so we ordered a drink and then went next door for an omelette and very nice it was too.
Our next day was going to be the last off road ride of the trip as we set out west for Anezal and the piste west and then south to a small village called Taliouine. This piste was a varied ride of new tarmac, unsurfaced road and rough track with a steep rock drop to navigate for good measure.
We seemed to have been chasing a storm in the distance nearly all day and thankfully we never caught it. In fact for the whole trip we never got wet at all, well apart from my early ducking!
Dave kindly provided us with lunch, a few cereal bars he had bought in Plymouth at Sainbury’s when we filled up with petrol! None the less they were well received and washed down with a drink of Peckham Spring.
While the bikes were parked up I took the chance to take a couple of shots from different angles.
We made it to the village and decided to take our chances with a small Auberge and a place called the Hotel Souktana.
A nicer place to stop for a night would be harder to find. The host told us to park in his courtyard and then gave us a room for three, that was until Noddy notice that the room had a double and a single bed and although we’re friends we’re not that close! We decide to spend the money and hire another room. The six rooms were based around an enclosed centre courtyard with a huge burner in the centre.
In the winter I’m sure it would be very cosy but in this heat it was just right. We had another Tajine of meat, which may have been goat or sheep as that is all we’ve seen in the area. It was a lovely meal though and there was even a dessert of fresh melon and we had all this for 200MAD each.
The next day we left Taliouine and head for Marrakech via the Tizi-n-Test Pass. This pass is simply stunning and my pictures don’t really do justice to the natural beauty or the shear excitement of riding this road.
The corners just keep coming and coming and it makes the Stelvio Pass feel like Zig Zag Hill here in Dorset!
Near the top we bump into the first British bikers we’ve met on the whole trip. They tell us of stories of rain, floods and general tails of woe as one of their mates had been T-boned on the first day in the country and was now on his way home.
We work our way down the mountain and stop for lunch of another omelette and have a very relaxing time having lunch. After lunch we’re almost involved in a heated discussion when we’re pounced on by someone claiming to be a parking attendant and wants paying. Dave and I pretend not to understand and then tell them we can’t hear with earplugs in, he then calls for his mates and the scene starts to get a bit ugly, so Noddy acts as peacemaker and gives them a few Dirhams, they realise they’re not going to get anymore from us and walk away spitting on the ground. It times like this that hasn’t warmed me to Morocco.
We make it to Marrakech and Dave leads us straight to our hotel, the Hotel Le Grand Imilchil and we book a couple of rooms for two nights as we want to have a day off looking around and a chance to be tourists.
That evening we head into the Souk and enjoy some of the night life and the sights and smells of Marrakech.
Putting on my serious head on now but I find it sick and wrong by some of things I saw in the square laid on for the tourists. I saw Barbary Monkeys being used for pictures, these apes were kept in small cages and an image that will stay with me is seeing them sitting there with their hands sticking out through the bars. There was also snake charmers with cobras in baskets, I’ve read before going that these snakes are dying out because they’re caught, have their mouths sewn up so that just their tongues can come out and they then slowly starve to death, when they die their owners just go and get another snake. This barbaric practice has to stop and will only stop when the tourists stop paying to see it or the Moroccan Government does something about it and passes laws outlawing it.
Anyway, we decide to eat at one of the stalls as Dave told us we could eat for next to nothing here! We sit down and eat a variety of kebabs, chips, salad and dips etc and the final bill comes to 400MAD, we’ve eaten the whole meal in less than 30mins and still feel hungry!
The next day we take a sight seeing trip around the city and then head back to the souk to buy some presents for our families back home and then go into a proper cafe for lunch.
Back in our hotel in the evening we meet a gentleman who’s there on a walking holiday, tells us he’s a pomme and asks us if we’re from the colonies! We tell tell him we’re actually from Dorset and he tells us that the hotel next door sells beer, something ours doesn’t and when we get there we find the place full of ramblers!
Our next day and we set off for Khenifra and head north up the N8, not a very exciting road but it still has some stunning views as we edge around the Atlas Mountains.
That night we stay at the Hotel De France, a very cheap and cheerful place with a very interesting shower tray, complete with water that never drained away! The price of the room was 250MAD for three people so I guess we shouldn’t grumble!
The town of Fez was our next destination but we didn’t take the most obvious route out of town and we broke the golden rule of having a full fuel tank first thing in the morning. We kept riding and letting Noddy navigate, and after a few miles we were in the middle of nowhere. The road was starting to break up as well and we had two choices, we could keep going or turn around and go back, we decided to keep going, Dave and I were carrying four litres of spare fuel each and if we all ran out Noddy would only have himself to blame as he was navigating! By the time we reached the main road we were all on reserve and I put in 24ltrs into my fuel tank. But that had been the furthest I had pushed the bike on this trip on one tank - just over 550kms.
We stayed on the main road and had lunch at Ilfrane again which I found was still a bit freaky compared to the rest of Morocco.
At Fez we booked into the Ibis Hotel again and I went out to try and find the souk or medina but got totally lost and only found an Irish bar, so stopped by and had a couple of pints (tins) of the black stuff.
Our last days ride in Morocco was, on paper, going to be a fabulous ride throught the Rif Mountains back to Ceuta. The road north from Fez, the N6 was stunning but the people along it made it a nightmare. The Rif Mountains is the place were Kif or hash is produced and it’s obviously a favourite of the locals. The road to Ketama was horrible, people throwing stones at us all the way, offering us drugs everytime we stopped and just feeling generally intimidated, not really a good memory of Maroc. We didn’t stop much to take pictures and when we did the chap in the red appeared and offered us “Sputnik” - whatever that is?
To be continued.......
