Around the world with The Bear – Part 22

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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We didn’t – quite – make it to the middle of the Sahara. But we did find the world’s biggest mosquitos with the bluntest stings!

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Algeria

Then the ‘route rapide’ of the map turned out to be the ‘road lente’, because it was less than half finished and we got to Tlemcen tired and dirty.

Algeria saw the gang split up with The Bear and Annie setting off on their own

It took ages to find the campground; none of the locals seemed to know it existed, but when we did find it, it was comfortable and free – the only real drawback was a watchdog that delighted in untying people’s shoelaces and chewing through tent ropes.

I collapsed again as soon as the tents were up, still feeling ill, and things started getting heated again. Neil insisted that we split up right there and then. He was right, too – if it isn’t working, don’t drag out the agony. We slept on it, and I think he was a little surprised when I started sorting out the gear in the morning. We divided the equipment and Annie and I, on a rather overloaded Yamaha, set off down into the Sahara. By ourselves.

Feeling very much at peace with the world we buzzed across northern Algeria, with a short stop for coffee, and on into the greening countryside. Spring was in the air, people waved to us and we swept around the tolerably well-surfaced twisting roads in a thoroughly good mood.

Then half the gear we had balanced precariously on the back of the bike fell off – we lost our spare visors, Annie’s shoes and some food, but we weren’t particularly perturbed. Even the obstinacy of the police in Tiaret and Songeur didn’t bother us much.

The tourist office had assured us that these worthies would point out places to camp where there were no official sites, but all they would do was direct us to a hotel. ‘You are rich Europeans, you can afford it.’ Pleas of antipodean motorcycling poverty fell on deaf ears.

Camping ended up being provided by a kind local farmer

But it was all for the best. A farmer just outside Songeur was considerably more helpful; not only was he glad to offer us a place to pitch our tent, but he supplied us with milk and eggs and refused to take any payment. The whole family cheered us as we rode away in the morning. Algeria was turning out to be a much more hospitable place than it had been painted in Morocco.

It was getting noticeably drier now, and as we neared Laghouat we entered the desert proper. Vegetation, which had been scarce for a hundred miles or so, disappeared completely and so did the few flocks of goats and sheep; only the camels remained.

Shops became scarce, too, in the few towns we saw and we found it difficult to buy bread. On this day Annie finally got some in a restaurant in Laghouat.

The Saharan roads weren’t bad, but roadworks meant frequent detours through deep sand which were rather trying. The bike handled them well considering it was now loaded up with all our camping gear, food reserves and 30 litres of fuel and water, but the sand was still a strain.

Ghardaia proved a welcome reprieve from the desert

We were glad to see Ghardaia, our first real oasis, and its jolly but expensive campsite. We even popped up to the Big Hotel and had a drink. Considering how much wine Algeria produces it is damn hard to get any in the country itself.

One French traveler had a copy of the Fabulous Michelin 135 – the map of the Sahara crossing that’s been out of print and totally unobtainable for years – so I borrowed it and made a few notes in my diary; then it was on to El Golea.

The desert scenery, which was flat, without hills or dunes, and with rock-covered sand to the horizon was rapidly becoming boring. The one bit of relief on this leg was an enormous golfball on an even more enormous tee just before El Golea – it turned into a microwave repeater when we got close.

There was more flatness the next day on the way down to Ain Salah. I was a bit worried about the road surface before lunch, but a meal made all the difference and I relaxed in the afternoon. Food is an excellent medicine for the jitters.

The expanse of the Sahara

The truckies down in the desert were painfully polite, and would pull off the narrow tar when they saw us coming. The only problem was that once on the dirt they would then throw up an impenetrable screen of dust, which hid the road, so you never knew if there was another truck behind the first. If there had been we would have been decorating his radiator.

‘Where did you get the flat motorbike motif, Abdul?’ ‘It just came to me one day….’

The bike returned nearly 49mpg (imp) on this leg, the best it did on the entire trip, which was a testament to the flatness of the Sahara. Short of hills it might have been but the road was bumpy with shallow potholes, no more than an inch deep, which I learnt to ignore.

Ain Salah was a strange town; built of mud, or concrete covered with mud, it sat in the desert like a low rock outcrop. Where did they get the water to make mud? Aside from a half dozen lackadaisical cafes, it seemed to lack shops, even the markets selling only oranges and carrots.

Despite its isolation – it must be just about in the exact middle of the desert – Ain Salah is a cosmopolitan place; I guess they get all types coming through. We were warned not to camp in the ‘palmeries’, the palm plantations, because of the mosquitoes. They got us anyway, despite the fact that we sought out a little stand of palms way out in the middle of the sands; Annie returned to the tent badly bitten after answering the call of nature.

We held a council of war the next morning, and decided that enough Sahara was enough. There is only one road down through the desert and you must return the way you came. That would have meant looking at the same flat nothingness for an extra three or four days, and we decided we’d rather spend the time somewhere more exciting.

Then we tried to ride out. The back wheel of the Yamaha simply dropped through the crust and spun uselessly. We unpacked the bike, removing everything we could including the panniers, and then Annie pushed while I revved the bike as hard as I could. Slowly it began to move, and then it almost jumped back up onto the crust and I rode like blazes for the sealed roadway.

The road, seen behind Annie, offered mixed surfaces, with the win a real issue at times

On the way back the little palm-lined campsite in El Golea sheltered us for a while, and we explored this huge oasis and its surroundings – Annie even tried out the bathhouse, but wasn’t impressed. One afternoon, a Land-Rover with two Australian women aboard rolled up. One of them got out and said, ‘Geez, I’d give my soul for a cold beer.’ We directed them to the one ‘good’ hotel in town which had stocks of this foreign substance.

Our return to Ghardaia was uneventful – more sand and rocks – and we had a look around this “second Mecca”, so called because parts of the valley are still closed to non-Muslims.

Then we set off for El Oued and the Tunisian border, and rode straight into the teeth of a sandstorm. By the time we had turned east it had become a crosswind and was throwing the fully laden bike all over the road – on one memorable occasion, even into the deep roadside sand. Coupled with the limited visibility of about 20ft it was too much for me and we turned around.

