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