13 posts tagged “mountainbiking”

Day 1

I arrived at Vratz, via a brief stop at Mezdra at around 5am. There I met Dobrian, who would be my chain smoking mountain bike guide and interpreter for the next 4 days. The overnight train from Bucharest had been a bit of an endurance mission - it had come from Moscow, and was several hours late by the time it picked me up. Additionally, all of the Russians needed to have their visas checked when entering Bulgaria which held proceedings up another few hours. Finally, the Russians had also taken all of the sleeper berths - so I was left in a second class upright seat with a couple of Romanians. Luckily only 3 of 6 seats were taken in our compartment, so it was not as bad as it could have been.

Due to the lengthy trip getting to Vratz, I had suggested that an easy day's riding would be desirable. This was assisted by two main factors:

• Dobrian's need to stop for a smoke every 5km; and
• Dobrian breaking his bike half way around the ride (broken rear mech)

However, after 4 hard days in Romania, I was quite happy with this.

 

Once Dobrian's bike had broken, it was really more about how on earth we were going to get back into town. We managed to find a local's drinking spot, so stopped for a couple of beers. The old farmers started having me on suggesting that I probably thought Belgrade was in Bulgaria.  I got Dobrian to respond "if you're so smart, what is the capital of NZ?" - this certainly stumped them.

 

As we finished a little early, I went out again with Valu - a local teenager and ace downhiller, who put me through my paces on some pretty fast and loose sectons near my guest house.

Day 2

The second day started with picking up a new rear mech for Dobrian's bike and then getting a transfer to the top of the nearest hill. After some repairs, we then set off up and over a series of ridges before reaching a dry waterfall with an excellent view over the valley in which I was staying. What followed was an extremely technical downhill single track section (thanks Valu) which fully tested my pretty unresponsive brakes (from the Romanian repairs).

 

We then headed into Vratz for a late lunch and sat out the hottest part of the day (around 3-4 it became far too uncomfortable to ride).

Day 3

Following a short transfer, we set out again - initially over tarmac, before an extremely long 4WD track downhill. At the bottom we then had a 12 km climb up out of a valley in the increasingly inferno like riding conditons. Luckily we were riding along next to a creek, so we stopped several times to cool down by taking a dip into the icy water.

Along the way across each day in Bulgaria, we saw numerous springs and creeks, which Dobrian tried very hard to convince me to drink out of. Frequent bouts of food poisioning on previous trips had convinced me that this was not a good idea, so I stuck to mineral water. However, this did create something of a logistical problem as I could only carry 3L at a time - and on the hottest days I was drinking up to 5L. Running out of water on a long climb in conditions like this is a sure way to overheat within about 30 mins.

 

In any case, we soon were at the head of the valley, where we stopped at a monestry for lunch. In addition to the ubiqituous meat balls / meat on a stick we also had a pretty good bean soup. In the afternoon that followed, the beans provided a good, if quite smelly energy source. It also astounds me how people in many hot countries cannot think of anything better than a good hot soup to refresh them on a 35 degree day.

We then climbed up to 1500M - which, in the heat was quite tough (cue more pushing from those on downhill bikes!). It was a great view from the top, overlooking a number of mountains down to the village we would finish at.

What followed was an extremely fast 1000M vertical descent - made even faster for me by my erratically working brakes!

 

We then finished up with a beer, a great reward for what had been probably the best day in Bulgaria.

 

On the train back to Vratz, an elderly Bulgarian guy came up to me and surprisingly spoke English. He got out a rather old atlas and started talking about the various parts of New Zealand. At the back of the atlas was a list of the countries and the religions that were most dominant. He found it hard to accept when I suggested his atlas was wrong - that New Zealand wasn't really a mixture of Catholic and Protestants - that it was a highly secular country, and if anything, Anglicism was probably most frequent (or none at all!).

Day 4

My final day riding started with an early train half way to Sofia, where Dobrian took me on one of his favourite rides.

But first I tried a Bulgaria breakfast drink called Boza. Made of wheat, this drink had a flavour that I can only describe as grey-brown-sludge, and I could only drink a few mouthfuls without wanting to hurl. I decided it would be wise to decline drinking any more.

