Coast Road

We left surrey and immediately felt we were not carrying enough technology so made a quick pit-stop in Maplin in Portsmouth where Richard bought a hamster powered netbook to while away the lonely hours. 24 hours later, we were in Spaoin and on the bikes and on the way. Traversing Spain at 60mph is a pain in the arse...literally. We decided on the bum and mind numbing approach to conserve the knobbly tyres for when we might need them. No thought was give to sanity or the ability to sit comfortably for 10 hours straight. And to make it more interesting, I picked up one of those flu/viral stomach bugs which made me feel like crap so struggled to keep going sometimes. Eventually we got to Algeciras and I put on all my thermals and went to bed to try and roast the bugger out. It seems to have worked...

For our first day in Morocco, we decided to head east across the northern coast road to Al Hoceima. It is a beautiful coastline with amazing twists & turns along the edge of the Rif mountains. It looked like a nice gentle start to the trip on the recently upgraded road. Upgraded on the map that is. Sadly, the cartographer was ahead of the men in the diggers. Some of the roads marked on the map were very 'aspirational'. It was great fun and very dusty and a lot longer than we had bargained for.

The countryside is vivid green with red soil. It seems very fertile though very hilly. This is the main Cannabis cultivation part of Morocco and apparently, there are some 800,000 people working in the industry. Depending on who you talk to it is either the 1st to 3rd biggest foreign export earner in Morocco. We passed fields of the stuff. The grow lots of other stuff besides and Donkey transport seems to be the way to get around and bring stuff home from the fields. If you dont have a Donkey, manual labour has to substitute.

We rolled into Al Hoceima as the sun was setting, just about not breaking the golden rule of not riding at night. We stopped outside town to try sort out a hotel by phone and thougt we got a good deal. We found the place and then checked in to find out it was even cheaper (£15!) for a twin. Bargain! A little later we walked past the place we had actually reserved.... Doh!

Distance: 257km

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