V2XS

Welcome to my Christmas blog post – which is a sort-of substitute for sending Christmas cards and provides an opportunity to look back on 2019 and highlight some of the things that happened…

New Year at Ravenside

I spent New Year with Chris and Corinne on their small holding near Newcastle. No major projects this year (like barn building) but lots of other jobs to be getting on with.

Sussex

On my way back to France (driving in the Land Rover this trip) I stopped off to see Nanna and went out to lunch with Lucy and Bella…

Sunshine

Back home in early January to glorious sunshine…

Alvor

In January I flew to Alvor in the Algarve to visit Tim and Helen who now spend the winter there. First I had to take Hebe up to Limoges for Alexander and Laurena to dog sit. This invariably involves a visit to the Brasserie Michard, but I see from this photograph that we went somewhere else on this occasion..

Back home, then off to Toulouse for the flight to Faro…

Back home and off to Limoges again to collect Hebe…

KTM 250 EXC

In February I bought a new motorbike, having sold the other two…
Blog post here :
https://v2xs.com/ktm-250-exc/

Zoe & Oli’s Wedding

Back to the UK for my niece’s wedding (sister Sara’s eldest daughter)…

Blog post here :
https://v2xs.com/zoe-and-oli-wedding/

Marrakech

In late February Alexander, Georgina and I went off to Morocco for a week. The previous year we had spent a week in Agadir but were looking for a bit more excitement and we certainly found it in Marrakech…

Blog post here :
https://v2xs.com/marrakech/

Sunday Trail Ride

Out trail riding with some of the guys from the “Lot of Bikes” crew..

Blog Post :
https://v2xs.com/sunday-trail-ride/

Sport Adventure Dodogne

My first experience of one of the Chris Evans sport adventure trips was in the Normandie mud in November 2018. Trails riding in the Dordogne proved to be a lot less slippery, and much faster…

Blog post :
https://v2xs.com/sport-adventure-dordogne/

Keeping Up With The Boys

Just when I was starting to think I was getting the hang of the new bike and having successfully completed the 3 day navigation enduro in the Dordogne, I went out for a ride with some of the young lads from Lot of Bikes…

Blog post :
https://v2xs.com/keeping-up-with-the-boys/

Montesa Cota 4RT

Decided I needed another trials bike to develop my skills, having fallen off the KTM a few times…

Read more :
https://v2xs.com/montesa-cota-4rt/

Paris With Lucy

Long weekend in Paris with Lucy…

https://v2xs.com/paris/

Golden Gnome Treasure Hunt

Organised by John from Lot of Bikes, this was a team event involving navigation (with map and compass!), trail riding to obscure locations and solving tricky clues – the last one being attached to a buoy floating in Montcuq lake !
https://v2xs.com/golden-gnome-treasure-hunt/

Specialized Sirrus X

Another new acquistion…

https://v2xs.com/specialized-sirrus-x/

Summer Parties

I don’t get time for quite so many adventures in the summer time as I have to pretend to do a bit of work selling shade sails. But there are plenty of fetes and events to fill the evenings and you never know who you might meet…

https://v2xs.com/summer-parties/

Rando de Courbiac

More ..
https://v2xs.com/rando-courbiac/

Morocco Or Bust ?

The trip to Marrakech earlier in the year gave us the idea of doing a road trip to Morocco in Jan/Feb 2020. Having seen the huge number of Renault 4s in Marrakech at the end of the 4L trophy we thought it could be a great adventure…
https://v2xs.com/morocco-or-bust/
https://v2xs.com/morocco-or-bust-2/

The Vince

Doug, Mark and myself “The Old School” signed up to do a motorbike navigation event in the Pyrenees called The Vince. It is run by a rather eccentric guy called Austin VINCE who has done lots of round the world tours and now regularly runs adventure holidays.

The 2019 event is restricted to the use of maps and compasses only – no GPS allowed. Austin and his team have placed a series of small metal tags on objects scattered around the Pyrenees – typically on trees/posts/electric pylons. He has then supplied a very small scale map and guide book to tell you exactly where each tag is located. The event is held over two days and you are allowed exactly 12 hours each day to navigate your way around the objects collecting the information on the tags. Different tags score different amounts of points. The winner is the team with the most points at the end of day 2.
https://v2xs.com/the-vince/
https://v2xs.com/the-vince-2/
https://v2xs.com/the-vince-3/

Holiday Visitors

Plenty of visitors this year including Chris and Corinne (their first holiday for 10 years). My sister Sara is a regular and loves to get her dose of sunshine…
https://v2xs.com/sara-and-laurens-holiday/

Golden Gnome Challenge Trophy

Another event run by John based at his house north of Montcuq. This is an annual competition and involves trials, motocross and enduro…
https://v2xs.com/golden-gnome-challenge-2019/

