A difficult day!
And if I said we had breakfast at 7pm…you might imagine I have mis-typed an “a”! But no…..true…a series of events and empty landscapes colluded to deny us food…until we arrived at our destination!! Amazing how the body copes really…on a diet of water and sugary coffee!!
We knew it would be a long one….so got off to an early start, through the quiet Sunday streets of Rabat. (Seems a bit odd really that most places are closed on Sundays here…not on Fridays, the local ‘sabbath’.)
But we had not gone 1km before we came across a scooter driver, lying motionless on the road, his bent scooter and a dented car adjacent.
1km more….and there was another one! Plenty of folk helping out, so we cycled on by…but it was an alarming reminder of the dangers of Moroccan roads!
We tried to follow a ‘walking route’ for a while: lovely…but!
Cycling on sand is all but impossible, as the heavily-loaded back wheel takes on a life of its own!
40km on and we arrived in Kenitra…Morocco’s tenth largest city!
And disaster struck! A broken chain! The rear cassette on Iain’s bike has been a problem for a while in fact…with two of the gears most used just worn out, meaning the chain slips….and a chain can only take so much slipping before it wears itself out!
We tried to fix it.
But our spare links were just not working!
And of course…it was Sunday!
But thankfully we were in the city when it happened! And a lovely guy from the adjacent apartment block came to our rescue….leading Iain to the nearby bike shop. Closed. So he got on his phone…and found a guy 5km away who was willing to open up and save the situation. What a star he was!
Just hold on to the car…he said…as the last I saw of Iain was him being pulled off down the street gripping on to the back window of an SUV!!
We had thought it would be unlikely that a fix would be possible: there are just no bikes like ours in Morocco…so the contingency was that I would ride on…and Iain would jump in a taxi!
So I rode on alone….with a frisson of anxiety….especially when I came across a group of kids who started throwing stones. Pinging off my spokes. The first really unpleasant encounter really…for most of the time most folk have been great and so welcoming.
Meanwhile…after his terrifying ‘drive’….the bike mechanic did manage to fix the chain…and Iain too was back on the road sooner than we both expected!
And we met up again about 60km down the road!
But then 5km short of our destination…..ping…the chain was in pieces once again!
I offered to pull him…but after his prior ordeal he chose to push the bike! Many offers of help and 2km later he was directed to another bike mechanic….who ‘fixed’ the chain once again!
But by now…it really was sounding like a cot-case….as he gingerly rode to our accommodation!!
Moulay Bousselham…a weird place really…sitting on the coast. Certainly the dirtiest town we have visited. Trying to be a coastal resort…but not quite succeeding. And….no bar!! Alas!!
But there was a shop. A grocery shop. A dingy place as you enter…but descend into the basement and you enter a bright white-tiled and busy liquor store!!! So strange! So I stocked up as I waited for Iain…and we headed off to our beach-side villa!!
Not a bad place for a few cold ones…and some cheese and onion crisps (breakfast!!!) And after the day we had had…I think we deserved them….as we watched the sun go down….
We then wandered into town for food….
