Tuesday 19th October

The ride began today. We broke camp at 7am, loading everything into and onto our lovely landrover (including a spare bike). Jackie was in the passenger seat with the team photographer Martin driving (poor guy has come down with a rotten chest infection and cannot ride). We had a brief breakfast before our campsite was crammed into the Landrover, then left Fez on a southern route – heading for the desert. The bikes and the landrover stay together as much as possible on the road but both have GPS systems so we can meet up again after the bikes have taken an ‘alternative route’!
We stopped for a proper breakfast about 2 hours after leaving Fez in a nice little bar at a hotel in a busy town center. Very posh! We had omlets, bread and lots of tea. And chips!! We filled up for a long day!
Leaving there we set into a long ride of mostly tarmac today. We have made a decision to try and get to Zagora early because the shamrock rally is passing through – its a kind of warm up event for the dakar and we should be able to see some of the stages. But to do that we need to get some miles under our belts. About an hour after breakfast, we took an off road diversion through some lovely gravelly and grassy tracks and a sandlewood forest. As we got to the end of the stage, Wil, one of the sweepers on the trip asked if anyone else had seen the baboons in the forest. No one had. Mark and Mick and a couple of others rode back up the trail and found a whole bunch of them – Barbary Apes. Mick went and sat with them. I’ll try and get a photo to post later.
We met back up with Jackie in the Landrover and carried on south. The further from fez we travelled, the worse the roads got until we were riding on occasional tarmac and often dirt. The towns and villages we went through became more dishevelled but the kids all smiled and waved and only occasionally threw their shoes at us.
As we were heading out of a busy town on an uphill tarmac road, we had our first incident. Sometimes, when Mick is following his GPS, we have to slow to check if the turn ahead is our route. As Mick slowed we all bunched up pretty quickly, and unfortunately one of the riders got himself into a flap and hit the deck pretty hard, his bike clattering into me and Mark as we slowed for the turn. Mark and I both stayed on our bikes (not sure how). It was a pretty hard fall onto the tarmac and the rider was shaken up but not too hurt. His nice new riding gear had holes and tears in numerous places!! He got back on his bike after we had done some road side repairs and we carried on. The next town we hit was amazing – a completely crazy rural farming town with dirtroads, bars, crowds of people in the street with all sorts of animals running around. It was a very odd place but really great to ride through and very entertaining. We filled up with petrol on the outskirts and set off to find somewhere to camp for the night. A wild camp!! We found a great place in the mountains which was only a little dampened by the fact that it started raining as we got there and didnt stop till the middle of the next day. Cant wait to get to the desert!!!
I’ll hand over to Mark for the next day.

P.S. Please forgive my spelling mistakes – I’m knackered and want to go to bed!! I’ll check them tomorrow (o:
XX

Great day with everyone today. We spent a lazy morning talking about plans for the trip and then hired a guide to look around Fez… well worth the time and money.

We all enjoyed the cultural immersion, the sights and sounds of the busy old city (Medina) and some fantastic Moroccan food at lunch time.

Now we are sitting around the dinner table at the camp site, anxiously awaiting our final sleep in Fez before we head out in the morning. With luck we will catch a stage or two of the Shamrook Rally, a full Saharan Rally Raid similar to the Dakar.

Here are a couple of pics form the day for you to enjoy.

6.30pm. Base camp. Fez.

What a great first day. While the guys serviced the bikes Mark, Jackie and I took a trip into Fez. This place is amazing. It’s a very ancient city and remains mostly traditional and very atmospheric. There are lots of stories to tell from our day out and Mark has just managed to get his laptop on line so I’m going to stop trying to do all this on my iPhone and let mark tell a few stories from today.
We break camp tomorrow at 7am and head south toward the middle atlas region. Long ride – happy boy!!

Well, its nearly time to go. All our bags are packed and we leave tomorrow. I’m flying out from Stanstead and Mark and Jackie leave from Gatwick with a long stopover in Casablanca.

We should all be at basecamp on the outskirts of Fez by Sunday night and we will update you from there.

Getting excited now!!

Pete

Counting down….

In a few weeks Mark, Jackie and I will be heading out to Fez in Morocco to embark on a reconnaissance trip through the North African wilderness with Mick Extance and the team from the Mick Extance off road school. We will be heading out into the desert on Honda CRF dirt bikes and with a Bowler prepared Landrover Dakar support vehicle in tow. During the ride we will be following the ‘Dakar Highway’ (riding on parts of the Moroccan stages from the famous race), over the snow capped Atlas mountains and into endless miles of dunes at Erg Chebbi in the Western Sahara.

The trip is an exploration for Mick and Steph who will be making it an annual event. We are privileged to be part of such an adventure and to be guided by the legendary Mick Extance – Great Britains most successful Dakar Rally competitor. It is also the best chance Mark and Mick will have had so far to work together on Dakar terrain and will be very important preparation for their entry into the worlds toughest race – The Dakar rally.

Every step of the way is going to be exciting, challenging and hopefully rewarding! We will be sleeping under the stars in Berber camps, discovering our routes as we go and tackling some of the toughest terrain and elements the planet has to offer. What an adventure!

I did my final bit of riding preparation last weekend in North Wales with Mick and Steph and the team. We had a good day but I think we are going to struggle to find quite as much mud in Morocco!!

Good old Wales – it never lets you down!!

Mark and Jackie are currently making ready to travel to Nairobi in early October to work with representatives of ‘Just a Drop’ one of the charities they are supporting with the Rally4life team. From there they fly to the UK for 3 days of R&R with family before we set off for the desert.

We arrive in Fez on 17th October and head out into the wild brown yonder on the 18th. If all goes well, we will be back in Fez by 29th

Please check in at jennings-bates.co.uk for news and updates. We will do our best to upload words and pictures as and when we can. This will depend mostly on the availability of data networks for our mobile phones/laptops which may not be all that reliable, as you can imagine!

I have set my iphone up so it will broadcast to Google Latitude, a global positioning system which will be relaible, but again only if I have a data network signal. Mark is bringing along some transponders from one of his major Rally4Life sponsors, Helios Global Tracking and by logging on to their web site you will be able to track us accurately throughout the whole trip. We will let you have details on how to log in before we leave.

Thanks for having a look. More soon…..

Pete