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Andrew, the trip was fantastic. Our first low was 5 mins before we were going to leave from my house when I got a phone call saying the ferry was cancelled, Spur of the moment we swapped the ferry for a St Malo crossing which added another 700 miles to our journey. I realized I had no French maps on my Etrex 20x and sat in a McDonalds for an hour downloading them with my phone! France sucked but we did it in 3 days and was in Barcelona on the 5th day. My god damn cam chain snapped on the 6th and also bent my exhaust valve. Luckily I had a good network of buddys that shipped out parts and even paid for them within 4 days!!! From then on it was wicked but we were 7 days behind with the ferry and breakdown! We got down to Valencia and from there got to Alicante mostly offroad. From Alicante we did more offroading to a destination called "Pue" but had to cut it short after a demon mountain that my friend could not climb, where I had to do a short climb, find a flat bit then go back and ride his bike up, what should have taken 30 mins took about 5 hours! We pulled off the trails found a town and splashed out on a hotel (We had been wild camping up to then to keep the cost down). We got the Almeria and booked a ferry that night to Mellila, it cost about £50 or 70eur. It was overnight and we saved some money by just sleeping in the bench seats in the canteen. Morocco - I had set up off road routes leading almost all the way from Mellila to Fes, then Fes to Ceuta but we had no time. We tried a day but only did about 15 miles and then turned back as my buddy was not confident enough off road (thought he was a little better than he was). Stayed the night near about 15km south of Nador. The next day we just gunned it all the way to Fes where we found a secure guesthouse mainly for the bikes and basically did the tourist thing for 2 days. It was nice to sleep in a bed and see the old city, first time in North Africa since about the age of 10 where we went to some holiday camp place so this was quite an experience for me, you certainly knew you were in a different continent, even more so when you wake up to gunfire in the morning (Could not find anything in the news). We then rode to Ceuta in one go again and I got a bloody puncher on a tight bend, nearly stacked it... The boarder crossing was hectic people everywhere, about 20 people swamping us trying to be our fixers but we were pretty sure we didn't need one coming back into the Spanish territory, after 15 mins telling them to go away I lost my temper and told them to "F**k off before I get the police over to give you lot a beating", I assume they bad mouthed us in Arabic as they wondered off. This guy huffing glue wouldn't leave us alone though until some Moroccans in a car next to us told his something in Arabic and then he left. Got closer to the boarder a Moroccan got robbed in front of us so we gunned it right to the front of the line as we were feeling a bit twitchy, an armed Spanish policeman saw us and guarded us until we were through the boarder. We got through and saw Moroccans on the Spanish side tooling up and putting balaclavas on so we did 100km through the 40km limit until we were well into Ceuta! Got a ferry that night into Algacerous and found an abandoned garage to sleep in at about 1am! Spent two days getting to Portugal, met a Scottish guy on the way up who bought us coffee and had a nice little stop! Just did a whistle stop tour of Portugal and rode up through Spain, we started staying in hostels when it got colder. We got within 100 miles of Bilbao and had the Ferry the next day, of course my bike would not start for 2 hours that morning! It had been fine until then, all was good though we got there about 15 mins before it left mind! Super rough crossing!!! Got back to Portsmouth, stayed at my mates and drunk way too much. It took 10 hours to get back to Penzance the next day because we were stopping to warm our hands so often, I also got another rear puncture coming onto the M5 in Exeter where I nearly lost it again and thank god I did not as it was during rush hour. It was gutting to be so wet and cold and 100 miles from home and spend an hour or more on the side of the M5. I stuffed a 21 inch tube in the rear wheel and then rode that sucker home! got home gone 10PM which concluded the trip! We did just over 4500 miles in total. Was not going to write a full report but oh well! Hope that gives you some information or at least a semi interesting read. I'm happy to share where I got my GPX routes from if you PM me. Here are a few photos, going to make a video soon if anyone is interested! If anyone is really interested in more photos pm me and add me on FaceBook Hubb Morocco - Album on Imgur |
Killerbanjo, oh ok understood.
Don't forget a lot of units have motorcycle clubs also, HCR have one I know. Good luck with your trip, I hope to get away somewhere myself in between leave. Sent from my MoJ mobile tagging device |
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