Wednesday 8th October 2008

Another soulless breakfast, this time in an Etap Hotel, but no apologies – the hostel was the wrong side of town with nowhere for the bike and where was I going to camp in a commercial port? In any case the staff were very helpful, helped me to use their free wifi, and let me leave my bike in their secure parking all day until ferry check in time.
I had left it a bit late (small understatement) to print out my Moroccan customs form for the bike and I couldn’t print in the Etap Hotel so I found the internet café ‘cyberphone’ and followed the Globebusters’ instructions which worked perfectly. Until, that is, it came to the last instruction – print in colour. Correct, no colour printer in any internet café in Sete. Too late to worry, time for lunch. Attempt no 2 at the Blanquette de Veau just to give it a fair chance. Enough’s enough; it’s had its chance.

Up to the booking hall to go to the desk beside the one I was at yesterday to get my booking confirmation which was duly processed by a sullen jobsworth. Overall, the booking process, even in a foreign language, hasn’t been as difficult as I had expected although it is still possible that I’ve actually signed up for a ten year tour of duty with some obscure relic of the foreign legion. The vehicles waiting for the ferry totally lived up to my expectations – mostly ancient and mostly horrifically overloaded. One elderly Renault saloon appeared to have completely collapsed rear suspension but still had two lorry wheels and a trolley on its roofrack and some unimaginable weight inside it. I got waved on to the ferry, along with the three other bikers, via two more paperwork checks. My sullen jobsworth from the booking confirmation desk suddenly became animated by the sight of my bike and, when I let him blip the throttle a couple of times, became my friend for life and wished me something good that I couldn’t understand. Who knows? Reality check now – I had expected the usual strap over the seat tie down arrangement for the bike but no – turn the clock back thirty years and park on the sidestand beside a large vertical pipe. ‘Don’t worry, we will look after it’. I took a few obvious photos to prepare for the compensation claim and left them to it.
My cabin had mysteriously been upgraded to comfort class from economy and, when I glanced into a three person economy cupboard, I was very grateful. My cabin companions were two young Moroccan guys, Noaam & Najim, who spoke no English but were very friendly and kept muttering ‘courageous’ when we discussed my solo trip. We had dinner together and then went for coffee with another guy who sat at our table. Noaam and Najim are teetotal and I certainly wasn’t drinking on my longest ever sea voyage but the other guy made up for all of us. He had an interesting variation on the drinking water bladders that hillwalkers and mountain bikers have in their backpacks – he had a litre of whisky in his, which he completely demolished in the middle of a lounge full of people drinking coffee and mint tea. Thought for the day: if travelling in company on a ferry like this, eat good food in relaxed surroundings in the restaurant; if travelling alone, join the queue at the cafeteria, take whatever unidentifiable foreign meal is dished out, squeeze in at a communal table, become an object of interest to your fellow diners and have a lot of fun - you’ll even learn some new words