Morocco

“I spent all day Friday packing the vehicle making sure ever thing was ok, checked the oil, I knew it was ok it was dripping out from under the engine so there must have been some in, I kicked the tyres, it really hurt!”

“Why?”

“I didn’t have any shoes or socks on!”

“Why?, on second thoughts it doesn’t matter!”

“Because..”

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

“Right where was I?, that’s it packed the vehicle so we were ready to go, then my clothes, Jean took them all out of the repacked them properly then Saturday morning comes and the post arrives A BLOODY SPEEDING FINE FROM CLEVELAND POLICE!, 35 MILE A FUCKING AN HOUR IN A 30 MPH ZONE SIXTY BLOODY QUID and three points!”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have been speeding, 35mph is quite quick for you”

“It’s slow for Jean!”

“Hang on how come she’s involved?”

“She was bloody driving!, and as I had to answer the summons in 28 days I couldn’t tell them that because the next summons would come back for Jean and we’d be away and the fine would go up”

“So admit I was you!”

“It wasn’t!”

“Admit it was you and pay the fine!”

“They demanded my license to put the three points on it!”

“Hang on you need your license when you driving in Europe! And you were leaving in a couple of hours!”

“EXACTLY!”

“Why didn’t you phone the court and explain?”

“I did!”

“And”

“Saturday morning, no-one was working!”

“Aahhh difficult why didn’t you phone the police themselves?”

“That’s what I did next. Got a very nice lady and I told them that although they needed £60, an admission of guilt and my license, all that I was willing to send them was an admission of guilt (reluctantly) and that was it…..”

“Wow! I’m impressed, so you negotiated and resolved the issue?”

“Oh yes they soon realised that I’m not a man to be messed with, once I’ve made up my mind I cannot under any circumstances be swayed. So after a lot of negotiating, in the end I agreed to send them the admission of guilt”

“That all?”

“And my license!”

“Anything else?”

“£60”

“I’m sorry I didn’t hear that I thought you said £60!”

“Mmm!”

“So after all that negotiating you agreed to send them what they asked for in the first place!”

“Well if you put it like that I suppose I did, but I’d phoned lots of people for advice and not one of them said what I really wanted to hear”

“Which was”

“That’s ok Jeff tell them I was driving so I get the 3 points and I’ll pay the £60 fine for you!”

PETROL AND DIESEL DON’T MIX

“Putting unleaded into diesel engine is a mistake any one can make, and when you realise you’ve done it, under no circumstances do you start the engine, what you do do is shout “F….k !” and ask the garage for help!”

“And what did they do?”

“They demanded payment for the petrol I’d put in then they suggested I phone the RAC!”

“Good idea!”

“ I thought so, so I did but then hit a snag!

“What was that?”

“They reminded me that I wasn’t a member!”

“Bloody people nit picking like that!, so what did you do?”

“Right it’s not a problem draining a tank with petrol/diesel, you just open a nut and it runs out”

“But you can’t jut let the petrol/diesel run onto the floor!”

“That what I thought, the only thing I could see on the forecourt was was the containers that flowers they were selling were store in, problem was they were full of flowers!”

“Aah so what did you do!”

“Bought the flowers!..£40”

“Obvious really!”

“Next problem.. Now you had the containers to catch the petrol/diesel, but what do you do with the diesel/petrol then!”

“Try and sell it back to the garage!”

“And?”

“What do you think?”

“No?”

“Exactly!”

“What you needed was some jerry cans!”

“Which I just happened to have but which I intended to use to carry water in the desert!”

“So you?”

“So I filled the water containers with petrol/diesel”

“But wont that ruin them?”

“Don’t ask!”

“So what did you do with the two plastic jerry cans containing thirty litres of petrol/diesel?”

“Took them to the tip!”

“And they took it ok!”

“No It’s illegal to carry petrol/diesel in plastic containers, so they couldn’t possibly under any circumstances take them off my hands “More than my jobs worth Guv!”, he said!”

