I am in love (Morocco MTB Holiday 26.12. - 6.1.)

Truely, madly, deeply....
But from the beginning: What better way than escaping the xmas mayhem and the Scottish winter with going on a mountain bike holiday in a muslim country with daytime temperatures around 25 degrees ?
There we went on boxing day to Morocco (with considerable effort, let's just say it involved missed flights, tears and a credit card...) to join a group of unknowns the next day for a trip in the Anti- and Atlas mountains.
As a professional worrier I worried of course about - will the weather be nice ? - will I like the other people ? - will I be able to keep up with the other people (cycling that is, never a worry about the drinking) - will Michael Barrymore win Celebrity Big Brother- (sorry, dunno how that one slipped in there...).
Anyway, in the morning we would meet the others my mood, carefully restored to a rather fragile, but optimistic state the day before, hit rock bottom again as Rick announced, looking out the window in the hotel in Agadir: "It is raining in buckets!"And that was an under-statement if there ever was one, and my first worry was manifesting itself already. But - I decided I am not beaten yet (close though) and we headed for the breakfast room.
On the way there we passed that ultra-muscular black dude in lycra, so very likely one of our group, gulp. Will another one of my worries become true ?! No no no I have no problem about people in lycra, in the contrary, ahem... I mean the worry about being able to keep up...

In the breakfast room then, people gathering, first shy hellos and glances, everybody checking each other out I suppose... Then packing up the Land Rovers after breakfast and off we went out of Agadir through the rain into the Anti-Atlas mountains, where the cycling should begin. Or would it ? Or would we die of hypothermia before all hire bikes where fit to cycle on ? Read on to find out...

Cycle Day 1 - Tafraoute and the Blue Rock Trail
or Mud - a new definition
or How to loose a cycle buddy

After an endless wait on a cold pass to have the hire bikes ready we finally cycled off - after 20 meters there was me wondering why Liz on the first short offroad uphill swerved immediately to the right onto the curb, to realise too late that, if you didn't and cycled instead in the middle of what used to be the old 'road', about 5 kgs of red mud stack to your tyres and everything getting too close to this material. I thought Scotland had mud. Untrue. It's only dirt! Moroccon mud you can build houses with. And cement your bike in.....
On through fantastic landscapes, rain, sunshine, rainbows ...
The bad weather wasn't so bad after all and all the moods lifted, also having stated new friendships alread standing on the cold pass chatting away while waiting to cycle off. Little did we know at the time that the waiting game would be played many more times !
Eventually we reached the infamous Blue Rocks, painted by a Belgian artist. Belgian, of course. What else have they contributed to the world than Chips & Mayo and Eddie Merxx ?? Chocolate ?? No, I bet they stole that recipe from the Swiss.... Painting rocks blue - useless and an offense to the beautiful landscape.

On we went quickly after a quick snack stop, onto the town of Tafraoute, where we would spend the next two nights.

A quick shower and off to the bar to meet comedy duo Andrea (the other one from Nottingham) and Julie already slavering over their beers. "Have you heard that we lost Richard ?" Andrea asks.... my brain just went into "doesn't compute" mode and rolled back the afternoon of riding... right, can't remember seeing him. Can't remember seeing him for a long time !! We'd lost him before the Blue Rocks, his bike broke down, he couldn't catch up, Liz was ahead and the Rovers couldn't support this part of the ride. What a catastrophe. In Richards case I still would be out there, wandering about aimlessly and lost, having the sense of orientation of a blonde female. Richard, the Red Indian at heart he is, followed the Rover tracks and then, when it was getting dark, the lights of the Rovers in the distance, then when these where gone, he thankfully could see the lights of the town.... a hero.

Joe (the black dude in lycra) could not leave all the excitement and attention to Richard, smuggling his bag with valuables into Margarets room and then pretended it has been nicked on check-in to fetch Liz's attention for whom he was obviously starting to feel rather fond of.
More bad news from Liz later in the bar, stating that the forecast was rubbish till Friday. This was Tuesday.....
After a nice meal and good amount of wine, off to bed, my last thoughts when drifting off being: "If it rains like this tomorrow, I'll be on the Jeep."

Cycle Day 2 - Tafraoute and the Gorgers of Ait Mansour or
Want no carpet, haggle for no carpet or
I had him down to £180!
Waking up to the lovely tones of our mobile phone alarm clock, I couldn't see a thing ! The shutters closed,the room was pitch black. Rick, with the curiosity of a 5-year old, had to immediately venture out into the courtyard, while I turned round for another minute of sleep... if it's gonna rain anyway.... "Andrea, it's bright sunshine and not a cloud in the sky outside. Glorious, get up !" Realising a tad too late that he meant the weather and not me with glorious, I jumped out off bed to see it with my own eyes. And it was true, the most stunning scenery bathed in morning sunshine. And it should stay like this till the day we leave.