We then arrived, and once we had dropped the packs off to be looked after for the day we spent the morning climbing back up to 1500M - again, pretty intense in the heat. I was then looking forward to a long downhill back to the train station when I started having puncture problems on my rear tyre. Looking more closely, I realised that the 10 quid special I had on the back was starting to disintegrate under the pressure of 8 days on the trail.

I then limped into our lunch break. More meat balls and repeated attempts to fix my tyre later, and we set off - pausing briefly at a large communist monument to look at the view (and for me to have a somewhat unexpected comfort stop in the bush nearby).

It was then a relatively technical single track descent back to the train station. It was probably right on my limit at that point, with there being several sets of steep steps that I wasn't feeling up to on that particular day - especially as my rear brake was still acting somewhat erratically. However I made it down without falling off the side of the mountain (always a good sign!) and we headed back to the train station.

 

From there, it was another hour to Sofia, where Dobrian helped me pack my bike up and get onto a train to Istanbul. Over 8 days, I hadn't climbed 9 vertical km and ridden something like 350km. For me, this was a great result.

The train to Istanbul, although late, was actually really good. Retro, with berths assigned somewhat randomly (and not corresponding to your train ticket), it felt very orient express. There were only 3 berths in my compartment, but in the end, it was only me and an American guy who was living in Istanbul.

It was then that I had heard Russia had invaded Georgia - the next country on to Turkey - so it was with some trepidation that I arrived again into Istanbul. It was one of those strange moments when you realise just how out of touch you are with what is happening in the world - something which does not happen very much in my always-connected lifestyle!

After spending the first day looking about Brasov, and going up the somewhat creaky cable car to the hill next to town, I then met up with Razvan, who would be my guide for the next few days.

Day 1: Brasov day trip - 55km, 1.1km ascending

The first day was supposed to be something of a warm up, although I would have to say I found it quite tiring. We basically climbed out of the back of Brasov to the local ski resort where we had our first encounter with a pack of Romanian wild dogs. When I say wild, these ones were nominally shepherd's dogs, although they were so aggressive that they may as well have been completely wild.

Needless to say, being surrounded by 15 snapping mutts made me wonder if I should have organised a rabies shot before coming on this trip. Over the next few days, wild dogs flying out of hedges and the bush would certainly add to the difficulty level of the cycling we experienced, particularly when they chose to do so as you were flying down a technical piece of single track!

We also checked out a fortified village which commanded a great view up towards Dracula's castle before another long climb back to Brasov.

I had been slightly concerned about bringing my bike as I thought the chances of a breakdown somewhere that I could not get parts was quite likely. So I guess it shouldn't have surprised me when on the first day my rear disk brake crapped out. Unfortunately Razvan didn't use disks and I am of course incompetent when it comes to this sort of thing, so some fannying about was required to get me moving again.

Day 2-3: Overnight in the Romanian countryside, 90km, 1.7km (ish) ascending 

The following day our start was delayed a bit as we had to take my bike into the shop to get some new pads fitted - Razvan and my attempts the following day having actually not helped. Took the mechanic all of 10-15 mins and we were away again.

A quick transfer to the next village and we were climbing again up a fire road into the national park. This continued for several hours before we emerged into a beautiful alpine meadow, complete with cows and ringing cowbells. We then headed over a plateau type area before starting to descend - stopping to check out the cheese sherpas - local shepherds that lived in the mountains continuously for 5 months a year during summer milking sheep, making cheese and protecting their herd from the local wildlife (bears and wolves being a constant threat).

 

Their migration to the alpine meadows was mainly spurred by the need to make hay for the winter on the lower slopes, and it was good to note that whilst the shepheds protected their flocks with their lives if necessary, they did not kill bears and wolves hunting their sheep. This explains why Romania has 90% of Europe's remaining bear population.

We actually saw fresh bear prints - and knew they were fresh as it had rained the night before.

After a tricky and quite technical descent, we then started climbing up to the guest house for the night. Initially Razvan had suggested we were just climbing from 800 to 1000 M, so I was somewhat ropable when he changed his mind and mentioned we actually had to climb up to 1400M! I'm sure he experienced a large number of scathing looks from me.