The most excruciatingly boring day followed as we sat in the tent and listened to the wind howling outside. After the third game of Scrabble and a couple of Mastermind we just sat there and stared at the canvas. But it had settled down the next morning and we made good time across – you guessed it – more flat desert.

But near El Oued the country changed and soon we were riding through, and sometimes over, enormous sand dunes. This was the Great Western Erg, the sandy desert you see in the movies.

By the side of the road, the telegraph wires often disappeared into the tops of dunes, only to reappear on the other side. Communications must be dire. We also saw date palms and herds of camels, and decided that this was much more like it. Why couldn’t the whole Sahara look like this?

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Our troubles were not over with the end of the sandstorm. The bureaucratic calm was about to engulf us on the Tunisian border.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Motorcycls touring the Tichka Pass into the Atlas Mountains and the western margins of the Sahara at Taddert and into Ourzazate, Fes and into Algeria.

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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The Bear’s journey continues in Morocco. Now Marrakesh might have five-year-old extortionists, but you can swap old bras for new blankets.

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Our most spectacular coup came in the campsite. An old bloke was selling warm, fuzzy, striped blankets, and he had one that was really lovely. His starting price was 350 dirhams, and he assured us that this was not his ‘rich tourist price’. After an entire evening of dedicated haggling, he settled for 35 dirhams, a t-shirt, two pairs of socks, a shirt, a tie (no, I don’t know either) and . . . one of Annie’s bras.

He had a little trouble figuring out what this wispy nylon thing was, but he got the idea when we held it onto his chest. Then he was hugely amused. ‘Ah, pour madame!’ he beamed, blushing madly.

In town, we found warm showers, in a hamam (bathhouse) next to the Regent Cinema. The first warm showers for a month, and you could stay under them for as long as you liked. Ah, luxury.

The Mols, Annie and I spent one evening on a cafe balcony overlooking the Djeema el Fna, watching the trading and performing going on below us by the light of pressure lanterns.

When we got back to the bikes, we were overwhelmed by a crowd of little boys, perhaps five years old on average, who, like a locust swarm, proceeded to pick our pockets and climb all over us and the bikes. They disappeared like smoke when a soldier came along. It was just as well that he came by, for how do you defend yourself against five-year-olds?

Taking the mountain pass to Ourzazate

Annie and I took the Yamaha up to the snowy pass leading inland over the Atlas, to see if it was possible to get across to Ourzazate. The road was mostly clear, and where there was snow or ice on the surface the truck drivers had been spreading gravel. So the caravan of bikes moved on over Tichka Pass and down into the western margins of the Sahara.

The Atlas is quite lovely here, with sheer rock flanks and tiny stone villages, all shrouded in snow. We stopped in Taddert for tea and were bombarded with demands that we buy handfuls of the sparkling crystals found around there, but we managed to resist the temptation. Just over the pass there was a bus lying by the side of the road.

It had taken a corner too wide and rolled three times. Although the casualties had been taken away, we could still see the rust-brown stains of blood on the broken window glass, a chilling reminder to ride carefully.

Refuelling and getting some directions

Ourzazate boasted a basic but comfortable campsite – it had running water and a helpful caretaker-cum-guard, who looked after us to the extent of making a fire off palm fronds in a tin and preparing tea for everyone on it. There was also a good market and a much-detested Club Mediterranee. The local people all resented the place because it bought nothing from them.

We pushed on north along the flanks of the Atlas, over narrow and often broken desert roads. This felt like the real desert, with very little vegetation and occasional small herds of camels or goats.

At El Kelaa an old man in a torn djellaba came up to us and started extolling the virtues of sidecars in a mixture of French, German and Arabic (or maybe Berber; it was hard to tell).

The sidecar outfit drew a bit of attention at times…

He had fought in the Second World War on the side of the Germans and they, he told us, had had sidecars with machine guns on them! And the British had come over in aeroplanes, shooting, and the French had shot him in this leg right here. Oh dear, what a lot of fun the war had been… he sounded just like some of the old soldiers back home.

The Ksar es Souk campsite had deep grass and trees but very little water. We had also run out of gas for our stove and small bottles were unobtainable, so we ate sandwiches. Later, someone told us that there was a spring just outside town where there was plenty of water and free camping, as well as palm leaves to make a fire. Ah, well.

On the way back up into the mountains we had almost alpine scenery up to the Col du Zad where we had a snowball fight. After that it looked more like the end of the world. A high plateau, bare and windswept, with snowdrifts huddling against black rock piles, this was one of the grimmest places I’d ever seen after the Anatolian Highlands.

It went on for quite a few miles, the road snow-ploughed clear to one car’s width, and we felt the cold creeping in even under our excellent Britax Alaskan suits. The plateau ended very abruptly and the road dropped through pine forests to the red tile roofs of the very French resort town of Ifrane.

The real desert… complete with camels

A few miles later, over good roads, we were in Fes, the new part of which looked very French too. The old town was straight out of the Dark Ages, with its narrow, convoluted, noisy passageways. We actually employed a guide – the first time I’d ever done that – and it was just as well, even though he was more interested in taking us to his friend’s shops than showing us the town.

We would never have found our way out alone. The next day was my birthday, and I was presented with a cake. Then sixteen buses loaded with 600 Danish schoolchildren invaded the camp. They came in the morning and left in the evening without ever looking at the town. A mystery.

We took advantage of the ridiculously low postage charges to send our souvenirs home and had the parcel wrapped very professionally by the semi-official parcel wrapper at the post office. He had a folder full of letters of appreciation from past customers, which he insisted we peruse while he wrapped.

After arranging to meet us again in Athens, the Mols took their leave to return to England and we turned towards the Algerian border. After an oil and filter change by the side of the road we rode past Taza, pretty on its hilltop, up to a famous cave in the mountains.

The steps leading down were in woeful condition and when, months later in London, I saw a photo I’d taken of it, it revealed ‘Bon courage’ scribbled on the wall near the bottom. It had been too dark to see this cheerful note while we were down there. We camped in the showground at Taza, watched by a cute and inquisitive donkey which then tried to steal our food and threatened to bite when we tried to chase it off.

