Base camp for the Severn to Sahara Expedition

Friday, 18 September 2009

Hello

Arabic keyboard again so little by way of punctuation BUT big news: Ive made it to Marrakech

Arrived yesterday afternoon, 25 days and 2 hours, and 2400 miles after leaving our flat in Bristol - difficult to take it in, really - cant believe that Ive arrived. Marrakech has felt so distant for such a long time. 

Had a busy few days riding out of the Sahara. Of all places, I got caught in a huge thunder storm on an exposed desert plain as I was on my way back to the Atlas mtns. Temperature dropped drastically over a matter of minutes and the sky went from being clear to black. Wind went from a gentle warm breeze to a crazy storm force gale - I couldnt even stand still and hold the bike - was being blown backwards and over into the puddles - then a huge hail storm with hail stones the size of gobstoppers being fired down at unbelievable speed - very painful... lasted for about 10-15 minutes during which I turned the air blue and also the wind ripped off one of my pannier covers, my hat and most importantly my map, which all disappeared into the desert. Fortunately, I have been studying the map since xmas and knew where to go. I have an untouched bottle of factor 50 suncream in my bag and was wondering if that was enough before I set off - wasnt expecting this sort of caper...

Because of all the rain and thunderstorms in the mountains, I had a day of problems crossing the many fords in the road - hadnt even noticed them before as the river beds had been bone dry. The day of the storm and the day after they were all in flood and I had to wade across a few. One was about waist deep and flowing really strongly - but was about a 250mile detour so ended up carrying baggage and bike across whilst the whole village came out to watch - got a huge cheer when I made it over and was pretty relieved to be on dry land again. Did another 50 miles and arrived in a town where a road junction by the mountains was about 2-3m under some muddy rapids - wasnt going to have a go at that... in the end some young lads on a motorbike took me on a long diversion through some woods, through a mud brick souk to a precarious little bridge over a narrow bit of the river that was thundering by underneath - another problem solved and kept spinning away towards Marrakech.

The next day was very hot, in the mid 40s again, and all the river beds were bone dry again, with the rivers having dumped all the water into the desert where it has quickly disappeared - crazy.

A couple of days over the High Atlas then and some spectacular scenery - crumbling kasbahs and mud brick villages - people washing clothes in mountain streams. Stayed a night in a gite - was thinking of characterful converted barns in northern France but this place was a real dive. A concrete box - gaps plugged up with empty cement bags - and a carpet of plastic sacking. Could here rats or mice or something under that carpet all night - was glad to be away from there... and really enjoyed soaring along the mountain roads at 2000m, above the clouds before the long descent into the crazy traffic of Marrakech.

Cant believe that Im here. Im a day early so am enjoying lazing around in the many cafes of the city and am very excited about seeing Talie again when she arrives tomorrow - feels like an age since we left our old flat back in Bristol.

Hope you have enjoyed the updates and I look forward to catching up with you all soon. Thanks for the many text message congratulations that many of you have sent - great to hear from everybody and really enjoyed reading them all last night - I sat in an English pub, beer quite hard to come by here, and read through them all whilst I tried to understand that I wasnt going to be getting on the bike in the morning, or tomorrow, or the day after - a welcome break...

See you all soon

Pete

Pete Woodward
www.GoingTheExtraMile.org.uk