Visit to Marrakech with Alexander and Georgina, as usual all details fully sorted by Gij. Last year we visited Agadir and this was a striking contrast – a quiet beach resort compared to a buzzing metropolis. We were a fair distance away from the Medina but walked in each day – often twice a day in my case – to get the full experience.
This was my second trip to Marrakech having visited with Amanda some years ago when we stayed in a Rihad within the Medina, which I actually managed to locate again. We discovered lots of great little places to eat with our favourites being the Earth Cafe and the Cafe Des Epices, both of which I remembered from last time.
Wandering through the Souks was as fascinating and irritating as ever “Come into my shop, I give you very good price…”. Drank no end of mint tea and managed to find a couple of very discreet off licenses to satisfy the need for a beer.
As it happened we arrived at the end of the 2019 Renault 4 Trophy and there were hundreds of 4Ls scattered everywhere. They seemed to be occupying most of the hotels along the same road as ours. This also sowed the seed for a potential 4L trip of our own next year…
Having successfully completed the Sport Adventure Normandie event I felt I had completed my trail riding apprenticeship. The Scorpa Trials had given me an excellent early grounding in basic balance, slow speed manoevering, throttle and clutch control. But it was not suitable for the Normandie event which led to the purchase of the T-ride, specifically to do so. I gradually realised that good though the Scorpas undoubtedly are, they are the output of a very small scale manufacturer, were produced for only a few years and are getting rather old. I found I had to make various modifications to them to overcome issues that had not been well enough engineered and the parts supply was quite a challenge. So I sold them both and started to look for a do-everything Enduro type bike. I had quickly learned to value light weight and felt that a 2T is always going to be simpler and lighter than an equivalent 4T, so my search narrowed to looking for a modern 250 2T enduro.
A few days in Budapest with Georgina. It was very cold !
Once again Gij organised everything – EasyJet flights, AirBnB. We had a whole apartment to ourselves and it was amazing – very Bohemain. The visit to the Holocaust museum was harrowing but very worthwhile and extremely well done.
These events are run by Chris EVANS of Sport Adventure https://sport-adv.com/. This is a 3 day event and you cover approximately 100 miles per day, nearly all off road. Each bike is fitted with a road book reader – just like the Paris-Dakar rally ! Each morning you are issued with the road book scroll for that day and given a briefing on the key points. The road book is a long list of instructions telling you which way to turn and what to watch out for as you navigate the trail. People are usually in teams of 2-5 and take it in turns to lead and do the navigating.
Our team was my mate Dougie on his trusty Freeride, Mark on his KTM 250 4T and we were joined by their friend Dave (Dangerous Dave) on a Honda 250 4T. I was on the Scorpa T-ride.
The first problem was that I had ignored the supplied instructions that stated you should fit Enduro tyres and had turned up to the event with Trials tyres. These tyres are perfect where I live as the trails are hard and rocky and the trials tyres provide lots of grip. But in Normandie it was very very muddy. The organiser Chris took one look at my front tyre and said “I think you’re going to struggle with that” and he was right! Every time we came across a patch of mud – which was most of the time – the tread blocks would plug up with mud and the tyre would then provide no grip at all, just slide across the surface. Good job I had been doing a lot of slow speed balancing practise as I was certainly going to need it.
I had so many close calls when the bike was slding out of control but I just managed to gather it back together at the last second and avoid an off. Dangerous Dave wasn’t so fortunate and fell off quite a lot, resulting in his early retirement from the event.
I struggled on with no possibility of changing the tyres I just had to manage. Fortunately Doug and Dave were quite happy to take the lead and do the navigating which meant that I could concentrate 100% on just keeping the bike upright. But I seemed to make progress and it felt like the trails got easier day by day, which is apparently not the case.
Apart from not wanting to start on the first day – lots of embarrasing push starting attempts in front of the hotel – the T-ride did a perfect job, which was exactly why I bought it. Having succesfully completed the 3 days I felt I had come through my apprenticeship and the Scorpa Trials and T-ride had served me well, but felt I wanted to move on to something a bit more modern. So the plan was to sell them both and get one Enduro bike that could do it all…
