‘Into Africa — in just three days’
If you want to feel a long way from home in the shortest possible time, head for Morocco
SPONTANEOUS ADVENTURES ARE now few and far between, but I often catch myself dreaming of the days before Covid passports and passenger-locator forms.
Most often, my mind wanders to the sandpit of the Sahara and my first proper motorcycle adventure. Morocco came to fruition before we even knew it – less than a month after my partner (then without a motorcycle or licence) floated the idea over the dinner table. “What if…” he had mused. What if indeed.
Fervent preparation followed and, before we knew it, we found ourselves aboard a Brittany Ferry on Boxing Day 2016; I with the recently-launched Africa Twin and Leo his new (to him) F800GS. But our paper plans belied the challenges we would face on the 3500-mile, 12-day round trip, the first of which would be to conquer 1300-odd miles of tarmac through France and Spain…
Into Africa (in just three days)
But we blinked and missed it, and crossed to Morocco barely three days later, taking a ferry from Algeciras to Ceuta, a bustling Spanish enclave on the African coastline. From here, we would be without sat nav and a dog-eared paper map was instead jury-rigged to Leo’s bike.
We took the A6, and then the N16 along the East coast, a twisting ribbon of tarmac clinging to the cliffside. At El Jebha we turned inland, on to a semi-constructed gravel road through the mountains. The craggy peaks were a physical border, dividing European-influenced Morocco with Africa; where wide, sweeping snow-lined roads gave way to narrow tracks across desolate plains.
And then we were in the desert.
Deflating the tyres, ditching the kit and disabling the bikes’ ABS and TCS, we flew into the dunes, learning the hard way that sand both sapped us of energy and stripped the chains of any lubrication. For want of a better substance, we covered the links and sprockets in 10W40 oil.
Having spent ourselves in the Sahara, we headed for the Gorges du Todra, where the next morning we would attempt the 28-mile hors-piste stretch from Tamtetoucht to M’semrir. It was billed as achievable in Chris Scott’s Morocco Overland but we didn’t factor in the freezing conditions and soon found ourselves out of our depth and in the dark.
After an impromptu night camping, we emerged exhausted, hungry and bruised, and the bikes hadn’t fared much better. We’d made but 100 miles in two days, to Ouarzazate, and were significantly behind schedule. We had less than four days to reach Santander and catch the ferry home. But we were exhilarated; we had come to Morocco in search of adventure, and had found it, albeit on a much larger scale than ever imagined.