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