San Sebastien

A wonderful week in San Sebastien with Susan…
https://v2xs.com/san-sebastien/

Charity Run

5Km charity run in Cahors to raise money for breast cancer research (ladies only)…
https://v2xs.com/charity-run/

Quatrelle Farewell

What happened, what went wrong, have we missed the epic adventure of men and machine battling against all the odds to get to Morocco or Bust ?
https://v2xs.com/quatrelle-farewell/

Sport Adventure – Morvan

Read more…
https://v2xs.com/massif-de-morvan-2019/

Morocco

Another fabulous week away with Susan, visiting Marrakech and Essaouira…
https://v2xs.com/morocco-nov-2019/

Egypt

A week in Hurghada with Georgina…
https://v2xs.com/egypt-nov-2019/

More…

Well it’s not the end of the year yet…
Georgina, Alexander and Laurena should be here for Christmas, then I’m flying to the UK for a tour of the UK to visit the family. Back here early January to start the adventures again – trip to Alvor and Morocco at end of January…

Just back from a week in Hurghada, Egypt with Georgina…

This trip was arranged many months ago by Georgina as we decided that we would need some winter sun in November. As she works for Hays Travel she was able to find a great deal on an all-inclusive package deal with TUI. This was a first for me having not done a package deal before but it was fantastic. If you just want to relax in the sun by the pool this could be the perfect holiday. Average tempertures were in the high twenties and we didn’t see a cloud all week – not too surprising as the average annual rainfall in Hurghada is 3mm !

But package holidays like this are what you make them and we were looking for a bit more than just tanning and consuming the huge variety of all-inclusive food, wine and cocktails on offer…

Our resort hotel was the Jaz Bluemarine which was right on the Red Sea. It is huge – has over 1,000 rooms and 20 swimming pools..

The beach runs along a shallow lagoon which with the steady wind made this a perfect place to learn kite surfing (there was even a kite school on the beach).

Kite Surfing

I had read that this was a great spot for learning to kite surf and on the first day went down to the beach to book in for some lessons…

Having done quite a bit of windsurfing and having had one kite surfing lesson in the UK I was hoping I would quickly get the hang of it – but it proved a tricky skill to learn. After 9 hours of lessons over the course of the week I managed to get my level 2 certificate. My target was level 3 but that required me to waterstart and then plane for 50m in each direction. I was only managing about 10-20m.

My biggest windsurfing sail is 6.5 m2 – we started the training with a 9 m2 kite and once using the board we were up to 17 m2 !

On the positive side the instructor said another 4 hours and I would be surfing independently. My kite control was good but board control and body positioning needed more practice – maybe next time…

Swimming With Dolphins

We booked a day trip to go snorkelling and swimming with Dolphins in the open sea, which was an amazing experience. The trip also included snorkelling on a couple of coral reefs and rides on inflatables being towed behind a speed boat.

It was a full day and an early start – we were collected at 5.30am !

Scuba Diving

I carried on with my kite surfing lessons while George went on a scuba diving trip..

Quad Biking In The Desert

Another trip was quad biking in the desert. I thought this would be quite tame but the bikes eventually wind up to about 60 km/h which is plenty fast enough across sand with lots of bumps – enough to bounce you out of the seat if you don’t hang on tight making it tricky to use the GoPro with one hand while controlling the bike with the other.

We went 20 Km or so into the desert to a Bedouin village for camel rides and tea..

Chilling By The Pool

Plenty of time for chilling and tanning (some of the pools were heated like bath water) and taking advantage of the all inclusive food and drink.
I managed to read both of the books I had brought on the trip.

Getting Home..

Caught the coach back to the airport (along with 200 other people), which arrived 3 hours before the flight, only to be told there was a three hour delay. After some waiting around this turned into a 5 hour delay.

TUI then shipped us back to the hotel for a meal where some of our fellow travellers took full advantage of the complimentary beverages on offer…

Eventually got home 5 hours later than planned, arriving at Georgina’s house in Brighton at 4am…

Just spent a week in Morocco with Susan…

We flew with EasyJet from TLS to Marrakech and picked up a hire car from a local rental company called surprise cars – it turns out they were full of surprises…

According to the instructions which we had carefully printed out we were to be met at the exit from the terminal, but there was no-one there. We asked around and were pointed in the direction of the various car rental offices at the far side of the main airport car park. We walked along the various offices (Avis, Europcar, Sixt, etc) but no sign of an office labelled “Surprise Cars”. We stopped at the Hertz desk and asked if they had heard of them, beginning to suspect we may have been “scammed”, but they pointed us to the far corner of the car park where we could see a small group of people standing around a couple of cars. We wandered over and discovered that they operate out of the back of a car!

There was another couple in front just collecting their car which looked like it had taken part in a demolition derby – every panel on the car was dented! It took forever for the agent to record all the existing damage and for the clients to photograph all the evidence. How many rental miles in Marrakech would it take to produce that much damage?