A day of the most gorgeous gorges (!) and long waits near people working very hard on broken bikes emerged.... to spit us out at the end of the day doing a 'carpet night'.
Rule number one: if you don't want to buy don't ask for a price. Rick asked how much that one was... even after dinner next door, the carpet dudes were still lingering out in the street to pick up the dealings where Rick left them before dinner....
A berber not happy was left behind....

Cycle Day 3 - Anezi Descent or
The hammam visit or
The white leather jacket
After another day of fantastic cycling and a lot of waiting about an interesting evening was about to follow - a hammam visit ! Two jeeps chauffeured us to a hammam each, one to the boys and one to the girls hammam.... we had not a clue what was going to happen... after long discussions at the entrance (mainly in Arab but it sounded nevertheless very interesting to us !) we were finally in. Steam. Lots of steam. All these women looking at us. One naked. The accoustics in the bath was extreme, very hard to understand what anyone was saying, even if it was English. It seemed the nanked woman was the one in charge and she quickly chose me as her main point of contact when she noticed I speak French. Take your clothes off. Put them there. The clothes off - ok, where do I put them ? There there there (wild pointing in ambigous direction). We start taking our clothes off, I take my kniggers off as well, big screaming off everybody local.... I get a closer look at chief woman, oh she's not completely naked, her kniggers are flesh coloured. Ok, pull my kniggers back up.
Over to the wash room then. She makes us all sit down. Buckets and buckets of hot water are brought to us while we start to shampoo and soap ourselves in. Slowly a bonding between us western women starts to form.... would you take that bucket and wash my hair out ?? Could I have that ladle when you're done with it ?
I found it very back to baics to wash myself with water not running from a tap. It was very Out of Africato have the hair rinsed by water from a ladle. It was very very weird and wonderful. Although I could have skipped the bit when I had to get dressed in a room with humidity close to a 100%...
Back in the hotel, we were waiting for the boys... they got lucky and got the whole treatment with exfoliation and massage and all looked like rosy babies when they got back....


.... to be continued....


Cycle Day 4 - The Tacheine Trail and Taroudannt
.... to be continued....

Cycle Day 5 - Tamgault Gorge Trail
.... to be continued....

Cycle Day 6 - Agadir and the Cascades Flyer
.... to be continued....

A journey to the dark side...

Since a while we are involved with an 'action group' called HOOL, or Hans Off Our Links in long, to fight the destructive development of the Musselburgh racecourse.

One idea was to sell stuff on car boots sales to add to the raised funds, and off we went, one Sunday just Rick and I, the Sunday after, Irene, our neighbour, joined us in East Fortune !

Irene wins the award for fastest sale, an exercise stepper (sold to a 400 yr old man who couldn't get out of his car...go figure..) within 45 seconds of her arrival. Ker-ching! £15. Closely followed by my bread maker to the same person within 1.5 mins... double ker-ching @£15..... Stalls paid for plus £10 profit at 09:30 am.

The rest of the day was a non-stop roller coaster of hedonistic 50p sales..... or the bargain of the century of 60, yes....SIXTY.... Babylon5 video's for £10....

We also ate some unidentified food substances (no animals were harmed in the production of these burgers/sausages/lorne/ etc etc)...

It is a bit of a laugh and you wouldn't believe folk buy your stuff till you see it! And the kind of folk..... there was the Russian girl with the peroxide blond hair, red fake leather blazer, same colour cords and white spikey stiletto boots... haggling half an hour over a ring for £1... you had to be there...especially when her Sergei had to make sure first it is really silver before she was allowed to buy it.

Anyway, we will go again one more time before Christmas, Sunday the 11th. This time we have Santa hats and plan to make Mulled Wine to give away for free with every purchase of £2 and over! Watch this space....

Mount Keen Tour - 15th October

This tour is one Rick and I did before, on a sunny, warm day last summer (the picture proves it...). Kenny, SLAC Cycle Club chairman, had walked the most easterly munro in Scotland a few weeks back and wondered if it was do-able with a bike. We told him it was and, together with fellow biker Alan, off we went to do it again. As it is a long time ago, I take the liberty of copying Kenny's report of the day from the SLAC bike club forum. Photos courtesy of Mr. Morton....

"Saturday was an epic day out. We (Alan, Andrea, Rick and myself) met in the car park at Tarfside at 8.30 (yes Ewan, we were in a car park in the Cairngorms by 08.30.....I know you think meeting at the Pentlands by 10.00 is an early start!!), and after the usual faffing about, were under way by 9.15. The route took us straight on to a rough Landrover track, undulating for the first miles or so, through a startled looking herd of cows, and then uphill. And uphill. And uphill. And then uphill a bit more. Yes, it was a long way, however we managed to ride around 98% of it, with just a steep, loose section near the top making us push.