Eventually we made it to the top of the climb, and had a huge meal prepared by the guest house managers. There was certainly plenty of meat on meat action, and plenty of cheese as well! It was also interesting to try their honey flavoured brandy - Razvan believed it was too sweet, but I had no problem downing a couple of shots.

The next day was easier, mostly descending, although a couple of little climbs with bite.

We stopped in at Vlad the Impaler / Dracula's castle - impressive from the outside, pretty dull on the inside - with the exception of a staircase that was initially hidden in the fireplace (the entrance now being changed to make it easier for tourists to climb).

 

We then headed back to the town we had started from the day before to stay at another guest house. This time the manager had been drinking since 10am with friends, and so was very quick to make with the brandy - unfortunately, this time it tasted like aviation fuel - so I didn't have particularly much of it (thankfully!).

 

Day 4: The final climb - 50km (ish) 1500M ascended

 

The final day and Razvan had something special planned - climbing out of Sinaia (a European capital of culture), through the forest and up through alpine meadows and more ski fields to reach a summit that overlooked the whole of the region.

It was to be a difficult climb, up to 2500M, so enough to be the base of the Romanian Olympic team (for altitude training) and certainly enough for me to be breathing pretty hard.

Grinding away hour after hour, I was not sure if we were moving fast enough to get up and back before my train to Bucharest that evening. So on the second half of the climb I stepped it up a notch, but somewhere near the top the cloud unfortunately rolled in. This pretty much negated any chance of a view and pretty soon had created a navigational error from Razvan - meaning we climbed an extra 100M we didn't have to. This meant by the top I was completely out of gas - having rather a lot of trouble staying on the bike, particularly as we went over a few technical climbing sections.

For the second time in the week Razvan was subject to a series of extemely scathing looks from me, and I came close to throwing in the towel, as you couldn't see anything anyway.

However, I stuck with it, and at the top was rewarded by a view of about 5 metres, and more importantly, a hot tea in the hut with a little rum in it. This made me feel a little better, but what made me completely recover was the 1500M straight descent. It took a couple of hours was fast, rocky in places and quite loose. Great riding, and felt really rewarding to overcome a challenge I didn't think I was fit enough to complete - even if it was shear guts an ardenaline powering my riding at the end (not much in the way of skill or finesse involved.

Even better, I made my train to Bucharest, where I was to meet up again with Korina.

Total climbing in 4 days = just over 5 vertical km!

Since Korina's unfortunate spleen accident, we have not spent much time cycling, nor have we gone away much. So at the last minute, and following some really long hours at our respective works, we decided to head out in the country cycling for a weekend.

 

 

We stayed in Sonning, which is a small village about half way between Reading and Henley. On the Saturday we rode a loop from Sonning to Henley and back on the other side of the Thames, and on the Sunday we rode the other way along the Thames, past Reading to Pangborne. All in all we covered 65km, which wasn't a bad effort.

 

 

We also went to the local pub in Sonning to watch the Rugby World cup final, thankfully to see the English lose. I say thankfully otherwise work would have been unbearable for the next month or so. The game itself was pretty boring, and led me to the conclusion that something is wrong with Rugby at the moment - where teams that play attractive rugby and attempt to score tries are ultimately punished, and those that play low risk wars of attritution, kicking it often and waiting for the opposing team to make a mistake are ultimately rewarded. Hopefully they address the rules before 2011...

Over the last wee while I've been scaling up my endurance racing - this summer I had already done 2 X 12 hour races as a team. So when Jac asked if I wanted to fill in for her club team, I said "why not?!". However, I didn't count on having the flu in the lead up to the race - but as it turned out, I recovered well (enough) to still partipate. Still, I spent the week before wondering whether the timing was that good for my first 24 hour race.

These events work by having a lap-based course that you do as many laps as you can within the time limit. People race in teams (as we did), in pairs or, for the really stupid, as a solo.