As it turned out our car was brand new and carried a 1000 Euro excess so it was with some considerable trepidation that we ventured out into the random chaos that is Marrakech.

Our apartment was in the Gueliz quarter, not far from the Red Hotel where I stayed with Alexander and Georgina in February. Right next door was the Bagatelle restaurant which does excellent food at very reasonable prices. The weather was balmy and we were able to eat outside – a far cry from the cold and stormy weather lashing most of Europe.

The one downside of the apartment turned out to be the night club/disco next door which seemed to play loud music for most of the night.

Breakfast the next day was at the Pain Quotidienne and I chose the Moroccan option, which turned out to be bread and pancakes in many forms.

We then walked to the Medina to experience the full-on buzz of Marrakech.

Mint tea in the Cafe des Epices.

Fresh juices in the Earth Cafe and then on to visit the Bahia Palace.

In the evening we went to the rather posh Cafe de la Grand Poste which was expensive but the food was amazing.

For our second full day we decided to head out of Marrakech to explore the Atlas Mountains which are about 1.5 hours away.

We went up the Ourika valley intending to visit the waterfalls (cascades). They are clearly a big tourist draw and there were lots of coaches and tourism taxis. The parking areas were swarming with official guides all touting for business. We were hoping to make our own way to the cascades – expecting to find a well worn trail that we could easily follow – but this proved elusive and we headed out of the village away from the crowds with “our guide” in tow. Having reached the edge of the village we surveyed the scene and considered what to do next.

Our guide offered to give us tea as we had inadvertently stopped outside his house. We declined as we had just taken tea and there is only so much mint tea you can take.. He explained there was another route to the cascades that started next to where we were which avoided all the tourists and had much better views so we gave in and hired him as our guide. He neglected to mention that route he had in mind was only really suitable for mountain goats…

After a lot of walking, some scrambling and some real rock climbing we eventually got to the cascades which were not particularly impressive in themselves but the surroundings and views were amazing.

Our guide was very helpful and actually proved to be essential as the route was not marked and dangerous in places – accidents are very common apparently.

Saturday was the Rugby World Cup Final, which we managed to locate on the television in the apartment…

We then went to visit the Yves Saint Laurent museum and Majorelle gardens.

In the evening we met Susan’s friend Karine who also happened to be staying in Marrakech and had rooftop aperitifs at the Hivernage Hotel followed by a delightful dinner in the restaurant.

That was our last evening in Marrakech and the next day we set off on the 2.5 hour drive to Essaouira on the coast (pronounced Essa-wee-ra). This is an old fishing port that has hugely expanded and is a popular tourist destination. It does have a fortified old town (Medina) attached to the port which is similar to the Medina in Marrakech but smaller and less chaotic.

Our loft apartment in Essaouira was small but very cosy and with the benefit of a roof terrace with views of the sea and Mogador island.

We spent time exploring the fishing port which was buzzing with all the fishermen selling their freshly caught fish and wandering through the Medina, taking impromptu snapshots of the locals and their wares.

On our last day we drove out of the town to the next village which turned out to be a prime surfing spot and actually held a round of the windsurfing world cup last year. There were very few people there and we were immediately accosted by young boys trying to sell us woolly hats that their mothers had knitted. The weather was more unsettled today and the waves were big – presumably ideal for surfing but there was no-one taking advantage. The beach here is twenty miles long and we had it all to ourselves!

On our last evening we walked in to the Medina in search of a small local restaurant – there are plenty to choose from but most don’t serve alcohol. After dinner we went for a drink at the Cosy Cocktail Bar, where the bar tender from Toulouse mixed up a unique and delicious Pink Kitty Cocktail for Susan – I just had a bottle of local Casablanca beer.

The next day we drove back to Marrakech to catch the plane home. We had noticed on the way here that there were lots of speed cameras, both fixed and mobile and lots of police check points – we had already been stopped once. It was no surprise that we got stopped again and they asked to check papers etc, but they also told me that I had been speeding 89Km/h in an 80 limit and the fine was 150 Dirham. I protested as I had been watching the speed limits quite carefully (although they change every few Km) and explained that we were not in a hurry. This reduced the on the spot fine to 100 Dirham (10 Euros) and a warning… I think this was probably just a scam that the police use to get some extra pocket money out of tourists but as they were both armed I wasn’t going to argue further.

Along the Essaouira to Marrakech road we passed a few Argan trees with goats in them which is such an amazing and unusual sight…

At the airport we returned the rental car to Surprise Cars in the corner of the car park. And the final surprise was that they discovered a tiny dent in the bonnet and charged us 400 Euros!

Other than that unpleasant surprise it was a fantastic break. Morocco is an amazing place – wonderful weather, exotic surroundings, friendly people, not too far away (2.5 hour flight) and they speak French!

