Atlas
It’s taken a while to get down to writing something since five days pedalling through the Moroccan Atlas. I’ll blame, in part, the fact I’ve just finished reading Kate Harris’s Land of Lost Borders. It articulates most of what I’ve ever wanted to say about two wheeled therapy in far more elegant prose than I could dream of. The book I’m now reading may also share responsibility for the self-diagnosed writer’s block; Roland Huntford’s biography of Shackleton has left me with a deep cynicism for the overuse of the word ‘adventure’. I am now left squirming whenever I read it in the captions of bike packing photos of a little loose gravel. As far as Ernie was concerned adventure is the fine line between life or death, freezing your boat into pack-ice and trekking 400 miles on foot into the great white unknown and not the choice between 28 and 32 milimetre tyres.
Given that I found the latter book on the family bookshelf speaks volumes about the lack of sympathy received during my weekly ‘trail off the back cry for attention’ I was known for during my childhood years. My family will no doubt have already sensed the anecdotal segway that’s occurring for it was one such glycogen deficit hissy fit that stole the show the last time I was in the Atlas. We went to Morocco around 12 years or so ago, it may well have been my first time out of Europe, for I remember the sights and smells of the bazaar with the vivid lens of culture shock; the horns of the snake charmers, the cries of the fixers and the bright haze rising from the tagine tables in sweet smelling plumes. The aim of the trip was to climb Toubkal, the highest peak in the Atlas at 4200m. After a few days trek from Imlil we trudged ever higher through the earthy strata from purple to red to orange until we were surrounded by the pristine white of the snowline. That evening we practised ice axe bracing at ‘Base camp’ until our hands and feet were numb and my dad was satisfied he’d made mountain men of his boys.
We set off for the summit bleary eyed the next morning happy to escape the deafening snores of the burly Norwegians we’d been bunking with. Toubkal was my first experience of altitude and to this end I was not equipped with context with which to judge the headache that was building with each footstep. Shortly after the summit I stained the wind kissed crystalline surface a rich caramel as the mars bar I’d been struggling to digest reappeared. Minutes later the mountain brat emerged and time was called on ruining others’ summit moments. We descended into the oxygen rich valley in silence whilst the shame of ruining another family day out took hold.
This time in Morocco was to be a little different. The initial plan was to pretend to be professional cyclists for a long weekend in Mallorca but the boys I was organising with don’t often do things by half, very quickly the what’s app group escalated into a 5-day bike packing tour of North Africa. Sam and Alex are solid riding partners from my times in Shanghai and despite a rather unhinged competitive streak in one of them they’re both passionate guys who know something about everything, making conversation equally interesting and effortless. Their company was never going to be an issue, what was however was the extra December kilos I was carrying and the lack of long days in the saddle since the inevitable motivation dip post TCR.
We assembled the bikes on the rooftop of Alex’s air bnb and caught up over mint tea as the sun set behind brick minarets. Alarm times for the following morning were negotiated and route options discussed before we proceeded to get heavily ripped off in the markets on the way home. For his role in trading our kitty for 2 kilograms of pistachio nougat, Alex or Ali baba as he was already becoming known in the medina, would never live it down.
We rolled out of Marrakesh before dawn dusted the clouds pink and squeezed the mercury above zero. We were frozen and stopped 2 hours later to seek refuge in an inviting looking homestay. A fire was lit, bread and tahini brought and our schedule quickly unravelled. The sun danced amongst the ridges ahead and the altimeter clicked ever upwards, we settled into a rhythm and the rest of the day took care of itself. Despite the background feeling of needing to be strapped to a board and ironed flat it was good to be back on the wagon! At this juncture I’ll steal a Kate Harris quote. Its good!
‘“Every time I got on my bicycle after a long hiatus it was like riding back to myself, the only way there. The dissipation of life in the city—days of to-do lists, errands, emails, small talk with strangers—generated static in my mind that I didn’t notice was there until I started pedalling and realized it was gone, the way you don’t hear the hum of a refrigerator until it stops. Such is the paradoxical freedom of cycling. In restricting the range of directions you can travel, in changing ordinary movement with momentum, a bike trip offers that rarest, most elusive of things in our frenetic world: clarity of purpose. Your sole responsibility on Earth, as long as your legs last each day, is to breathe, pedal, breathe—and look around.”