In all, I did five laps (plus a warm up lap). I attacked my first really hard, and was rewarded by a 40 min lap time. My next was a '45, which was also good as it was at night. I then had a double lap to look forward to - luckily it was light again by this stage, but unluckily it had been raining (so slippery) and I also broke my seat 5 mins into the lap - 2 slowish '52-'55 laps resulted (in addition to a large amount of swearing and kicking my bike).

Basically, the part where my seat joins the seatpost had slipped, meaning the seat rotated back as I rode. This had two consequences - firstly, I kept feeling like I was going to slide off the back of the seat, and secondly, every time I stood up, I was rewarded by a crack in the back of my ballbags by the front of the seat.

Two uncomfortable laps later, I then took my bike to pieces and managed to rig up a temporary fix, resulting in my final lap which was back to a '45.

Obviously I still felt a bit uncomfortable, as evidenced by this photo:

 

 

Full results are here: http://results.singletrackworld.com/category.php?id=230. Overall, we came a respectable 41st - the first BOB team home. Not bad, considering the calibre of some of the teams involved.

 

 

OK. Simple plan.

The first May Bank holiday would see Korina and I travel down to the North Downs in Surrey, staying at a traditional British pub and spending the weekend relaxing, mountainbiking and hiking. Idyllic. Korina had been working really hard, so some time chilling out together was just what the dr ordered.

Unfortunately, this simple plan did not go, ah, as planned.

Started well enough, with a picnic near Coldharbour before heading up into the hills mountainbiking. We were really just pottering around on the Saturday, as I had been racing the weekend before and was still pretty sore. Save the harder stuff for Sunday and Monday. We thought.

 

So anyway, we were meandering down a path near the end of the day when Korina had a bit of an off. She fell into what looked like a rather forgiving clump of undergrowth. However, under this forgiving layer was a rather unforgiving tree stump. Which she was impaled upon.

She was obviously winded, so we waited for a bit to see what would happen next. Afterwards she was still sore, and we thought that she may have cracked some ribs. But she was still able to ride out, so that is what we did for around 30 mins. Back at the B&B for an hour, still looked like she may have cracked some ribs. Sore, but managable.

 

Then it all went down hill. Korina is tough, but I've not seen someone in that much pain before. All the same she insisted on driving to the hospital because I was not insured for her work car. A somewhat scary ride later and we arrived at East Surrey hospital.

The next three days were spent with Korina in a surgical critical care unit as various doctors and surgeons debated the relative merits of taking out her spleen (or not), which had apparently ruptured and was bleeding internally into her abdomen. However, not taking her spleen out won through, as she was otherwise fit and healthy, and young.

So that is where Korina remains.

She's been there a week now. Fortunately every day she looks less like needing surgery and looks a little more healthy.

 

 

However, the past week has not been without other dramas. Such as Korina reacting badly to an anti-nausea medication, sending her (and probably my) heart rate up to 160 and her blood pressure up to 155/119. Not great considering her family history.

Hopefully she will be out in the middle of next week, with another week or so of complete bedrest to look forward to at this stage.

When Darren invited me to fill in for a night race I wasn't sure. I'd never done one before, and I was not that confident that I would be up for it.

As it turns out my concerns were for nothing. It was a great challenge and nice to race in a team situation - as I find mountainbike racing to be generally quite individualistic.

 

The only scary thing was when my lights crapped out half way through one of the laps, and I had to ride for 5 km using only "the force". Interesting this went OK, although I did hit a tree on my next lap when I did have light.

So my lap times were '40, '45 (light problems), '40, '39. Interesting that my blind lap was only 5 min off my regular pace. Also interesting that I got faster each lap (ignoring the blind lap).

 

Although we took a pasting, it was good fun. We're talking about doing another race soon.

Getting home wasn't so good though. Major rail delays at Reading station turned a 2 hour direct train into a 5.5 hour, 4 change epic. Not what I was after after 2 hours sleep and carrying my bike and camping gear! Bloody National Rail!

We had a 7.30 flight which was always not going to be fun as it required a 5.30am start. However things got substanially worse when I woke the next morning with food poisoning. By the time we got to the airport I could hardly stand up I was so sick and Korina had to manhandle our bikes, packs and other gear through the massive crowd to the check in desk (which took 2 hours in itself). Luckily she managed to find some friendly Australians in the cue who helped us out with the gear.