Towards the end of October I completed a 3 day navigation enduro in the Massif de Morvan organised by Sport Adventure. This was the third of these events I have entered – the first was in the Normandie mud last November, followed by the Dordogne in May. This time I was teamed up with my mate Dougie who had driven down from Yorkshire in his big van.

There were about 15 of us in total and the event follows a consistent format. Three days of riding nearly all off road covering about 150Km per day. Riding along unknown trails at a reasonable speed is challenging enough but the navigation element is what makes these events unique. The route is marked out using a road book system – as used on the Paris Dakar rally. This is a scroll of paper mounted to a reader on the handlebars of the bike. The navigation instructions are presented as small pictograms with distance markers – for example “turn sharp right in 1Km opposite a church” or “take the left fork in the trail in 800m”. This seems simple enough but at speed the changes in direction come thick and fast and are quite difficult to read when you are bouncing along a rough trail at speed.

Following a spell of bad weather last year there were a lot of fallen trees across the trails – some were small and could be ridden over, some were large and presented a large enough gap underneath to just about squeeze the bike through, others completely blocked the trail and it was then necessary to head off into the woods to try to find a way round. The logs were wet and slippery which meant that even crossing a small one was quite treacherous and resulted in a few offs.

Accurate distance measurement is vital as a check that you are in the right place – each box on the road book shows the distance from the previous junction and the total distance travelled. Paying close attention to this ensures that even if you go wrong, which we did many times, you can quickly recognise the error and backtrack.

The conditions were quite muddy in places but nothing like the gloop we experienced in Normandie. On the first day it started to rain in the afternoon and got dark early which made the trails through the woods much more difficult to follow safely so we finished early and missed out the last 20Km. We did manage to complete the route on the next two days.

I tried to describe the feeling of riding in this event to my family and came up with this…

Riding along unknown often slippery trails with random fallen trees at the speed I like to ride (as fast as possible with a small safety margin) is a huge buzz – much like skiing on the edge of control I would imagine – requires 100% concentration and good fitness/endurance to be able to do more than 10mins. Add to that the need to navigate using the road book and odometer with changes of direction every few hundred yards. Then do it for hours at a time…

For those new to the blog and the whole Morocco or Bust adventure, here is the previous post on this :
https://v2xs.com/morocco-or-bust-2/

What happened, what went wrong, have we missed the epic adventure of men and machine battling against all the odds to get to Morocco or Bust ?

The short answer is …
there was too much work to do.

For the long answer read on …

Having bought the 4L and being full of enthusiasm for a new project Alexander and I embarked upon the long list of jobs I had created to make the car suitable for the adventure we had in mind. The first and probably the worst job was crawling about underneath the car to rustproof and paint the chassis and underbody. We managed to achieve this in one weekend but it was horrible messy work and I had hammerite tattoos on my back and arm that lasted two weeks.

Close examination of the car revealed that it was surprisingly sound – some corrosion at the front end of the chassis rails but these are not a key structural element and not a CT failure point. This is just as well as repairs to the chassis require the body to be removed which I was not planning on doing.

There is no doubt the 4L has bags of character and as a local runabout it oozes charm and gets lots of thumbs up from the locals and is perfectly suited to this kind of use. The brakes are unassisted drums all round and are terrible – but if you remember to give them a mighty shove they do actually stop the car. The trombone gearchange is totally bizarre but actually works very well, the steering is light and reasonably accurate. Plenty of room in the back for trips to the dump or collecting a new washing machine. Yes it is noisy and the suspension is harsh with no load and the doors don’t fit properly but these things only add to the charm.

The real issue for me came down to this :
“Will the 4L manage the 5000Km trip to Morocco and back?”

The answer to this was “possibly” and to change that response into a “probably” or even a “yes” would require a strip down and rebuild of many of the mechanical systems on the car. Having been through the car and made a list of all of the work I would like to do in order to feel comfortable doing that journey, I began to question the whole idea. As a local runabout none of these potential issues would be a problem as you would most likely be able to make it home, order the parts and fix it – the parts are readily available and the car is mechanically and electrically very simple. On some deserted mountain road miles from anywhere it would be a different story…

Bear in mind that although the Quatrelle I bought is a 1986 model from near the end of the production run (a 33 year old car), the actual design and manufacturing setup for the car was from the 1950s with the first car produced in 1961 – which makes it about a 60 year old car in terms of technology. If we were entering the 4L trophy then we would have to put the work in to make the car reliable enough to complete the event – but as we are just planning to follow some of the route and get to Morocco at our leisure the 4L may not have been the best choice of vehicle. On the positive side I did sell it for more than I paid for it….

So now begins the search for a suitable alternative to allow the Morocco or Bust challenge to become reality…

Lots of pictures here :
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bb1zHNWhmjzpE2tD8