For several days now it has been Ethel to the rescue as first Tobi ran out of fuel and then got a puncture.
Whilst the major event of the last 2 days is that he has broken his gearbox - it happened on the desert highway - we then had an epic of a day (too long to go into here) involving a refrigerated lorry, the police and a team of Japanese people in a minivan.

The upshot is that I ended up TOWING Tobi on his R100GS (that’s a big 1000 cc bike for those of you not in the know) for 125 kms - it wasn't much fun as I had my nearly bald desert tyre on the rear and NO suspension, and naturally the desert winds were blowing as well.
Ethel coped well though and we reached the nearest small town where the bike was transferred to a ...Mitsubishi taxi - bit of a squeeze but we managed it and got to Laayoune – the biggest city in southern Morocco at 10pm that night.