“So you?”

“Gave him £10!”

“And?”

“Put them over there behind the shed Guv!”

“Bloody hell so it cost you £10 to get rid of 30 litres of diesel/petrol which is worth, what? £25 bloody hell, then there’s the flowers which were £40 so the day had cost you lets see 60 +10 + 25 +40 bloody hell £135 and you haven’t even left England yet!,.Still nothing else could go wrong!”

“Erm..”

“Nooo!”

I didn’t tell them my vehicle was over height so they wanted to charge me an extra £100 on the ferry!”

“What did you do?”

“Screamed burst into tears and threatened to kill myself!”

“Did it work?”

“The nice lady didn't seem to mind about me killing myself but it was the tears that got to her so in the end she only charged me £38”

For anyone who is interested I used Speed Ferries from Dover to Boulougne..At last a company that doesn't rip you off with the fare £32 Dover Boulougne return (plus £38 if you're a tall vehicle) eat you heart out P&O you've been robbing us for too long Good on you Speed Ferries you deserve to succeed

DATELINE FEZ 19-4-05

Well after weeks driving through France (everywhere closed) and Spain (the biggest building site (and sight!) in Europe we arrived in Morocco. The border post at Cuerta is easy. It could be easier of course if they put the windows in the order that you have to do things, but the walk does you good and they only seem interested in whether you have a CB radio or a pistol!, presumably the expect you to contact them before you shoot them.

The pervading sounds (and smells) are unmistakably Arabic, for a race who pride themselves on their personal cleanliness, their country is the pits when it comes to that’s same attribute. Everywhere there is litter and dirt; the smells are, er, for want of a better word Anal, and not just animal anal, a sewage connoisseur would be in his element.

Anyway we finally entered Fez resisting all temptations to mutter “Juslike that” (any non English people will have no idea what that means nor will anyone who has never heard of Tommy Cooper!) and despite two motorcyclists and one car driver driving alongside and directing us to one campsite, we chose another (well THE other!), mainly because I’d punched in the wrong co-ordinates into the GPS which not only resulted in us booking in at the cheapest site but also pissed off three touts, a good result by anyone’s standards.)

A VISIT TO THE MEDINA

Today didn’t quite turn out as we expected. Oh yes we expected to go to the Medina but not quite by the route we finished up taking. Wandering out of the campsite we were greeted (accosted, waylaid?) by Aziz who kindly invited us to accompany him around the Medina, at a cost! He wanted 120 dirhams (around £9) for half a day. I wanted to know what half a day meant; in my book its 12 hours in his book it was 4. Oh we did have fun discussing this! and in the end he agreed that I was of course correct 12 hours is in fact half a day, but in that case the charge would be 120 dirhams for 4 hours.

I’m not sure I won that argument.

He told us to get on the bus (number 17 if anyone is interested) and get off at the terminus where he would meet us. (He was going to follow us in his own car. No don’t ask why? I did and still don't understand why)).

Now that’s not a problem is it? Say slowly after me,

“Didn’t you ask how you would know when the bus was at the terminus?” and I will reply just as slowly

“Noooooooo it’s obvious! Any one knows that at a terminus there’s lots of buses stopped and everyone get’s off, the driver switches the engine off and leans against the bus smoking a cigarette!”

Now you say

“So was it obvious and did everyone get off?”

You’ll have guessed that the answer is no on both these counts and so we found ourselves still on the bus, happily watching the shops and cafes pass by untill the shops and cafes were left behind to be replaced by countryside, nice countryside I’ll grant you, but certainly not what we expected.

Bear in mind that we had never been to Fez before so when a traffic island came into sight with policemen on it, whp looks familiar, I knew it was either a case of Déjà vu or that we had done a complete circle on the bus and were back where we started from.

Seeing our vehicle in the campsite confirmed it was the latter.

We jumped up and off at the campsite entrance, trying to look as though the circular trip was exactly what we intended all along, and I think we would have gotten away with it, had the bus that we caught going the other way i.e. back to Fez, not been driven by the same driver and conducted by the same conductor.