From there the Airline then wanted to charge us 10 euro for each bike - which was something that I had known, but forgotten about as I was so sick. So Korina had to try negotiate us off this charge as we had no money left. Luckily her skills - combined with me collapsing all over the check in desk and our plane being late anyway was enough for them to flag it.

It was one of the nastiest flights I've ever been on - although I tried to sleep most of it away, I still spent a lot of the flight trying to be sick. Basically as soon as we got off the flight I went to bed for two days and couldn't really move. I'm still not right now - and this is 5 days later. Korina is still less than 100% too.

With Easter upon us, it was time for a week of. Korina and I decided to head over to Morocco for a mountainbiking adventure holiday.

Marrakesh before mountainbiking

We flew in late Fri night, crashed out and then arose to the un-envious task of putting our bikes back together. Three hours later and we had assembled Korina's bike but were still having problems with mine. Luckily Karim, the mechanic from Skedaddle was available to help compensate for my complete lack of mechanical ability.

We then spent the rest of the day swanning around the central souk (market) - it wasn't long before a snake charmer had grabbed me and put a couple of snakes around my neck - refusing to remove them until I gave him some money. I did notice that during this experience, rather than trying to help me, Korina had headed for the hills. I found out later that there were also guys there that had monkeys which they would let you take a photo of with (i.e. with a monkey on your back) or purchase for 300 euro.

 

Day 1 - Telouet to Ait-Benhaddou

The first cycling day started with a somewhat harrowing transfer through some dodgy Moroccan mountain passes in the 4WD before a picnic lunch at a ruined Kasbah.

We were then on the bikes. The first 10km were on road, with a heavy cross wind - it was pretty amusing looking at a line of cyclists all leaning close to 45 degrees into the wind! As we left the road we dropped into a valley which meant that the wind ceased to be a factor for most of the rest of the day.

The cycling followed a general downwards trend along a rough 4WD track. Generally it was pretty non-technical, although there were one or two sections later in the afternoon where you could push yourself somewhat.

There were also a few river crossings. As I approached one of them I remember hearing the rest of the group yelling "hit it", which I interpreted to mean hit the river crossing as hard as I could. Unfortunately what they were actually saying is "keep left", which, by ignoring meant I crashed straight through the deepest part of the river. It was a pretty warm day, so I didn't mind being a bit damp!

We were staying in a hotel that had been made out of a refurbished Kasbah, and after 42km of rough terrain, both Korina and I were looking forward to seeing it. The hotel turned out to be excellent - with lots of little lounges and rooms for different groups, and rooftop terraces that would be great if the nights were a bit warmer.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we became aware that there had been a few problems during the day - most noticably, Martin and Jamie had both crashed - with a catalogue of minor and more serious injuries (turned out that Martin had broken a bone in his hand) and two of the girls had come down with food poisoning (seriously, who eats from the souk the day before setting out on a trip like this?!).

Also, one of our drivers had managed to crash a support vehicle into a rock. It was still operational, but did suggest something about the skill levels that our drivers had...

Day 2 - Agouim to Tizi-n-Tleta

Day 2 started off with a quick transfer to Agouim and then a rather hot, steady climb up to lunch. Korina was finding this much easier than the day before, in part because it was not as bumpy. At lunch, our drivers came through again by running over one of the bikes - all I could think was "£1,800" and was somewhat relieved to find out that he had managed to hit one of the hire bikes. Luckily there was a spare one as Martin could no longer ride with his arm in a cast.

However, Martin did start to amuse himself by walking - he walked the rest of the day after lunch, and was actually faster than most of the cyclists on the longer climbs.

After lunch there was a single track option which I took with our guide and some of the other riders in the group. Unfortunately our guid got a puncture and the valve of his inner tube was jammed - so I had to chase down the support vehicle and explain in broken french (and sign language) that our drivers needed to go back for Charlie.

The reason I was able to catch the support vehicle so easily is that it also had got a puncture - so after some delays relating to changing this, we were on the trail again.