The desolate but picturesque landscape

There was no problem about obtaining Algerian visas at Oujda, near the border, except that we had arrived on one of the innumerable Muslim holidays. So it was off to the border and the only campsite, to wait for three days and, in the cafe, watch the worst TV programs we’d ever been subjected to. Egyptian soap operas seem to have the lowest budgets, for sets anyway, of any shows I’ve ever seen. Every time someone closed a door the walls shook.

I had a nasty bout of ‘flu, and lay in the tent drugged to the eyeballs while tempers again deteriorated around me. I didn’t help by snapping at anyone who came near me. In the end I got fed up with it all and suggested we split up as soon as we were out of the desert.

When the consulate finally reopened, one of the questions on the visa application form was ‘Will you be sufficient during your stay in Algeria?’ The bloke opposite me, filling out his own form, grinned and said, ‘I guess the only answer to that is “Quite”,’ so that’s what we both put down. Insurance was much cheaper than it had been at the Moroccan border and we were processed quite quickly.

A dilapidated Honda spotted along the journey

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Algeria is terrific – as long as you like bread, tinned sardines and oranges… read all about it next week.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 20

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Last time The Bear travelled from Lisbon into Meknes, arriving in Morroco. And there are worse ways of spending a winter than lazing about the beach in Morocco – except that hot showers are so rare!

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Morocco

Meknes has a most attractive campsite, with lush grass, gum trees, flower beds and stands of banana plants, all surrounded by the walls of the old sultan’s palace.

The German girl with the 400/4 whom we’d met in France was here; she had teamed up with a chap on an XS750 which was currently a 500 twin. One cylinder stubbornly refused to fire. The army kept us awake that night with band and choir practice until the early hours. They were pretty good, though.

The Meknes medina, or old town, isn’t particularly exciting, but there’s a good, versatile bazaar and most of the fruit and vegetables had marked prices. After a while that comes as a relief, trust me. We indulged in a glass of the delicious mint tea that was to become our standard beverage in Morocco, and luckily didn’t catch anything unpleasant from the grubby hole-in-the-wall tea house.

Just after our return to camp it snowed. The guards were delighted and told us that this was their first snow for 15 years. A lot of good that was to us, camped out in it! We’d had enough of the cold, and headed for the coast and then south.

Marked prices at the markets were a welcome reprieve

Rabat was a very European and not particularly interesting sort of city, and at Casablanca we struck the only bit of motorway in the country. Everyone really liked it – you could see that by the traffic, which consisted of everything from pedestrians through buggies to loaded camels, ambling every which way. There was very little motorised traffic, which was just as well as it would probably have disturbed the people living under the bridges. We didn’t stop in at Rick’s for a drink.

After a night in a nasty campsite at Mohammedia, which seemed to be inhabited solely by rapacious cats – one slept in my helmet and one chewed its way into most of our dried soups – we pushed on to Essaouira. As we were rolling south through the rather dull countryside, I plotted a way in which I could attend my own wake.

I would organize it when I got back to Australia… amazing what idle minds will turn to. The campground was pleasant and run by a bloke who looked like an ASIO (Australian Security and Intelligence Organization) spook in his shades and jungle jacket.

Farther south it became noticeably drier, and the goats had to climb trees to get at edible bits of greenery. We stopped to photograph some of them and became embroiled in an elaborate arrangement as to how much to pay which of the herd boys who clustered around for the right to take photos of the goats. ‘Whose goats are those?’ – ‘Yes, yes!’ – ‘No, whose goats are those?’—’Yes, one dirham, yes!’

There is an abrupt rocky drop to sea level along this road that reminded me of Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain. We stopped to chat with a group of surfies, who reported some tent slashing and stealing in their impromptu beach camp, but who were much more interested in how the swell was farther north. Disappointing, we told them. Flat.

Camping conditions proved varied, but weather improved

We stayed at the tourist campsite in Agadir, mostly because it had hot showers, and spent Christmas Day sitting around the pool, drinking beer and wondering what the poor people were doing. Agadir is a tourist resort like any other, with the same hotels and conducted tours, and didn’t hold much for us. Except those hot showers.

We went south to the edge of the desert at Tiznit and then out along the dirt road ‘piste’ to Sidi Moussa. Along this stretch there was a bridge with a prominent ‘detour’ sign pointing down into the sandy river bed. Being good law-abiding citizens, we toiled through the deep sand with the bikes only to see a loaded truck go past on the bridge. Such is life.

Sidi Moussa turned out to be a grimy, derelict place with one campsite covered in rocks and another deep in sand, all inhabited by dubious-looking Europeans drawing on funny cigarettes.

As the war had closed all the roads, we could go no farther south, so it was unanimously decided to go back and spend some time in Essaouira. On the way, we were pulled over by police, who just wanted to have a look at the bikes.

One of them allowed that he wouldn’t mind an XS 1100 himself, but his BMW was so simple to repair that it was more sensible in Morocco. His friend looked familiar, and I soon realised that he could have been a rather slimmer Idi Amin. Lo! How the mighty are fallen….

The XS 1100 also developed some starting issues, having been used as a battery pack for lights while camping

Rolling into the Essaouira campsite, we were just behind another Australian couple, Michel and Cathy Mol, aboard a BMW R100S. They camped with us and we all employed ourselves lazing about in the sun. They joined us for the New Year’s Eve fire on the beach, too, and Cathy absorbed a little too much of the local rough red wine.

Being a gentleman, I won’t go into details, but Michel had his hands full for a while. We had had to ride all the way down to Agadir to buy the wine, so it was a bit of a waste really….

Time passed quickly, as it often does when you’re doing nothing, and we spent a lot of time just wandering around the harbour and fortifications of the town, which had once been a Portuguese trading post and had the cannons to prove it. The gates to the medina were still defended by bulky bronze mortars, now serving as never-emptied rubbish bins.

Freshly grilled sardines straight off the fishing boats

Freshly grilled sardines, straight from the boats, were an attraction on the wharf. One group of campers was permanently stoned, and it took them four hours to collect their meagre belongings when they left. They then wandered vaguely off in different directions. I guess they got a lift, because we didn’t see them again.

The campsite, ‘defended’ by seven dogs augmented by four pups, became a home from home to us. One evening, a little fat-tyred 125 Suzuki fun bike rolled in. The occupants eyed the XS 1100, R100S and GS 750 outfit parked near our tents and the female pillion, whose motorcycle clothing was a ragged-looking fur coat, asked diffidently, ‘Do any of you know anything about motorbikes?’ We allowed that we might, just a little, and asked what was wrong.

