Planning our 3 week holiday took a long time - two hours in the local pub to be precise. The original idea being to whizz around Europe, but lurking at the bottom edge of the map was the tempting unknown, the north African coast. We all decided we had to go for it. I think someone said, it doesn't look very far on the map.
On the evening of Saturday 3rd September we were on the Portsmouth-St Malo ferry anticipating hot sun, fast roads and cheap beer. I was on a Z1300, Mark on a V reg Yam XS750 and Tony on a K100RT, all loaded with camping gear, spares and bottles of tablets to cure all ills.
We set off from St Malo at about 7am, heading south through the drizzle of northern France - so much for the recently polished bikes. Stopped for lunch at La Rochelle where we were invited to a party that was going on at the back of the bar. After some lamb and several glasses of a strong red wine punch, we continued on our way. All three bikes had developed a wobble that cured themselves after an hour or so.....strange!
We eventually arrived at a campsite at 10.30pm just south of Bordeaux after spending the afternoon and early evening on a 120mph blast up and down the autoroute, trying to find the toll where I had lost my camera and running out of petrol. Thank god for the AA 5 Star Service!
We set off the next day in hot sun and, after a successful camera shopping expedition, we crossed the border into Spain, near San Sebastion. Spanish drivers lived up to their reputation, as well as maniac lorry drivers and helmetless motorcyclists. By now the landscape was dusty and the air very hot, we were in Spaghetti Western country. The afternoons were too hot to travel in, even with the fairing screens removed it was like riding in an oven. The only relief was shopping for food in an air conditioned supermarket and indulging in that great Spanish tradition, the siesta.
All the way through Spain the roads were traffic free, hot, long and fast. The evenings were cool and we were camping out in the inner tents only. We went about 10 miles into Portugal to camp then back out to Spain, just to add another country to our list before reaching the port of Algeciras. Earlier we had a running battle with a couple of traffic cops. We would go through their speed traps then stop for a drink to see them ride past and set up another trap further ahead, which we would go through. This went on for most of the day.
Two hours after leaving port, sailing past Gibralter, having our passports checked and several cool beers, we arrived in Tangiers. At the port, our passports were checked again and the details from the logbooks noted. The official told us to open and remove our panniers, only to walk off and come back without checking them.
Our first priority was petrol, then on to find a campsite. All along the open road were people walking in the darkness, most of them seemed to be hash dealers selling their stuff, we were too tired to stop. The next morning we were southbound again, along the coast road to Casablanca. The countryside was much the same as in southern Spain - hot, flat and dusty; the roads were still good and fast. The only differences were the people, stalls selling melons by the side of the road, clapped out lorries spewing out thick black diesel fumes - one of the lorries had five cows standing on an extended roof rack!
At one water, salt tablet and fag stop, I could hear gurgling noises from my petrol tank. I opened the filler cap and a jet of hot petrol hit me in the face. The intense dry heat combined with the heat of the engine had caused the petrol to boil. Tony's bike was the same. The rubber hoses that I had strapped on to the crash bars had little or no effect. Previously, after 50 miles of hard riding, the bike would cut out due to overheating and the hoses directed extra air at the Z1300's radiator.
Riding through the villages was an experience, people stopped whatever they were doing to wave at us as we rode through. Petrol stops attracted curious onlookers. Larger towns were different, most of the traffic lights didn't work and combined with thick oil on the road at junctions made for some very interesting manoeuvres especially with over 120 horses available at the back wheel.
We spent the night at a campsite where we seemed to be the only whites, but we were soon befriended by one of the campsite workers who took us to his room for a meal. He sampled our whisky and we sampled some of his famous plant life, a night to remember, but that's another story...
The next morning we went in search of Bogart in Casablanca, the outskirts of the city were dusty and smelly, so we turned round and after a few commemorative photos of the bikes we left and headed inland towards Fez. The surrounding countryside was now desert scrubland but the roads were better than those in the UK.
We had to make regular drink and salt tablet stops to combat dehydration from the heat. Every time we stopped, Mark's bike had to be bump started, probably because the petrol was evaporating out of the carb breather tubes while we were relaxing.
On our arrival in Fez we were joined by a group of boys on mopeds who wanted to give us a tour of the town. Unfortunately, we were on a tight schedule and could not stop. The campsite at Fez was quite luxurious - swimming pool, bar, cafe. There were a few other European bikers and a Brit who was doing Morocco.
By now we were short of Moroccan money, so began a search for a bank but it was a national holiday. Eventually a hotel was found that would change our traveller cheques and we headed for the Algerian border at Oujda. It took nearly three hours to get through.
On entering Algeria we were informed it was compulsory to buy 1000 Dinars which we were not going to be able to change back when we left. A £100 for four days was a lot of money, so we decided to stay in hotels and eat out. Even staying in a good hotel only cost £6 so it was going to be hard work to get rid of the money.
The bikes were running well, we had been warned about the petrol so bought super grade which had little effect on the performance. The roads in Algeria were good but in the towns they were lumpy and covered in black, greasy oil. It was very easy to spin the back wheel when pulling away. There was hardly any traffic on the roads out of town, delays were cause by police checkpoints and we were always stopped but no great problem, just annoying.
When we did come across road closures due to resurfacing, the diversions were exciting, usually a rough track across fields - ever tried trail riding on a fully laden touring bike? This was not Aspencade country!
