Moray - Morocco 2015

Planning, Preparing and Packing. "Planning" began 8 months ago having read a short resume of someone else's trip. That spark has brought us here. "Preparing" has filled the interval as well as our spare room with maps, boxes and books. Now we are "Packing" it all into our One-Ten Landrover...Planning, Preparing and Packing. "Planning" began 8 months ago having read a short resume of someone else's trip. That spark has brought us here. "Preparing" has filled the interval as well as our spare room with maps, boxes and books.

The 3 "P"s progress. Mike has done all the planning over the last few months sorting the travel arrangements, acquiring maps and practising his Arabic. This aspect has now pretty much stopped as we decided that having anything more definite than "point towards the mountains" might act like a carrot to a donkey, and we'd end up chasing a schedule. We've both marked up the maps with our Must See lists and hope that we'll be able to join them together,perhaps not.Packing has been delayed a lot, mainly due to the horrendous gales and sandstorms we've been having lately.

A frosty morning, cloudless blue and half an inch of ice on the pond - a perfect day to head for the heat. We were briefly regretting having to leave the not-yet-emerged daffodils and blossom behind us, but scraping the ice off the windscreen has reminded us that British ex-pats head to Spain for a good reason.We got away in time to enjoy clear roads and a beautiful sunrise. Mind you, in this part of the world, Sunday mornings are generally pretty quiet.

We got away from Portsmouth on time yesterday, having spent most of the day in the Historic Dockyards and, more specifically, the "Mary Rose" exhibition. We left Moray a day earlier than our original plan specifically to do this, and it was well worth the effort.

Ksar Temnay, near Midelt. We decided to kiss off the planned visit to Volubilis and Fes as the rain is really beginning to get a bit of a bind. We reckon that the only way to escape the weather and get dry is to head south, as fast as we can get there.Monday 23rd

We arrived in Santander at 1815 which allowed us time to head out for a 2 hour drive, mostly in the dark through mountains and tunnels, climbing all the time.

Moulay Idriss. We caught the bus here from our campsite. Mike suggested walking as we hadn't had any exercise for a week, but the Maitre D' suggested a Number 15 bus might be a better idea. Guess who was right?
It only seemed a short distance between the two points last night as we searched for the campsite, but it's a damn sight further today, and it's uphill, too.

One of the perceived difficulties of making this trip seems to be the fear of crossing a major practical hurdle, that being the entry into the bureaucracy of an African culture. Our homework and the advice of many who've done this trip promised that this hurdle is a lot lower than many believe.

The late arrival in Tarifa coincided with a downpour, or rather, an introduction to what the locals have been suffering for quite a while, judging by the flooded fields. And campsite. A bit squelchy underfoot is an understatement. No bother, just need to get some fuel. We're running on empty since there have been no garages at all for the last 60 miles, which we hadn't expected.

Tuesday 24th March (was the day that this entry was started).

We stayed last night near Temnay, cold and disturbed in the night by rain and a chorus of barking dogs. The latter seem to be a feature of all the sites we've stayed at - perhaps it's some form of "piped musak" to help the locals get to sleep.
We ate well last night with home-cooked chicken and Edam, wrapped in ham from the Marjane.

Off to the dunes! This was one of our major objectives and, though the Erg Chebbi dunes aren't considered to be the "proper" Sahara, it's close enough for the moment.We tried to make an early start from the campsite at Karla, but had to pay due attention to the ritual farewells and gift exchanging before we could make a polite exit. The route down to the south end of the dunes was on tarmac, but we left this as soon as we could and pulled into a gravel area where the ordinary surface met the sand.

Wednesday 25th..
A pleasant night at Camping Karla although the wind’s been getting up and the loose bits of the tent were flapping and cracking like loose sails on a windjammer.

Forgive us, but it's been another few days since our last confession. The limiting factors are 1.time, as there are a lot more chores when you live like this, and 2. power supply.We've discovered that at this end of Morocco the socket/plug combination has not only defeated us but several campsites as well. Despite all efforts, we remain reliant on Daphne's electrical supply and the 600w inverter - and what a bonus that's turned out to be. Even so, we have a max of 3 hours laptop power with 2 batteries, and the daily batch of photos has to share time with this blog....

We arrived in Tata on Tuesday afternoon after a long, hot and frustrating day. Leaving our desert camp at about 0930 we felt we were lagging behind the sun a bit. The clocks changed here last weekend - have I mentioned that twice? - and our body clocks aren't in sync with that yet. The sun still comes up as normal and the cocks still crow at the same time. They need some education on the new wake-up call.

So, we've decided on a plan for the day, Saturday 4th April: 1. Drive to Taroudant. Get cash. Gawp. Do Tourist Thing. 2. Find Route MH7 and spend rest of day getting high.
Drive to Taroudant. The Rough Guide has good things to say about this place, and we need a break from driving, a "civilised" cup of coffee and an ATM. There's also an ancient Kasbah that's said to be worth a visit, and the town has both an Arab and Berber souk on every day of the week, which is a bonus as today is the Muslim "Sunday" and a lot of places may be closed.

....and for those of you of a Certain Age, you might remember this Mike Batt classic. If not, it doesn't matter 'cos, as far as we experienced, neither does Agadir.As cities go, I'm sure that Agadir has it's good points, but for us, fighting the rush hour traffic to find 1. a supermarket and 2. a campsite, it had little to endear it to us. Jammed into the mayhem of commuter travel is bad enough if you know where you're going but as we didn't, and were relying on apparently random signage, it becomes very much more frustrating.

Sunday, 5th. The first job is to get down off this mountain. According to the book, we've broken the back of this route.Shouldn't say things like that. Be more accurate to say "we aren't out of the woods yet".

So, another day. Heading north east for Boumalne Dades, the intention is to visit the Todra Gorge and then use an offroad route to connect us with the N13 and from there slowly start our homeward journey north to Tangiers and the ferry on Monday 13th.

....that we didn't get while southbound. That's to say, Volubilis. We've decided that Fes or Marrakech will have to wait until another time.We've already decided that we must come back to this amazing country - so we'll "do" some the culture stuff and get an injection of history and leave the standard tourist ticks for later.

Having spent the last 4 hours completing our record from Tangier to here, we find our efforts wasted.The ship's wi-fi - yes, we're outbound from Santander - dropped offline while we were updating everything. Since it's an on-line system, what we thought we'd been saving as we went along wasn't. Saved, that is. So we've just discovered that the whole lot has gone over the side. Sleeping with the fishes. To say we're p*ssed off is an understatement, but actually, the trip's over now. We've done what we came for.