Looking out over the water in Morocco

It turned out that the tiny bike would only rev out to twenty-two hundred, and then died. My first suspicion was the sparkplug, because I’d had similar problems with my XL. But it wasn’t that, as we found out when we unbolted the carburettor float bowl.

This was filled with what looked like fat white worms. The rider then remembered that he’d had a petrol leak from the lip of the bowl, and put sealing compound on it and bolted it back in place. He must have used a whole tube, because the stuff had squeezed out and set in the bowl, forming the worms and stopping the float from moving. The bike had been like this for a thousand miles, they told us.

I hope they made it home to Switzerland.

Annie got an abscess on a tooth and had to go to the local dentist. Although she claimed afterwards that he had been quite good, her heartrending screams under treatment suggested differently. The chap was so concerned about hurting her that he waived most of his fee. There’s a tip there…

The Yamaha’s battery ran flat, too. Mind you, we had been tapping it for our fluorescent camping light for a couple of weeks without running the engine – not entirely recommended. I was grateful for the accessory kickstarter, because push starting didn’t work and this way we could run some improvised jump leads from the BMW while I kicked – the leads wouldn’t carry enough current by themselves to use the electric starter. They nearly melted as it was.

A boat under construction, with fishing a major activity in the region

The fine weather broke towards the middle of January and we moved on to Marrakesh and more blue skies. The Mols came with us, and it felt like a bike club run with the three machines. Camp was made in the larger and cheaper of the two rocky Marrakesh sites and although hygiene left something to be desired, it was a relaxed sort of place and we settled in well.

Marrakesh was like something out of the Thousand and One Nights. The old main square, the Djeema el Fna, was filled with conjurers, fire-eaters, snake charmers, dentists, acrobats, musicians and traders at all hours of the day.

The intricate passageways of the souks, the markets, held fascinating workshops and good bargains – if you haggled carefully. We left the bikes outside in the care of the human parking meters, attendants with large brass plaques which they wore proudly and ostentatiously. You had to bargain with them, too, over the parking fees, but they were conscientious.

Bargaining was a must, with amazing markets

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It might have been winter, but the mountains with their wonderful roads called us. So off we went…

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 19

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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We last left The Bear in Portugal in Part 18, he now continues on towards Meknes in Part 19. Turns out crossing to Africa is easy. Dealing with the traffic can be a little harder.

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We toured the old town, the Alfama, on the outfit and had trouble fitting through some of the narrow, steep streets. There are excellent, cheap restaurants here, specialising once again in seafood, and we had marinated fried tuna and grilled sardines.

The people gave us good-natured advice – don’t park there, traffic comes around the corner so fast! There was so much gesticulating that I understood Portuguese quite easily.

Trams run through the alleyways, and on blind corners there are men with table tennis bats – one side red, the other green. When a tram comes along, they show you the red side of the bat and you stop. Portuguese policemen are rather more fortunate than the Spaniards and get BMWs on which to ride around.

Local drink was easy to find with a local pear brandy sampled on one occasion, with plenty of history behind what was available

It was Millie’s birthday, and we bought her a cake, which was much appreciated. We also found a laundromat and did some long-overdue washing, and I invested in a litre of the cheap and delicious local pear brandy.

Going south again, we took the coast road through Simbales. It must have been a sleepy fishing village not too long ago, but has been caught up in the tourist trade now. A castle overlooks the town, looking suspiciously like a dozen other castles we’d seen in this country.

I have a theory that they’re mass-produced in cardboard and erected anywhere there are tourists, for atmosphere. Possibly they soak them in the kind of resin the East Germans were using for the Trabant cars, to make them rain-resistant.

Over lunch we were serenaded by a great flock of goats with bells around their necks. Shortly afterwards, I pulled out to overtake a truck and suddenly found a car coming the other way. I opened the throttle of the XS a little too far and we went past the truck on the back wheel. A rather unexpected bonus, considering the load we were carrying…

Our map showed a bridge across the river mouth here, but that turned out to be a misprint and we had to brave the Setubal one-way system again. Then we did something very naughty—an oil change by the side of the road, running the waste oil into a pit and covering it up. Considering that everyone else does the same thing, without covering it up, we didn’t feel as guilty as we might have.

Castles were suspiciously similar in this region of the world, with maps often unreliable

In the Sines campsite we watched the Magic Roundabout on TV, dubbed into Portuguese; it didn’t seem to lose anything in the translation, and Zebedee was as cute as ever.

A German engineer we met suggested we take the mountain road rather than the coastal highway down to the Algarve. We were glad we’d followed his advice when we found a well surfaced, twisting road lined with enormous gum trees and pine forests. We did have one heart-stopper along here, however.

I had just paid at a service station when I turned around and saw the Yamaha wreathed in smoke. By the time I was half-way to the sidecar for the fire extinguisher, I realised that it was just steam. The attendant had washed some spilt petrol off the tank and the water had vaporized on the hot engine. Quite a relief.

We had organised the catering so that one couple bought the food and cooked for a week and then handed over to the others. When Neil and Millie handed over to us down on the coast, they had overspent badly and we had another argument.

The goodwill of Biarritz was wearing thin. Then Millie was cheated of £14 of the kitty, changing money at the border, and didn’t notice until we’d crossed to Spain on the rickety old ferry. It wore even thinner. Regrettably, things that don’t really seem to matter very much in normal life can take on great importance in the hothouse conditions of a long tour.

Our map showed a motorway from the border to Seville, but this turned out to exist only on paper, so we took longer to cover this stretch than anticipated. By the time we got onto the motorway to Cadiz, we were riding into the setting sun; and the last stage down to Algeciras was done in the dark. But it was a remarkably good road; we stopped for a roadside dinner with coffee and arrived at the campsite in good shape.

Neil and Millie took the XS to Granada to pick up the mail and Annie and I did some shopping for Africa, mostly packet soups and a bit of booze. We also chatted to a chopper-riding Swede in the campsite who had just returned from Morocco. He made it sound just like every other Muslim country I’d been to.