After a tea break, the next challenge was an 8km climb. Again, this was mostly non-technical in that it was still a 4WD track - but it was exceptionally loose rock so therefore quite difficult to get traction. It was also pretty steep - so getting started once you had stopped could also be difficult. I decided to avoid both problems by not stopping. The climb took me about 40-45 minutes when usually it takes around 45-1.15. However, by the top I was not particularly lucid, with adrenalin being the main thing keeping me going.

 

It was then about another 5KM to our campsite in the High Atlas mountains. This was pretty easy going, although I was not really concentrating that much and almost came a cropper a few times in high speed corners that disintegrated into sand.

The lack of problem solving ability also became apparent when I arrived at camp - we had to put up tents, but because I was so knackered I really struggled to get my head together and figure out how the tent went up. Eventually I got it though.

After dinner, Korina started complaining about feeling unwell. She ended up crashing early, not before I had to have some animated discussions with her about taking the warmer of the two sleeping bags if she was not well.

It was quite a strange camping experience as there were nomads about - every now and again 1 or 2 would kind of wander through the camp, look at the fire for a bit, before wandering off.

 

Day 3 - Tizi-n-Tleta to Tachokchie

Rising early to check out the dawn, it became apparent that all was not well with Korina. She tried to start cycling, but as the sun came up and the heat started to beat down she made around 10km before having to wait for the support vehicle. I felt sorry for her, and a little guilty, as I was having a great time, and she had been really enjoying the trip before this.

So I continued on, catching up with the rest of the group just before the next village where we were mobbed by several hundred young kids. We found out later that it was school holidays - but something tells me that most of these children would still be around anyway. Mostly they stood in a big group and just stared at us - clad in lycra, with strange looking bikes we must have looked very strange to them.

After lunch there was a very hot 6km climb to lunch. Generally it was not as loose as the one on day 2, but it was a lot hotter, which made for uncomfortable climbing conditions. Riding up to lunch Charlie managed to break the rear mech on his bike, meaning that it was out for the remainder of the trip. Luckily we again had a spare bike which he used until the end.

 

The route from lunch was battling across some rather dull flats into an annoying headwind for an hour or two before getting into some of the nicest, fastest 4WD downhill I've come across for a while. Half way down the downhill there was an optional single track route - which I took with Charlie and some of the other riders. The single track was nice steep, but not too steep, ultra fast and quite well bermed on the corners. It was like it was man made, but apparently it had just been formed by people walking the track. This was perhaps the best part of the whole ride.

We then had four shortish but rather sharp climbs to get to the village house where we were staying the night. Shortly after arriving at the village where we were again mobbed by kids, I joined in a game of football, where I will be remembered for kicking the ball off the pitch and down a huge valley, and for scoring a pretty reasonable goal (even if I was playing against 10 year olds...).

 

Day 4 - Tachokchie to Anezal

After much discussion the previous night, our group had come to the communal decision that no one felt much like the 'optional' 24km climb first thing in the morning, much to Charlie's disappointment. For me, I know that I could have done the climb, but as I was already having some pain in one of my hamstrings I decided that the key to enjoying the rest of the trip was taking it easy on this day.

So we transferred to the top of the hill and then had a massive downhill by 4WD and single track to the lunch spot. It was mostly 4WD track and this was ultra fast and a bit sketchy on some corners where it was really loose and sandy. The place where I almost ate it was when Jamie stopped in front of me and I hit some loose stuff trying to avoid him. Could have all ended rather nastily, but luckily I just shaved him and onwards we rode.

Korina somehow managed to ride this downhill although she was still well below her best.

Before lunch there was another single track diversion I took with a couple of other guys which ended up with us getting lost in a village. Navigating amongst 100 Moroccan kids, all of whom are keen to alternately kick your tyres, push your bike, give you directions, give you high 5's or slap you on the arse (in the case of the ladies) was a somewhat stressful experience (although not particularly scary - again, they were mostly 10 year olds).

When I got to lunch I found out that Korina had flaked out completed and needed some other people from the group to push her bike the last bit. At this point there was little I could do for her - although it was clear that she shouldn't really have been riding.