We ignored their quizzical looks and looked at the fascinating sights that you see when you drive into Fez, wondering if they'd changed since the last time we'd seen them, but they hadn't (it had after all only been 90 minutes!)

This time we got off at the terminus (we asked the conductor!). We waited for Aziz but he didn’t arrive (it was one and half hours later) so we went to the Medina ourselves. You know what we soon realised? You don’t need a guide, or a guidebook! Its not as complicated as people think, we wandered around for 2 hours, again giving the impression that we knew exactly what we were doing and where were going, a view somewhat diluted but the fact that we saw the same stall 5 times and the very nice man treated us like old friends, which by then of course we were.

The meat stalls were very, erm, meaty, having for sale unidentifiable parts of unidentifiable animals. I suggested we get something but Jean demurred (i.e. screamed NO! and threw up in a corner)

I think she was worried it wasn’t fresh. I suggested that we buy a chicken, at least we knew it was fresh its was still walking around..Oh well vegetarian again tonight!.

My unerring sense of direction meant we visited parts of the Medina not seen by a white man since the last crusade and just as Jean was about to lose confidence in my navigational powers ( something in truth she lost about 30 years ago) we found the way back.

I knew that Jean by this time would be feeling hungry (she often mistakes blind panic at being lost in a strange dangerous environment for hunger) so to placate her I bought her French stick, (cheaper than a meal!) and was very pleased that I had because had I done with it what she suggested, the alternative large flat Moroccan bread (especially the ones with nuts on) could have proved painful.

So that’s it we’re back sat the campsite, Aziz is nowhere to be found (the guide is lost!).

So to summarise, I lost at negotiating, I didn’t get off a bus in the right place, I got lost in the Medina, Jean thinks I’m a useless idiot who is too tight to buy her a decent lunch.

All in all its been a pretty normal day

Off tomorrow into the desert where my unerring sense of direction will get us through 5000 square miles of featureless countryside, that is if I can find my car keys which I’ve lost somewhere!

CAN LAND CRUISERS FLY

Route De Jaffe

Well that was an experience!; only time will tell if it was a good one as the immediacy of 10 hours of difficult and at times extremely scary driving fades.

And It started off quite easily. The book said that the Tour de Jaffer was a pleasant mountain drive through the Middle Atlas which you should take your time over and enjoy the view. What it didn’t say was that at times the view as you looked out of the window was downwards and the only thing between you getting a much closer look at that view than you would really want (and which would have certainly been the last view you saw) was the friction of the tyres on rocks or sand as one side of the vehicle got higher and higher whilst the side I was sitting on got closer and closer to the ground!, or more exactly the open air between the vehicle and the ground hundreds of feet below

The width of the path obviously always exceeded the width of the car (that obviously sometimes being as much as an inch). The edge of the road, er ledge was made of small stones that periodically and for no apparent reason jumped into the gorge below

Jean decided that she could contribute more by being outside the car, and she opened the door and climbed out, well in truth up and out, and ran off down the path screaming. Eventually she stopped and turned and from a very safe distance guided me through the tiny gaps by means of a semaphore system known only to her, and which she was amazed that I didn’t immediately understand, but her demented screams which echoed through the valley, and dislodged even more stones, eventually got the message home even to me.

As a thought if there are any tyre technologists reading this who are doing research into the co-efficient of friction between tyres of an overloaded Land cruiser at an angle approaching 45 degrees, and smooth rocks, please do not in your research ignore the influence of the effect of knuckles gripping the steering wheel untill they bleed whilst the owner of the knuckles mutters Holy Shit! Over and over again. Just a thought for you!

So anyway if you’ve forgotten let me remind you of what’s happening, there’s me in a car over a 1000 foot gorge, the car leaning over at 45 degrees, and Jean out in front shouting advice at me. (some of the advice being really helpful like "it was your bloody stupid idea to come this way!!)