We were at the wharf quite early the next day to catch the ferry, and Annie went off to mail some letters while we were waiting. Neil and Millie decided to get the outfit on board to make sure it was out of harm’s way, and disappeared down the dock. Then, ten minutes before time, our ferry cast off and sailed! Annie returned and we stood watching our companions disappearing around the mole. Or so we thought.

Just then, an elderly French chap I’d been talking with earlier came over and asked us if we weren’t going to Ceuta. Of course we were, but – regardez, la bateau marche. Oh, non, he said. The Ceuta boat was farther down the wharf, but we’d better get there toute suit or it would go without us…

We made it onto the Virgin of Africa – the right ship!

Annie and I were on the bike, down the other end of the wharf and aboard the good ship Virgin of Africa in a time that would have made Graeme Crosby proud. I always did have a habit of jumping to conclusions.

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Morocco

Going from Spain to to Ceuta is pretty much just like crossing the English Channel; even the ferries are similar—the main differences are that you get a view of the Rock of Gibraltar on this one, the crossing only takes two hours and you stay in the same country.

Ceuta is rather like a dusty, grubby Singapore with all the atmosphere of excitement that free ports get. The mailing slot in the post office is the mouth of an enormous brass lion’s head, which impressed me no end. The story goes that if you tell a lie while your hand is in the lion’s mouth, it will close and crush it. Not true. Heh.

The border was slow, but fairly relaxed. We were apprehensive, having heard horror stories, but the only horrible thing that happened was that we had to lay out a fortune for insurance. Customs seemed very keen on guns and radio transmitters, but we assured them the bikes held neither and they let us go.

We were stopped for papers twice before reaching our camp at Martil, but weren’t delayed much. Over dinner we discussed the financial situation, for once without acrimony, and Annie took over the management of our funds from Millie. The Martil campground was quite reasonable, with a reassuring wall and trees.

The amenities block, however, had a broken tank on the roof, which led to cascades of water pouring down the walls and over the door. It was rather like walking under a waterfall into a river cave to brush your teeth.

Tetouan, which we reached the next day, is the main tourist trap in the north and catches all the day-trippers from Spain. We parked in the main square while Annie went to change some money, and were handed all the usual lines: ‘I am from the tourist office. You are very fortunate, today there is the annual market, just one day….’ We had been told about this line, and assured that the market was not only on every day of the year, it also had prices especially inflated for the suckers.

‘You want some dope? My father grows best quality….’ I get rid of these guys by quoting, with a straight face, a Reader’s Digest story I once read on the horrors of ‘the weed’. We had a bit of fun there in the square.

A closer look at some of the hospitality along the way

The road south through the Rif is lovely, with steep, scrubby hillsides reaching up to snowy peaks on both sides as it winds up to the plateau. After a stop to buy lunch at Chechaouen, a pretty little hill village, we pushed on towards Meknes – pushed on rather carefully, too, as the road was lined with some unpleasant car wrecks and we weren’t keen to add a bike.

The light was failing when we reached Meknes, and the politeness of a Moroccan bus driver nearly killed Annie and me. A lot of vehicles have a small green courtesy light affixed to the back, which they flash when the road ahead is clear. I took this bloke’s word – or rather light – for it, but he was wrong. I made it back into the line of traffic with inches to spare.

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We bring the first snow for 15 years to Meknes, next instalment. Who says motorcyclists can’t affect the weather?

Source: MCNews.com.au

Motorcycle Touring & Travel
Spain and Portugal

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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We last left The Bear picnicking in Biarritz, having replaced the rear wheel on the XS with a cast option, and setling the differences in their travelling troup, at least for now… In this excerpt they continue into Spain and on to Lisbon.

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Spain

Did you know that Sangria is alcoholic? We found out when we had a beach party near Barcelona. We crossed into Spain with minimal formalities and followed an awful, pockmarked road to San Sebastian.

Road conditions varied greatly during the ride through Spain into Portugal

We stuck it out for long enough to buy a gas stove with a little bottle and then took to the hills. While the road didn’t improve, the air at least became transparent again. The pollution was grim.

We rode through some lovely autumn hill country to Pamplona, which was all rather spoilt by the amount of waste plastic hanging from riverside trees. There were fun and games in Pamplona, with our blue Australian passports acting like the proverbial red rag to a bull.

The Bear visits Spain and Lisbon

Every time we showed them at any of the pensions, they were suddenly and mysteriously full. It was later explained to us that Australians have a bad name for their behavior during the running of the bulls. The boys must really have misbehaved to upset the Spaniards that badly!

We had to find somewhere to stay, because the campsites were all closed for the season and it was getting late. Finally someone relented, tricked only a little bit by being shown Neil’s British passport first. But Neil and I had to share one room and the girls another, under the watchful eye of a shawl-draped crone. It appears there’s this law…

The bikes stayed out in the street, chained to a lamp post and to each other, with their alarms on. Dire warnings of bike theft had made us paranoid. An old gentleman told us that we were ‘loco’ to leave them there, but he couldn’t offer an alternative.

The Bear visits Spain and Lisbon

We went to do the bars and had a great evening. There was no need to go to a restaurant – the bars all served tapas, delicious snacks such as liver with onions, pork and pimentos and grilled sardines, all of which we washed down with glasses of the cheap vino tinto. We were hardly incognito, however. Wherever we went in town, we were greeted with cries of ‘Inglese moto!’

The bikes were still there the next morning. They weren’t entirely untouched—someone had carefully peeled most of the stickers off them.

Breakfast was by the side of the road as we had a long way to go that day. It consisted of jam on fresh bread bought from a van and coffee heated on our new gas stove. A great improvement over the petrol stove – it took less than half as long.

A quick stop to admire the countryside

It was a long grind for the rest of the day, 12 hours down to the coast at Vinaroz, near Barcelona. The Ebro valley is flat and agricultural and there was a great deal of mist, which hid anything that might have been worth seeing. Just before the coast, up in some hills and in the dark, we passed Morello and were spooked by the chill bulk of the castle hulking over the town. Had there been a lighted tower window, I could well have imagined a latter-day vampire sitting down to… err… breakfast.