The mantra that had begun to form owing much to our collective discomfort was ‘two long days, two short’ it was repeated more and more as cracks emerged in our game faces. We hit the top of the pass with the last few hours of daylight remaining and made the most of the switchbacks that snaked off into the valley haze below. That evening we enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere hiding behind the high walls of ‘Riad Hida’ in Oulad Berhil. Peacocks strutted nonchalantly across symmetrical gardens bursting with ripe fruits as the last of the day’s rays danced over turquoise mosaics that lined the walls. We de-lycra-ed in the colourful bathrooms of our rooms before tucking down on succulent lamb and prune tagine with all customary sides and trimmings. The hotel clearly boasted some colonial pedigree, a favourite for passing French generals. Muskets hung above arched doorways and ornate antique furniture adorned tiled niches at every step. I’d planned to save it for a few days in but thought it was apt time to fish out the hip flask of Speyside I’d packed as a treat for the boys and we toasted a great day.
The next day Sam and I succumbed to Alex’s pleads for a later start and we rolled out just as dawn broke. Fortunate, in hindsight, as we spent the first few hours of the day tracking the gps route in circles around dusty farmlands. Eventually we put faith in passing goat herders and followed their half-hearted gestures onto the road west. The road looped and rolled all day into ever more remote and surreal landscapes, dry trees punctuated red rockscapes the colour of rusting steel while purple mountain ranges floated in and out of focus on the horizon. Finding water and food was becoming a struggle but luckily our personal supplies of Morocco’s most expensive nougat staved off the bonk. As evening fell and the novelty of riding through the sets of Star Wars wore off, we drifted at our own pace, spread out along the undulating road in intervals relative to the weight of what we carried. It proved to be a regrettable riding style given that setup weights were also proportional to route knowledge. By the time I’d followed Alex down a 15km descent and darkness had fallen we quickly became aware that we’d taken the wrong turn off the hill. We toyed with the idea of following our tracks back to the junction for all of 10 seconds before finding the closest B&B with a room for two.
The following day we plotted the quickest course to find our fellow rider, which did of course involve starting the day with the same 15km climb we’d bombed it down with glee the night before. We made it to Sam’s spot for breakfast; ever the route researcher and planner, Sam had chosen the fortified Berber Kasbah of Tizourgane. The hilltop residence built in the thirteenth century looked as if it was hewn from the same sandstone rock face it sat upon. From the sounds of things Sam had experienced an epic late into the night to find the place. Whilst the terracotta walls of the Kasbah gleamed prominently in the otherwise flat lands surrounding, things can look a lot differently in the flickering visibility of a head torch with battery issues. After crawling into the guesthouse late that night with his comrades AWOL he had then faced the unrelenting negotiation over the booking of a three bed room. The 12 hour day he’d fought through had clearly taken its toll and unfortunately an old knee issue had flared up. Luckily we were now trending downhill to sea level and had broken the back of our mantra; ‘two long days, two short’.
We were heading back to civilisation and the busy port of Agadir. Given last night’s mix up and Sam’s gracious acceptance of paying the fee for a family room, Alex took up the challenge of finding the evenings accommodation. It’s fair to say his approach was a little less considered than the care and attention Sam had put into ensuring we sampled the very best of Moroccan culture. Alex took to Ctrip, instinctively booking 3 all inclusives to whatever that one was with the biggest list of amenities. In this case it was ‘Club Jardins d’Agadir’, a package holiday delight for French retirees featuring cabaret, dancing, karaoke and ‘step ups with Jamal’ on the hour every hour down at poolside. Really, this place looked as though elderly French couples came to live out their last days in high definition nostalgia set to a thumping 1960s soundtrack and lit by multicolored strip light LEDS. It did have a beer license however and an all you can eat world buffet. We definitely weren’t complaining, just laughing uncontrollably at the extreme contrasts we’d experienced in such little time.
The hotels ‘amenitities’ had unleashed a flood of emails into Alex’s phone overnight and with Sam still nursing a bad knee I left the boys at the bottomless breakfast and set off solo on the final stretch north up the coast to Essaouria. The day paled in insignificance to the past few in the high mountains but I was glad to be able to spin at my own pace and plug into some tunes. Every now and then the road opened up to Atlantic panoramas but a patchwork of dull holiday homes in construction and lazy developer schemes littering the coast ruined it more often than not. By the time I reached the destination Sam and Alex had leap-frogged me in a Taxi. Luckily Sam was back on the reigns on booking.com and a cold beer was waiting on a rooftop overlooking the white stuccoed maze of Essaouria’s historical streets.
The next day would bring taxi rides and fervent trinket haggling with the angry men of Marrakesh followed by the energy sapping process of non-bike related transport. The ‘adventure’ was over and it was time to head back to the infuriating realities of a flag waving Brexit countdown. . . Take me back to the mountains!!