By the time we were on the flattish section at the top the weather had closed in completely, with visibility down to less than 100 yards. It's here that the track splits with the Fungle Road going one way and the Firmounth Road the other. We took the Firmounth Road, which rapidly became no more than a rough, narrow track. After a couple of checks of the GPS (and how useful did that bit of equipment prove to be in those conditions), we found the track that would take us down into Glen Tanar. It was about now the real fun started. It's not a hugely steep descent, but does have enough rocks, ruts, bogs, puddles, streams, drops, scree and everything else to keep your mind totally focussed. It was about halfway down here we had our only big crash of the day when Rick nosedived over the bars and surfaced with blood coming out his forehead.


After some medical attention we were off again, with a short, slightly uphill section followed by another long descent, this one a good bit faster on wider tracks, down into Glen Tanar, and a well earned lunch by a pretty little bridge over the river.

Sandwiches scoffed, we were off again up a fairly smooth track which lead to the foot of Mount Keen. After a slightly awkward river crossing it was time to get out an assortment of slings and hooks and attach the bikes to our rucksacks for the walk up the hill, the track at this point being unrideable.

It would have been a hard enough walk normally, but in miserable weather, with tired legs and with 30 lbs of mountain bike attached to our already laden rucksacks, it became a major undertaking.

After about an hour of hiking we finally hit the point where the track divides and we were able to re-mount. What a relief it was too; suddenly our rucksacks felt so light! It was while we were unhooking the bikes we met three hikers coming up the hill. I think four folk with mountain bikes was just about the last thing they expected to see up there, if the looks on their faces was anything to go by!.

The track (the Mounth Road) at this point is a narrow singletrack which contours round the summit, before meeting up with the path coming down from the top for the big descent. The next few miles flew by as we zipped down the track to the cottage by the Queen's Well. Other than loose rocks and some big drainage ditches, there's nothing to stop you really flying down this hill, and by the time we got to the cottage the sore legs from the hiking were well and truly forgotten and replaced with huge grins, helped with the very welcome nip of whisky Rick produced to celebrate surving what was a very tough day out.
From the cottage we had another mile or so of track, plus a few miles along the road back to Tarfside and the cars. As far as luxury goes, Champagne, caviar and the rest are nothing compared to the feel of clean, dry socks at the end of a long day on the hills!!

Big thanks to the other three for a classic day's mountain biking, and to those of you not there, you missed a great day out............although there are a number of other tracks up there that I'm sure we'll be back to explore."

Well, one thing Kenny missed is, that Rick actually produced a medal for each of us together with the whisky, and boy, did we deserve one!

7Stanes weekend with the SLAC Cycle Club 23rd-25th September

Happened to stumble over the above bunch announcing that they would hold their yearly weekend outing at a bunk house in Mabie Forest for a weekend to try some of the 7Stanes tracks.
Thought it’ll be a good idea to meet up as I was talking on the forum to some of them but never met.
Said, done and I also stupidly volunteered Rick and me to do the cooking as an ‘Einstand’.
(German culture thing...yes, we Germans do have culture other than putting towels out on sunbeds at the crack of dawn...).
I wasn’t quite sure if I was more nervous about matching people’s cycle skills on the tracks or about messing up the meal!

Saturday we went to Kirroughtree. Quickly it emerged that it was better that Dave G., Alan, Rick and I split from the group as our speed was a notch faster than the rest. Unfortunately half an hour after that Rick had an accident due to new tyres/bad brakes which finished his day, and as it later turned out, the weekend as the front wheel was bent.
Never mind the cut in the leg!
I was tempted for a moment to bail out and do the 'I accompany him home' trick, as I was a bit worried riding 30kms+ with two guys I've never cycled with before. Visions of Chamonix returned.
I only noticed later, that in fact I had never cycled without Rick at all (not counting the daily commute...). So, it felt a bit to me like a 'coming of age' in the mountain bike world. And man, did we have fun!
Riding McMoab at Kirroughtree:
Alan doing the same:

Sunday we went to Dalbeattie as everybody was keen to see (and some to ride) The Slab :
I remembered when Rick had done it 2 years ago, it didn't look that steep looking up from the bottom. I had never seen it from the top as then I used the escape route which starts before the thing comes into view, to also avoid The Qualifier, a bit of a rock heap which just preceeds The Slab.
So, after some discussion, if and how The Qualifier would be rideable at all (and deciding it wouldn't), on we went to The Slab. Gulp. Somebody made that steeper since I was here the last time or what ?? After lengthy discussions (again!) we decided that we would try the lower half of it:


And it wasn't bad at all, once you were over the edge..... The full Slab next time then.
More exhilarating riding from there on and back.

A fantastic weekend overall (minus Ricks accident of course) and looking forward on doing it again soon !

PS: The meal went fine. Tom Yum soup, Green chicken curry with rice (a bit too sticky), and Luca's ice cream as afters.....One thing I learned: 2 kilos of rice for 15 people is too much. Waaayyy too much.

Some photos...

... finally - of the holiday here.