Castel Camping offered another castle, albeit a fake one built out of concrete blocks, and iron-hard ground. The hard ground turned out to be a common feature in Spain. Take heavy-duty pegs if you go. The grounds were deserted when we arrived, but the owners, a German couple, returned from a night at the movies just as we were setting up. They were friendly, turned on the hot water for us, and we all went to bed – very tired.

A little maintenance work the next day was interrupted by the arrival of a German tour bus. Its occupants spent the day in the site restaurant, listening to salesmen who were demonstrating kitchen gadgets. I couldn’t contain my curiosity, and during their lunch break I asked what was going on. It appeared that they got a free bus from (and back to) Germany in exchange for sitting down and listening to the sales pitch. Funny way to spend your holidays.

The coast south to Valencia was dreary and dirty. Every lay-by seems to be used as a rubbish dump, the rivers are open sewers and it’s dull country. Valencia does have a good market and that, combined with the ridiculously cheap booze, reconciled me to the place.

Camps proved a mixed bag, from expensive and poor to great and cheap

Our campsite was south of the city and surrounded by blocks of ‘holiday flats’. We had a little potato bake on the beach and consumed a few litres of Sangria, but we felt as though we were being watched by the brooding, empty-eyed concrete giants all around us.

Dreadful hangovers in the morning made packing a bit of a chore. Then, back on the road, both Neil and I kept imagining there was something wrong with the bikes – it was just Sangria withdrawal symptoms. But we certainly didn’t imagine the bottle that burst on the pavement near us when we stopped to cash a cheque.

I guess someone in the apartment block behind us didn’t like bikes; they certainly had a very graphic way of showing it. We moved. The Costa del Fish ‘n’ Chips rolled past, looking grimmer than a suburb of Calcutta, and we camped in an excruciatingly expensive site near Alicante. Spanish campsites do not offer off season rates like the French ones, and they’re out to squeeze every peseta they can out of you. Nasty places.

It did become interesting, and more pleasant, after we had crossed the Sierra Nevada to Granada. A cosy campsite made up for the fact that we’d arrived on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and everything was closed.

The Alhambra was worth looking at, although it can hardly compete with some of the great buildings in the same style in India or Pakistan. The Red Fort at Delhi, for instance, is both more intricate and grandiose.

Reaching Granada marked an improvement

Unlike Delhi, Granada does however, boast good pastry shops, which we explored at leisure. Annie had what we assumed was an allergy reaction and her hands became itchy and covered in a rash. Antihistamine cream and tablets helped, but she had a great deal of difficulty sleeping. I think it had something to do with the amount of chlorine in the water.

On the way to Seville we passed quite a number of bike cops in pairs on their pitiful Sanglas 500s. A couple of them found it difficult to disguise their envy of the Yamaha when we pulled up, but tried to act nonchalant.

Coming into Seville was a little like coming home. There are large stands of gum trees and casuarinas, both natives of Australia, but while the orange trees that line the streets look fine from a distance, the polluted air has done its work and close up the fruit is grey, the leaves crippled. There was the most glorious cathedral, though, with buttress upon buttress reaching out from the nave until it all looked like a cross between an enormous centipede and an equally huge spider.

The Bear visits Spain and Lisbon

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Portugal

The Portuguese border was next, through mountain ranges hung with mist and covered in cork oaks. The road was awful, like most Spanish roads, but offered pretty surroundings for a change. The undergrowth was inhabited by troops of pigs snuffling around for fallen acorns. Portuguese Customs checked our papers quite thoroughly, but gave us no trouble.

The road just over the border was even worse than the ones in Spain, and for a while I held an image in my mind of us limping into Lisbon with totally ruined shock absorbers. But lo! Within a mile or so the surface became quite reasonable and stayed that way through most of the country.

We spent that night in the municipal campsite at Beja, a green and cheerful place that cost us a tenth of what the last site in Spain had. Things were looking up.

Reaching Portugal introduced rolling hills

I took us on a tour of rural Portugal the next day when I confused the road signs, but no one minded. The road went through forests with the occasional village squatting in its fields. Our first major town held a surprise.

This was Setubal, which has the most diabolical one-way system known to man. It is necessary to traverse just about every street in town before emerging at the other side. I hit a pothole, too, that I thought was going to swallow the bike whole.

From the south, Lisbon is approached by a long, high suspension bridge. Neil, who was riding the XS, noticed that the bridge had no guard rail, and the gusty wind kept blowing him over to the side, and he didn’t enjoy that at all.

Seafood proved a strong point in Lisbon

You’d never have any trouble finding the campsite in Lisbon. It’s so well signposted that you’d think the city was an adjunct to the site rather than the other way around.

A pleasure to not have to search for ages, just for a change. Lisbon itself turned out to be a homely sort of place, with good and pleasant bars. In the bars you can buy plates of seafood, including whole crabs.

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Are the castles in Portugal imported from East Germany? Does Portugal have the world’s biggest gum trees? Find out next week.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 17

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Last time we left The Bear and Annie after they arrived in Marseilles in France with their XS1100 along with fellow Aussies Neil and Millie, and now they explore some more and head to Biarritz.

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There were no laptops back in the day, and I discovered that even portable typewriters are heavy. Too heavy for spoked Suzuki wheels at least….

A major sort-out followed and we sent three large, heavy parcels back home. My typewriter went – sadly missed; I hate writing longhand.

Then we loaded most of the remaining heavy gear aboard the XS which hardly seemed to feel the difference. We were all breathing more easily as we buzzed off along the coast, over the classy motorway bridge at Martigues and on to Arles for an excellent lunch.

It is difficult to imagine how such flat countryside can be so beautiful, but the Camargue, with its waterways, stands of golden reeds and herds of white horses, looked lovely. With the mistral at our backs, we drifted through the meadows and occasional stands of umbrella pine down to Les Saintes Maries with its little chapel that attracts thousands of Gypsy pilgrims every year.

The town centre still felt quite medieval with its winding alleys and little shops, but a huge modern holiday development all around rather spoils it.

In the sandy campsite we did a little more maintenance work on the bikes and I couldn’t understand why it was impossible to get the rear brake disc of the XS back between the calipers after I had replaced the pads. Lots of headscratching later, it occurred to me that I’d refilled the brake fluid reservoir as well. Sure enough, I’d put in too much fluid. The spokes on the GS seemed to be holding. We tapped them every day now.