For our next night we stayed in the only hotel in the only town for miles. It wasn't up to our 5 star standard but there was no other choice. Our bikes were parked in the safety of the hotel's storeroom. Security is very important in these countries otherwise bits of bike tend to go walkies. The evening was spent at the town's hottest night spot - the ice cream parlour where we sat in the cool evening air eating our ice cream.
From there on the roads became worse and more lorries filled the roads. We were still travelling through dry hot desert but the closer we got to Algiers the greener and cooler it became. The checkpoints didn't help our progress. After arriving in Algiers the plan was to find a hotel early and spend the afternoon milling around. Algiers must have millions of hotels......wrong, we only found two, one very expensive and full, the other with no secure parking facilities.
The capital's traffic made London's look sane and mild, we soon headed out to look for somewhere to pitch out tents. We actually found a complex of holiday apartments, £23 a night. Tony had a very bad dose of the shits that none of the pharmaceutical wonders could cure.....we later discovered that it was caused by the soda drinks we had been forced to drink in the absence of anything else; available in a huge range of colours they all tasted the same, like creosote.
The following morning the greenery faded and we rode through yet more desert, the roads became worse and a few times the tyres slid on the oily surface even on wide bends. There were fewer checkpoints than before, one strategically positioned on a motorway so as to cause maximum annoyance, congestion and confusion.
The luxury 5 star hotel Setif was the last port of call on our mammoth spending spree in Algeria. We arrived at 2.15pm to find the hotel open but with no water until 8pm because of shortages. The loo bowl soon filled up, with no water to flush it and Tony doing 10vph (visits per hour). After a meal of our Spanish emergency rations, home cooked in our hotel room, we dosed up with salt tablets, vitamin pills, aspirin and anti-diarrhoea capsules before going to bed.
We decided to make a break for freedom and cross into Tunisia by the end of the next day. We were held up by a sandstorm, a diversion for some roadworks through a residential area that looked like London in the blitz and a train crossing the motorway. As we neared the border the roads improved and we were riding through greenery again, towards the coast. Getting out of Algeria was the usual rigmarole and took the wrong side of two hours to complete. Five miles down the road was the Tunisian border - I wondered in which country was the village we had passed a couple of miles back down the road.
After the first beer for four days and another night in a hotel, we became more adventurous and decided to leave the main road, heading out on a small track that was shown on the map. Not a good idea, the road was rough, with long stretches of just gravel instead of tarmac, the longest section being two miles. Our egos were boosted at one village where it was market day, we'd parked the bikes to fill up with petrol and were immediately surrounded by the villagers. They did not try to take anything or touch the bikes, but we could not talk to them; I have difficulty with English let alone Tunisian.
The one precaution we had taken before leaving home was to check on the availability of ferries and tickets from Tunis to Sicily. The very nice man from the AA said there would be no problem - he was right, there was no problem as long as it was Wednesday, the only day the ferry operates. We arrived on a Thursday - big problem. After two hours farting around at the port trying to find a ticket office, we were told of one in the city. A taxi ride took us to a seedy side street where we spent another hour and after nearly having a fight with a Tunisian who had pushed in front of us in the multitude of people trying to get tickets (no queues here), we eventually found a boat that was going to Genoa in Italy the next day.
We rushed to the bank to get enough cash for the sea voyage only to find the banks had closed. That night was spent in the luxury of another 5 star hotel, complete with porter to carry our panniers to our rooms. The following day we returned to the ticket office full of hope, but the agent told us that he had no tickets and we would have to buy them at the port. Were we ever going to get home?
It was a miserable, overcast, drizzly day, the oil stained roads had turned into ice rinks. At the port a man waved us through the barrier to the dock where the long wait began for the ticket office to open. We had got used to customs and with that completed we took turns to queue at the ticket office. Four hours later we were rewarded with a few bits of flimsy paper.
The prospect of a 30 hour sea crossing without food or drink was real doom and despair until Mark entered into a shady deal with one of the crew, obtaining £50's worth of French francs. The night was spent on the deck in the company of a group of mad Tunisian musicians who were getting more and more pissed, louder and outrageous as the night wore on. When the entertainment finished we settled to a night on the deck, a bit different to our last few evenings.
By 9.30pm the next day we had arrived in Italy. After a drugs search involving dogs and machine guns we joined the Genoa traffic. The Italians were doing their best to keep up their infamous reputation of being completely mad behind the wheel of a car. The bikes were given a bit of a service, new plugs, air filters (the old ones full of sand), battery top up and a general check over before spending the last few days meandering back towards good old Blighty.
The main points of interest was the Stelvio pass in northern Italy which consists of 40 to 50 hairpin bends to the 9000 foot high pass on top of the Alps. This is a must for any biker, the road was good and the scenery fantastic. It seemed funny being surrounded by snow five days after sweltering in the desert. Tony's K100 developed a slight misfire which we correctly suspected was a duff spark plug.
On the German autobahn, Tony and I embarked on an indicated 140mph legal blat, which ended in a fit of front end wobble - not bad really, considering both bikes were heavily laden and equipped with full touring fairings. The nearer we got to England, the worse the weather became, the worst being a torrential downpour of Biblical proportions as we arrived at the Hook of Holland. Tickets to Harwich were no fuss to get and passports were given only a cursory glance.
Back in England, of course, it was raining - we stopped ten miles from home for Tony to buy a visor, his had flown off somewhere in the Algerian desert.
The bikes had performed remarkably well considering what was thrown at them. Tyre wear was no different to the norm, as was oil and petrol consumption. After 4700 miles in three weeks through 14 countries, we had all changed our outlook on life, and would happily all do it again. Honest!
D.Briggs