It was at this stage that I remembered two things, the first was that that all the books say that you shouldn’t have too much weight high up in a vehicle as it makes it unstable, and ours had a bloody great roof tent on it, and the second thing was that if you lift a vehicle to make the ground clearance better you make it even more unstable. The Land Cruiser had been lifted by 4 inches!.

Neither of the two thoughts gave me comfort!

Suddenly I had a thought

“So that three thoughts then something of a record for you in a day Watts!”

“Are you going to let me finish?”

“Do I have an option?”

I remembered seeing those yachting people leaning far out to stop the yachty thingies falling over and wondered if Jean could be persuaded to do the same, but I immediately dismissed the idea for two reasons. Firstly we were so close to the rock wall she couldn’t lean out and secondly I didn’t want the last words I heard as I plummeted over the edge to be Jeans foul and abusive language.

I considered reversing back but you're talking to a man who cant reverse into parking bay in an empty supermarket car park, so that idea was discarded

Opening my eyes i saw that jean had waved me on, low first, don’t do anything suddenly, the car lumped forward inched even higher then leveled, I closed my eyes and opened them ! all ok!. Forward again the back wheels slipping in the loose gravel, accelerating gently to lift me over a rock, leaning away from the drop (as if that will make any difference!) the car cants over even more, nothing I can do now except ease it forward and hope.

Suddenly a knocking, quiet at first then louder, what the hell is it? I tear my eyes from the path in front and out of the corner of my eye a little brown hand is tapping the window. I look out and down. Oh my God! the drop is closer than I thought and squeezed between the drop and me is a little girl

“Donnez moi du bob-bon, Donnez moi une stylo, Donnez moi quelle qui chose!”

Bloody hell I am not kidding, there she was right at the edge of the cliff between a 3 tonne land cruiser driven by a white haired (the three remaining dark hairs had turned) Englishman and a bloody great drop, she stood hand extended and she wants a sweet, or a pen or something, I admit I was rude and ignored her but I secretly wondered if I did slide whether hitting her would stop me.

I know I am but I was under stress!

After eventually crawling through this part of the “Tour”, which turned out to be the worst, for the rest of the day we picked our way through a 100 miles teetering on the edge of drops; running out of road, fording oudis (streams), and easing our way round blind ends hoping nothing was coming the other way, or, remembering our earlier predicament dropping on our roof?. About half way along we stopped at an Auberge for mint tea and I asked if he had many people through that day

“Non!”

“This week?”

“Non!”

“This month?”

“Non!”

”Why do you have no visitors do you think?”

“Parce-qui le route c’est trop difficile”

Bloody hell now they tell me,

WE HAVE A STOWAWAY

Oh yes nearly forgot!, what you don’t do is ask anyone under the age of 20 for directions, they send you the wrong way, I’m not sure why, I’m not sure they know why, but that what they do.

I’d learnt this lesson to my cost when I’d slowed down near a group of Moroccans to ask the way. I asked the old man who nodded wisely and pointed knowledgeably but obviously had no idea what I was talking about.

One particular youth looked trustworthy, well less untrustworthy than the others, so we asked him and his answer at least appeared to be correct so off we went again, only to come to another cross-roads a couple of hundred yards further on. I stopped and the same youth appeared at the door, and again told me the way, now how the hell did he do that?.

Off we went when suddenly Jean said

“He’s on the back!” and there he was hanging happily onto the back of the vehicle as I swerved and braked he swallowed a mouth full of sand and when I looked in the mirror he was happily waving back at me.

At the next crossroads he simply waved me on and I accepted the inevitable, the inevitable being that we were going where he wanted to go and all we could was hope that where he wanted to go was where we wanted to go.

At one stage he hammered on the car side and shouted something in Arabic, which turned out later to be roughly translated as

“You can see my house from up here!”

Finally we arrived at village and he came to the window wanting “une cadeau!” for helping us but seemed to accept my “Bugger off!” quite philosophically, he then pointed us vaguely in the general direction we needed and ran off.