Morning in Toulouse. The fog was icy and thick, and never lifted.

There was still aggravation in our little party as personalities clashed, and Annie and I took the opportunity to spend a couple of evenings by ourselves in a comfortable bar by the harbour, drinking kir and gazing into the fire. The bar mascot, a dachshund, kept us company. He had a very simple way of indicating that the fire was getting too low—he would crawl right up into the brick fireplace and look out mournfully.

We moved camp after some days of this rather heavily touristed environment; our new home was ‘La Refuge’, a tiny place in the town of Vias. On the way, Neil once more puzzled the locals by asking where the war was when he meant the railway station. His rather good French always seemed to fail him when he had to differentiate between ‘gare’ and ‘guerre’.

We also met a young German woman on a Honda 400/4, who calmly informed us that she was going down to The Gambia to sell her bike. Carrying very little gear, she had been freezing in her leathers for the last three days. We gave her some lunch and wished her luck.

A bit of a wander along one of the canal towpaths in France.

Vias proved to be exactly what we needed – it was just a small wine and tourist village in the off season. With friendly people and the ‘Cafe de France’, where we became such good customers that the patron started buying us drinks, the place was cosy. If truth be known the free drinks were a result of his being unable to tell the difference between Australia and New Zealand. Every time we walked in he would burst into a big grin and say admiringly, “Ah, les All Blacks!”

We had a couple of barbecues on the beach and generally took it easy. Our bail bond insurance for Spain didn’t start for another eight days. I also had new tyres, Metzelers, fitted to the XS at the Honda shop in Beziers.

The rear wheel nearly reduced their mechanics to tears, and it took them three times as long as they’d quoted to replace the tyre. They swore they would never touch another XS 1100. I still don’t know why; I’ve replaced a rear tyre on that bike myself and it gave me very little trouble.

Feeling more relaxed, we continued to Biarritz via Toulouse. A sunny morning and pleasant lunch at the very beautiful mediaeval town of Carcassonne were followed by a freezing, impenetrable fog just outside Toulouse. With our heated handlebar grips, electric GloGloves and Motomod Alaskan suits we weren’t exactly cold—but we still couldn’t see. A campsite loomed out of the fog just in time.

We replaced a couple of dozen spokes by the side of the road.

Our flysheets were frozen stiff the next morning, and we had to thaw them out in the toilet block before we could fold them. The fog was still just as dense as the night before. We crept through Toulouse, visibility a few metres. To this day I have no idea what the place looks like.

An hour later, the fog lifted and we had the sunniest day of the trip so far. Our run that day through the hills of Gascony was nothing short of idyllic. This was the home of cassoulet, Armagnac and foie gras, substantial chalets peering out of the little copses, and the snowy slopes of the Pyrenees blinking away on the horizon.

I kept seeing signs all day advertising ‘Chiens Bergers Allemandes’ and my mind kept twisting the translation to German Dogburgers, possibly competition for the American fast food chains. They were only selling German Shepherds, of course.

In a little village just before our camp at St Sever, we passed a small church called Notre Dame du Rugby. Now that’s taking sports to heart.

St Sever is on the edge of the Gironde and lies peacefully in a wooded valley. Our petrol stove was acting up, giving only a low flame when it would burn at all. We consoled ourselves with a few drinks in the bar/tobacconist/newsagents/shop in the village. Even this out-of-the-way place had an electronic amusement machine, featuring little clowns breaking balloons. I was interested to see that the last ‘human’ score had been twenty, while the clowns by themselves often racked up 30-35. Clever little electronic clowns….

But France in autumn is certainly not always cold and wet.

It was cold again that night, but not unpleasant, and the next day we were nearly at Biarritz when the back wheel of the GS collapsed once more. Oh dear.

We located a Suzuki shop in Bayonne, but they claimed they couldn’t help until the next day. When we pointed out that this meant our sleeping by the side of the road, they gave us the name of another shop in Biarritz. After much pleading, the chap there agreed to rebuild the wheel for us, but he didn’t think there were any heavier spokes available. We had to face facts. There was little point in laying out more money when the spokes would only break again. We had to buy a cast wheel.

After an elaborate series of phone calls, our friend in the bike shop arranged for the other shop to stay open for us and to accept traveller’s cheques. Neil raced back to Bayonne, bought the wheel, raced back to Biarritz, had it fitted with our wheel bearings, tyre and tube; and we put the wheel back on the bike.

Hmm, this wheel appears to have disintegrated…

By now it was nearly 10 pm, and we had a great deal of trouble finding an open campground. Tempers flared. When we did find a site, we agreed that we must talk our frictions out.

Annie and I spent a relaxing day in Biarritz, where we picked up mail and had a picnic out on the beachfront rocks. Then we all got together for our bit of group therapy in one of the local bars. It emerged that Annie and I didn’t really think that Millie could cope with this kind of travelling, and that she found me too bossy and overbearing.

We thought she complained and niggled too much; she thought we didn’t listen to her enough. We adjourned after a bit of healthy self-criticism, and things did improve quite noticeably for a while.

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Spain is next, and we discovered that Australian passports can be less than useless there.

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 16

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

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Travelling two-up on an XL250 is okay for short distances, but for a proper trip you need a Yamaha XS1100! In Part 16, The Bear sets off from London once again, heading for France with Annie.

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France

Scroll forward six or eight months. Annie and I had now enjoyed one winter in Britain, and didn’t want to face another. So the plans were made – we would go to North Africa for the cold months. Yamaha Germany very kindly offered us an XS1100 on loan, and we snapped it up.  It was taken down to Vetter Industries and fitted with a Windjammer fairing as well as panniers and a top box, turning it into the closest thing to a one-bike invasion force I had ever seen.

Neil and Millie, another Australian couple, decided to join us on their Suzuki GS750. This was fitted with a sports sidecar by Squire and the roomy luggage from Craven; Boyers also fitted their electronic ignition.

Wiring in the heated grips and the hot gloves for Mrs Bear in Telegraph Hill.

None of us had camping gear for more than the odd long weekend, so we spent a morning with the folk at Binleys Camping Supplies in Kettering and staggered out fully equipped. We were also sponsored by Everoak Helmets, by Derriboots, Nivea and by Duckham’s Oils. Thanks, all, once again.

