Monday, that’s the day you go back to work isn’t it? Oh no, that’s the day you ride (on tarmac) up the stunning road to the viewpoint at the top of the Dades Gorge, then ride down again and take the scenic route all the way to Marrakesh via the Tizi-n-Tichka pass at 2260 metres in the High Atlas range. This was all tarmac but very demanding mountain riding that just went on for ever. The road surface was all good but quite a few stretches of guardrail had been washed away.
In reality, Sunday had taken more out of me than I had realised and my riding reactions and endurance would have been ok in a car but were not really up to the mark on a bike on this road. I got a bit of a wakeup call when I got a left hand hairpin all wrong, stiffened, locked my arms, and the bike naturally lifted and drifted wide onto the gravel edge on the outside. No guardrail, don’t want to think of the drop. Lesson learned, it was regular short tea stops from then on. In the right mental and physical state this has to be one of the best motorcycling roads in the world on day like this with hardly any traffic. I had started the day going up the Dades with the other guys but normally I much prefer riding alone at my own leisurely pace, so I split from them after about 30 kilometres and just had a tea stop with them at Skoura. Riding alone is quite different; when I was tired in the mountains, I saw three roadside crystal sellers who didn’t look too aggressive and stopped with them. They accepted that I didn’t want to buy anything and the four of us just sat, chatting in (basic) French while we shared my emergency bag of chocolate chip cookies. That’s hard to do in a group.
I arrived at the outskirts of Marrakesh late in the afternoon and was amazed by the string of mini villages along the road. Each one seemed to specialise in one trade, one was all bicycle repairs, on
e was lorry bodywork, and so on. All carried out at the roadside and all by Sub Saharan Africans.
Biggest mistake of the trip – I arrived in Marrakesh after 6 oclock and after dark. Nothing could have prepared me for the noise, the insane driving, the traffic fumes – it was total sensory overload for me. I followed a sign for the railway station in the hope there would be hotels near it. Forget the adventure travel, the first luxury hotel sign and I was straight up the kerb to the front door on the bike. The uniformed doorman and the well dressed guests of the Hotel Corail didn’t know quite what to make of the scruffy biker and his scruffy bike, both leaving trails of dried mud.
I arrived at the outskirts of Marrakesh late in the afternoon and was amazed by the string of mini villages along the road. Each one seemed to specialise in one trade, one was all bicycle repairs, on
e was lorry bodywork, and so on. All carried out at the roadside and all by Sub Saharan Africans.Biggest mistake of the trip – I arrived in Marrakesh after 6 oclock and after dark. Nothing could have prepared me for the noise, the insane driving, the traffic fumes – it was total sensory overload for me. I followed a sign for the railway station in the hope there would be hotels near it. Forget the adventure travel, the first luxury hotel sign and I was straight up the kerb to the front door on the bike. The uniformed doorman and the well dressed guests of the Hotel Corail didn’t know quite what to make of the scruffy biker and his scruffy bike, both leaving trails of dried mud.
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