Finally (and how I will never know) we got out without falling off the mountain, without scratching the vehicle and finally (and I’m sorry I am about to swear!) without shitting ourselves, but all three were damned close.

Ten hours of hard driving to cover one hundred miles to finish up at Iminchile a mountain village that was cold unattractive and so high you had an altitude headache.

So why did you do it you may ask, and the answer from me

“Cos it was there and it was fun!”

And from Jean

“You do know don’t you that you that Jeff is stupid?”

ERG CHEBBI

Erg Chebbi is the remains of an inland sea and throughout the region there are fossils for sale (and in my case as visitors!) which are thrust at you every time you do anything

“Yes it’s a beautiful stone and yes I know it’s cheap but for Gods sake can’t a man have a wee in peace!”

From a distance the orange yellow dunes look like waves shimmering in the scorching Saharan heat and I have to confess looked irresistible to a man with a 4X4 and who is stupid

Remembering the Jaffer gorge I hired a guide to keep us out of trouble. Now at first appearance Hassan is a typical Moroccan, handsome in his dark blue jerbolla.

fluent in many languages and with a broad grin he switched on easily when he spoke to Jean.

But as we got to know him we discovered, to my pleasure and to Jeans disgust, it transpired that he too was stupid, and when he got bored with the easy road he got us stuck in the dunes, twice!.

Now if we had been on our own Jean would have found it impossible not to comment, however it was Hassan who got us stuck so no comment was made Huh! And she thinks I didn’t notice, and another thing, where was he when I was digging hot sand out from under the car, chatting Jean up that’s where he was.

I dug, they watched, after I'd sweated for a while he let some air out of the tyres, and I drove out. Bloody hell how much effort did that take?, but that was the answer let some air out the tyres and you drive out..EASY!!

Another great day.

ITS MY TREE

Its a good rule of thumb that if someone approaches you they want to sell you something, which you wouldn't mind if what they wanted to sell you was an incredible bargain, it never is! the ones who approach you invariably try and rip you off.

As I mentioned earlier when we were approaching Fez we were accompanied by three motorcyclists and a car all trying to direct us to a campsite, well it happened again in Chebbi when we were ambushed by a man on a moped

We ignored him and for a while drove slowly in front of us, untill he realised that behind him was an old Englishman just itching to have a trophy on his bull bars!. We looked for something that we liked but they were all totally devoid of cover or full of French camper vans, so it was with reluctance we agreed to follow eventually our "man on a moped" to his camp site (he'd learnt his lesson by now and drove alongside us!). His "camp site! turned out to be a small square building and a small tree in the middle of sand.

"where's you're camp site then?"

"This is my camp site"

"Aaah..Ok no thanks !"

"You don't like my camp site?" all hurt and injured

"Its not a camp site its a hut and a tree!"

"Yes but it's my tree and you can have it a special rate!"

We left!!

We finally found a campsite that served beer, cold beer, small expensive beer but cold beer!.

The first beer disappeared very quickly, the second almost as quickly. I asked (nay demanded) a third.

"not possible Sir!"

Thinking there was a customer limit I smiled my best "don't piss with me " smile but he said

"no sir the fridge is locked and the bar manager has gone off with the key?"

He was surprised when I asked why, well the look of surprise may have been shock as I was gripping him by the throat by this time

"well" he explained" if the bar manager leaves the fridge unlocked people drink all the beer!"

For once in my life I was speechless, and drowned my sorrows with some water..it had been one of those days

MARRAKECH

Driving north north east from the desert to Marrakech over the High Atlas, the road tarred now, but without the, albeit illusory, comfort of a barrier, the temptation to tear your eyes away from the road and look at the view is easily resisted.

Although when you do stop the contrasts are unique. Dark peaks in the background with the remains of the winter snow, orange and green valleys

fall away before eventually rising to meet the snow capped mountains

Everywhere men selling coloured stones vivid orange and black, but the hassle of stopping and negotiating prevents you stopping.