It had taken a fair bit of work to get sponsorship, but a well-produced proposal and a carefully thought out set of benefits for the sponsors (mentions like this one), swung the odds in our favour, and we got just about everything we asked for. Mind you, the Yamaha, its fairing and luggage, and the Suzuki’s sidecar of course had to be given back after the trip.

At the beginning of November, badly overloaded and not really fully prepared, we rolled aboard the ferry to France. It was dark when we reached Le Havre, but we had little trouble finding the campground. Not that it did us much good for, just four days earlier, the site had closed for the season.

An experimental first ride all the way to our favourite London pub, Dingwall’s.

We set up camp in the park across the road, dined on sandwiches we’d made from the remaining contents of our refrigerator before leaving London, and slept very well. I always sleep better when it’s free….

The road signs and our maps were rather confusing in the morning, so although we had intended to follow the by-roads to Paris we ended up on the autoroute. It was Sunday and the road was full of pretty bikes, all sharp and clean, and we felt rather out of place lumbering along on our overloaded camels.

The Bois de Boulogne campsite extended its usual welcome, with deep mud and inoperative showers. It’s not all bad, really. There are a lot of trees and it’s quite close to the centre of the city. I do wish they’d fix those showers. About half of them just swallow your token, burp and give you nothing in return.

Most of the others give you your few minutes of hot water, but there’s always one that’s stuck ‘on’ and therefore free. The procedure, therefore, is never to go into an unoccupied cubicle. Wait until somebody comes out of one and ask ‘C’est marche?’ before committing your token. If one shower has a queue in front of it, that’s the free one. Wait for that.

This time it’s for real – here we are ready to head off on a seven month adventure.

If all the above sounds like too much trouble, imagine the frustration of getting undressed, putting your token in the slot without being rewarded with hot water, getting dressed, plodding over to the office to complain and get another token, getting undressed, putting your token… In 1979 the showers had been like that for at least eleven years, to my knowledge.

It rained during the night, and the top of the Lowrider tent Neil and Millie were using filled up with water, but surprisingly little seeped through. Neil and I spent the next day working on the bikes, finishing all the little things we should have done back in London.

Some people from a minibus camped next door wandered over and gave us the wonderful news that they’d just come back from Morocco and it had rained all the time.

After dinner, I found reassurance in a sip of my duty-free Glenfiddich and we once again donned our Damart gear to go to bed. It was cold enough to penetrate our down sleeping bags. A few days in Paris were fun, but the rain refused to let up and we pushed on towards the Mediterranean.

One of the alterations we had made to the GS was fitting it with GS1000 air shocks. As we rolled out of Paris, these proved to be underinflated, and as we could not work out how to get more air into them without losing oil, we changed back to the old units.

Neil is all ready for our embarkation on the ferry to France.

A wet day followed, with occasional glimpses of the lovely French autumn countryside as we rolled through the forests. We had a picnic at lunchtime—in an old disused petrol station at Sens. It was the only place we could get in out of the rain.

Somewhat further along and after dark, I switched the XS onto high beam coming out of a tunnel and promptly blew a fuse. A few hectic seconds followed – there was a corner somewhere out there – before I’d stopped safely on the gravel. The original 10-amp fuse was obviously not enough to cope with the extra load of all the lights the Vetter gear features, so I replaced it with a 22-amp one and had no further trouble.

What a ride! In the three days it took us to make our way down to the Med, we discovered just about all of the defects our equipment was to show during the entire trip. The Vetter panniers leaked a little, and tightening the locks only cured one. To be fair, Vetter told us later that our panniers had come from the only less than perfect batch they’d had.

The sidecar hood wasn’t entirely waterproof either, and the occupant complained that it was a little claustrophobic. The GS battery refused to hold a charge and the XS happily followed every white line that presented itself.

At one point I had to make a crash stop on the outfit, and the overloaded sidecar pulled me into the opposing lane, fortunately without dire results. At least the fairings proved their value; the Windjammer was excellent and even the little Corsair on the GS helped a lot in the rain. Tempers wore a bit thin, too.

Luckily we found good campsites all the way. One night somewhere near Lyon we even found a free flat. We had pulled up to ask someone about a campsite when they told us to follow them and took us to a half-empty block of flats. They shooed us into one of them and said goodnight. There wasn’t much furniture, but it was warm and dry.

Replacing the shock absorbers on the GS750 outfit just off the Paris peripherique.

It was a great relief to find some sun – not much, but some – in Marseille. We camped at La Ciotat after a run along the coast road, where we had another chance to admire the local bikes. Mostly kitted out as endurance racers, they all seemed to be piloted by riders bent on suicide. They were fun to watch.

Our spirits were restored by an excellent if horrendously expensive bouillabaisse, which we consumed with great gusto. Like Charlie’s and my French dinner in Chiang Mai, in Thailand, it was a great morale booster for all of us.

We spent a few evenings in the ‘Civette du Port’, a friendly little bar where we fascinated the waiters by playing Scrabble late into the night. Our campsite wasn’t very pleasant, and it was still so cold that we slept in our thermal wear every night.

A short run to St Tropez wasn’t terribly impressive, either. The coast road is plastered with ‘Private Property’ signs forbidding picnics, camping and even stopping. Ah, vive la France, sure. Renewed sunshine cheered us up again and we set off west along the coast in fine spirits. But France really didn’t seem to be for us.

Just past Marseilles, the GS suddenly developed a very flat tyre. Inspection showed four broken spokes, one of which had punctured the tube. The overloading was taking its toll. Neil and I respoked the wheel as well as we could beside the road, patched the tube and limped to the nearest campsite at Carry Le Rouet.

As if that last mishap had been the parting shot from our evil luck, things began to look up immediately. The campsite was comfortable and had excellent hot showers; a bike shop in Marseilles respoked the wheel for us in a couple of hours; and the mistral started to blow the rain clouds out to sea. I did get lost on the way back from the bike shop, admittedly, and saw most of southern France before I got back onto the proper autoroute….

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Next instalment we meet a young woman who’s riding her 400/4 to The Gambia to sell it. Seriously.

Source: MCNews.com.au