Old and New

Morroco (2005)
by stan

My new 950 KTM adventure and my Dads old XT600 Tenere.

I had been to Morroco previously and my dad had never been offroad.. What could possibly go wrong?

The plan was simple as we had a limited timescale. Put the bikes in a van, drive from Cumbria to Dover, through France and Spain, leave the van there with friends , hop on the ferry to Cueta then see as much of the desert as we could in 10 days on the bikes...

The first bit was ok. Its a marathon journey from The Lake District to the south of Spain but having the van made it easy taking it in turns to drive.  We had a coulpe of days in Spain at our friends sorting the bikes and kit out then we were off to the ferry in Agecires.  Well we werent going to make the ferry that day. I lost my dad on the main highway in the midddle of Malaga. Had no idea what had happened, and it took ages to find a slip road to get me back the other way on the motorway. Spotted him on the hard shoulder, then had to try and get back on his side.. Turns out he had run out of petrol!? And killed his battery .. A quick tow off the motorway and more fuel, but the battery was not recovering.Due to the time this had taken we decided to get the ferry the next day. Trying to find a campsite around Algecires is not easy so we ended up in Tarifa. The next day the XT still would not start so we had to hunt down a bike shop in Algercires and geta new one.  Will we ever get to Morroco?

Well we did eventually and after the usual caos of the border we were on our way, for a mile. Dad managed to crash on some gavel at the first round about..I was having serious doubts about the desert pistes i had in mind..

A little shaken but ok we made good progress and headed to a campsite i knew in Moulay Bousselham just below Larache on the Atlantic coast. Phew, a good meal and a sunset over the Atlantic, Morocco on our bikes at last.

The plan now was a big ride south to Essaouira, then to Agadir and inland to Tafraoute and then our first piste.

We made it to Essaouira in a 600km day, fine on the KTM but the old XT was plodding along and now using lots of oil !

Ashort day down the coast to Taghazoute Plage a place i had stayed over 10 years ago and was then full of overlanders was deserted, but it was good to 'bivi' by the sea.  from here a day on fntastic roads had us in Tafroute and the next day was spent changing our tyres for the upcoming 'dirt'.  Some 'yorkshire' bartering had us exhange our old tyres for souvenirs. We thought we had a good deal but whilst fueling up around the corner we saw the man we had swopped them with selling thwm onto someone else !  Tafrout leis in a beautiful area and my dad has since been back there twice walking and cycling.

To be continued