Category: route

After 2 weeks wheeling around Europe we eventually arrived in Morocco last Tuesday. We crossed the border at Ceuta. The crossing in itself was painless but took a lot more time than we had planned for. Getting lost in Ceuta didn’t help either nor did spending an hour scouring for the KTM dealer located there only to find it closed for siesta.

From Ceuta we had intended to ride down to Fez. The night came upon us faster than expected so we made an unplanned stop in a town called Chechaouene. The town lies on the foothills of the Rif mountains. Apparently this is were the word ‘reefer’ comes from. Rif is pronounced reef in French. These mountains being the primary weed growing location in Morocco we were approached at every turn by locals trying to get us to sample the fruits of the mountains. We’re getting old and boring now so we declined and instead found a great restaurant overlooking the entire square.

Morocco has been a bit of a shock. It’s the first time I’ve been put outside of my comfort zone on the trip. Things are really different here. People still farm the land with animals pulling their equipment. The roads in rural areas are dotted with horse and carts. There’s these great little kids who randomly cheer you on as you pass them. It’s kinda like Ireland 20 or 30 years ago. There’s also the poor people trying to make a quick buck out of the rich foreigners. You can’t really blame them.

We’re in Rabat now. The administrative capital of Morocco. We rode here along some really amazing roads. There’s some pics in the Morocco gallery to check out. The reason for coming here was to obtain our Mauritanian visas. We’ve been told we’ll have to wait until tomorrow which is just as well as my clutch died today and we had to spend a couple of hours bleeding it and replacing the clutch fluid. A job neither of us knew how to do before today. The damage probably came from the Ronda accident.

Tomorrow we will try to ride down to Agadir in one go. We’re going to be visiting Rohan, a friend of Jeremy’s. He’s been able to rent a bike and we’ll be attempting to go off-road around the anti-atlas mountains. It should be good fun.

We arrived in Gibraltar after 11 great days on the road. It’s been a a pretty crazy ride down. We’ve ridden in rain, wind, snow and sun. All of which were hard work apart from the sun. Overall a really great experience if not sometimes a tad challenging.

After leaving Andorra we rode to Deltebre national park where we decided to camp. The wind in this area was so strong that we were sometimes leaning at 45 degrees just to keep the bikes straight. It was a hard day fighting against the forces of nature. We then rode from Deltebre to Turre where we camped again before making our way down to Gibraltar. This was by far our best day riding down through Spain. The sun shone and the Spanish coast and geography opened up in all its splendour. It was fabulous riding through twisty mountainous roads from Turre to Carboneras. Later we passed the Sierra Nevada mountains and then Granada and Malaga before hitting the rock of Gibraltar.

We’ve dug our heels into Gibraltar for a few days as there was some bike maintenance to be tended to. My bash plate had almost cracked off and I needed my kick stand fitted. The latter will hopefully decrease the steady but embarrassing increase of the fallen bike score. Jeremy also needed bash plate work. Thanks go to Rob in Car Clinic for fitting us is!

On our second day on the rock we met Nigel, a fellow biker, who has introduced us to his wonderful family and friends, brought us on the road to Ronda with his mates and even had us over for Sunday roast.

The road to Ronda is a very famous mountainous biker route. It’s also the scene of my first ‘real’ accident. I rode around a corner a wee bit faster than I should have and then drifted wide into a stoney embankment. My bike then had the pleasure of meeting a large rock before we were violently separated and I went sailing over the handlebars and through the air. Luckily I landed rather gracefully with a tripple roll. Apart from a sprained thumb and a bruised ego I was fine. The bike wasn’t as fortunate as I. It’s all fixable though and I was able to continue riding on.

When we got back from Ronda Pete, one of Nigels mates and the organiser of the ride, brought us on a tour of the caves and tunnels of Gibraltar. Pete is an MBE and works in the army. The guy is an authority on Gibralter and especially its caves and tunnels. Some even refer to him as the mole. When he’s not on his bike or with his family the guy spends his time underground. Thanks Pete for the private tour. It was awesome!

Tomorrow the real adventure begins. We depart for Morocco. We’ll be sailing from Algeciras to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta sometime in the early morning.

Thanks to all the folks in Gibraltar for making our stay here a very memorable one. Nigel and his family, Pete, Karl, Diesel Dave and Mark. You won’t be forgotten!

Jeremy has uploaded some more pictures to the European Gallery. We’re being kicked out of this internet café so we’ll add the rest when we get to Morocco.

Today was our last day snowboarding in Andorra and we have had a ball of a time here. The snow has been perfect and the sun has still been out in the day! Great conditions for boarding, in addition we have enjoyed relaxing in the small village of Soldeu and meeting some interesting people in the evenings, like the honeymoon couple from Iceland whose holiday was displaced from Kenya to Andorra, great people and they really spoiled us!

The people here in Andorra have been really friendly and we found a pretty good hotel with good food and a reasonable price.

There are some pictures of our European travels in the gallery.

• European Leg

European Leg

Photos from the European leg of our journey. Sorry we haven´t taken too many - Europe just feels like home so you are less likely to just pull out the camera!

12 Photos

Tomorrow sees us heading south again along the east coast of Spain towards our crossing to Africa in a couple days time. If the weather is reasonable we are going to try our first night camping. A good chance to try out the kit and to test Keith´s hardiness out a bit more!

We have left Toulouse and are now in Andorra but before moving on many thanks must go to Ann Claire and her Mother for having us and being such great hosts. Thanks also to Vince, Elodie and François for a great dinner and an excellent evening. Elodie and Vince you guys must make London when I get back! I owe ya loads.

While in Toulouse I also had my Scotts steering damper fitted by the folks at KM Racing. This should keep me upright a bit more when off-road. Thanks go to Arnaud and Francois. Great guys!

In Andorra there´s snow on the slopes and as luck would have it heavy snow is wildly falling down. This is the second time I´ve been boarding with Jeremy and last time the weather took exactly the same turn. What can I say? he´s got his faults but the man´s a lucky talisman when it comes to snow. We´ve kitted out with two Burton twin-tipped free-style boards. Jeremy is riding a 164 and I´m on a slightly smaller 159. Mine should be good for a bit a messin around.

Fallen bike score now stands at Keith 6 Jeremy 2.