After lunch we had a short 2km hill climb followed by a long 4WD downhill to our stopping point for the day. We then transferred to Ouarzazate where we stayed the night. Our hotel didn't look much from the street, but it went back and back and back into a maze of different rooms and lounges. It really was a great place to relax after a few hard days on the trail and camping rough.

Day 5 - Ait-Saoun to Tamnougalt

Day 5 was a relatively easy short day. We started off at a leisurely 11am and cycled about an hour downhill into the Draa Valley to our lunch spot immediately following a river crossing. I think this was the best lunch spot on the trip because it was both warm and had ample shade for pasty whiteys like me.

After lunch we cycled on down the river valley before a climb and then a fast descent into another river valley.

Around this time I started having puncture problems. I had had one on day 3, but it happened overnight, so did not impact upon my riding. This time around I noticed my back tyre had a slow leak so stopped to pump it up, was about to set off when my front tyre was also punctured, so changed that - rode on for another couple of KM, caught up with Korina and promptly got another puncture - so used her tube to fix this one. In total I had gathered around 5 punctures over 3 incidents across about 5km.

We then arrived at the hotel - again another converted Kasbah - to find Martin sitting there drinking Pina Colada's. From this point forward he was known alternately as "the Bionic man" or "Forest". Again the accomodation was of the highest quality.

 

Day 6 - Tamnougalt to Timasla

The final day riding continued down the Draa Valley stopping briefly at a Kasbah which was used during the filming of Babel. We met one of the local kids who apparently shot Cate Blanchet in the movie.

 

The riding continued to be a mix of up and down 4WD track. At 62km it was our longest day and there were 1 or 2 across the group who definately looked to be feeling it. Korina again somehow managed to ride all day, even though she was still not properly right. I was proud of how tough she had been, although she was more annoyed at herself for getting sick than anything else.

 

I managed to continue getting punctures this day too. By the end I had decided that my tyres are rubbish - don't buy Specialised Pros unless you like changing inner tubes - they are as tough as paper and about as durable. Unnervingly, the sidewalls also tend to collapse at speed when you go around corners.

There is not too much more to say about the riding - at the end of the day we transferred to Zagora where we stayed in another converted building.

Zagora and the Sahara

 

 

The following day was spent driving into the Sahara. We stopped a couple of times - once to ride some camels, another time to look at a camel herd being "refuelled" with water and again for lunch at an Oasis. About now I was starting to feel somewhat nauseous which was somewhat concerning.

However, this could have been put down to our driver's driving, which again was utterly terrible - but not as bad as the new catering team we had picked up in Zagora who came close to rolling their Landrover on 3 separate occasions - due to punctures, bald tyres or poor driving.

By the time we got to camp I was surprisingly feeling a little better which was good as our driver managed to get our Landcruiser stuck in the dunes and required bailing out by Dris - the whilely little driver who said little, smoked a lot and was the only one that could actually drive.

We then climbed the tallest dune in the Moroccan Saharan and watched the sunset - which was less spectacular than I expected as it was a little hazy. We then had a few drinks and slept under the stars in the dunes.

 

The Sahara and back to Marrakesh

We got up early the following morning and watched the sunrise - well worth it as the weather was a lot clearer before packing up the camp and heading back to Marrakesh.

 

Brahim generally drove better on the way back - although he did pull out into oncoming traffic on a blind hairpin at one stage that made everyone gasp somewhat.

Arriving back in Marrakesh we then had dinner in a restaurant in the Souk before crashing for the night.

OK, so its been a really mild winter - but we have had a couple of cold snaps recently, including this morning. When I woke up there was about 5-10 cm on the ground...

Recently entered a race in a place called Tunnel Hill in Surrey with two of my UK friends - Darren and Bryan. They were in a more difficult class to me so I had finished when they were racing so took a couple of pics:

 

My race went fairly well after an abysmal start. I had to fight my way back up through the pack and traffic which often times became congested in narrow single track. Some quite dubious overtaking maneuvers ensued, and I fought my way up to around 20th, before running out of steam slightly before the end. My final result was 25th.