Since the advent of European travel, no that’s not true, since the advent of travel, people have brought back “souvenirs” which were so irresistible at the time which were bargained for with such intensity, and which stand on shelves forlornly untill eventually they are thrown out by people who have no notion of their importance, usually after the traveler had died.

So that’s Morocco, a land of contrasts an easy introduction to the delights and frustrations of travel in Africa

TWO LAST FERRIES

“So you’re back in Europe what did you think of Morocco?”

“It was nothing like I expected! I thought there would be lots of sand..!”

“Well it is the Sahara!”

“Yes but it also has amazing mountain ranges, the middle and the High Atlas, and the Rif and also rolling countryside not unlike Wiltshire!

“Knowing you’re navigation Watts it probably was!”

“And Marrakech itself was fascinating, especially at night when the central square was filled with food stalls and people, I saw a man dancing and playing the guitar with a chicken on his head!”

“Or alternatively you saw a chicken standing on a man who was playing the guitar!”

“That’s just silly!”

“And a man playing the guitar with a chicken on his head isn’t?”

“It didn’t seem so at the time and the chicken was squawking and it sounded to me like it was saying “I can see my coop from up here!”

And there was this other man who had a pile of boxing gloves who asked me if I wanted to fight him, I'm not sure why, but I didn't stop to find out...

“Look this is getting even more boring than usual, tell me nothing else happened so we can get on with our lives?”

“Apart from the return ferry no!”

“Good!”

“Hang on you’re supposed to say, “What was the problem with the return ferry?””

“I know what I’m supposed to say but after all this time I was hoping to avoid hearing!”

“Ok I wont tell you!”

“Yes you will!”

“Ok I will then!”

“How did I know that!”

“You know that Cuerta is a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco, so when you actually leave mainland Africa you are in fact already in Spain!”

“Ok that makes sense!”

“And when they gave us the timetable it said that the last ferry from Cuerta, the Moroccans call it Sebta, I'll bet you didn’t know that,!”

“Why do they call Cuerta Sebta!”

“Now..there’s a good reason for that!”

“What is it?”

“I didn’t say I knew what the good reason was I only said that there’s a good reason for it!, where was I?, Oh yes the timetable said that the last ferry from Cuerta left at 8.30, and as it was only 6.30 we had lots of time, we even thought about going shopping, but what they didn’t tell us was that the 8.30 was 8.30 Spanish time not 8.30 Moroccan time, which was in fact 6.30 Moroccan time, and that as we had by now we had crossed into Spain, the 8.30 was in fact 6.30, which was the time of the last ferry, still with me?”

“No, lost you ages ago, so what happened?”

“Well obviously we missed the ferry, and there wasn’t another one till the morning, and we had bought a return ticket, and they wouldn’t let us use it on the next ferry that was leaving in 20 minutes!”

“You said the last ferry had gone!”

“Yes, well no, the last ferry of the company we had a ticket for had gone but there was one more last ferry of another company”

“Two last ferries then!”

“Yes. so anyway we decided to buy a one way ticket for he second last ferry even though we had the return portion of the two way ticket for the company with the first last ferry!”

“First last ferry?”

“Yes, so you see the problem!”

“No but it doesn’t matter, for Gods sake you lost me at the 8.30 6.30 part!”

“The result was that we bought a ticket one way from Cuerta (or Sebta if you’re a Moroccan) and the return portion of the ticket for the first company’s ferry whose last ferry left before the second company’s last ferry I still have!, but it could have been worse. Ask me why?”

“Sorry? I was dozing there. Why?”

“Well by buying a return ticket from the first company operating the first last ferry we got a discount of €20 for the return part, so we in fact saved that on the amount we would have paid if we had have not missed the first company’s last ferry and had to spend €100 on the one way ticket for the second company’s last ferry.

No hang on look I'll start again.. Cuerta is in Spain and is…no don’t go come back..Its very rude to walk away in the middle of a conversation…”