The sands of time were eroded by the river of constant change...

And so, we've all made it back safely for another year... how on earth did that happen?!

Our final two days in Puerto Banus were saddened only when we waved goodbye to the bikes which were leaving, as they'd arrived, on board a truck which would be taking the strain of the 1000 mile journey rather than the seats of our variously sized pants. Tim Briton of Briton's Removals (www.britonsremovals.com) has done a great job getting the bikes to and from Spain (I hope I'm not tempting fate at this point as they don't arrive back til Tuesday) and while we don't usually do commercial endorsements (mainly because no one ever pays us to... not even Aston Martin or Hackett menswear) Tim deserves a special mention as well as our thanks.

Friday night again down by the harbour found all concerned in a demob happy frame of mind. Two weeks is a long time to be away from home and all that entails so there was even more of the usual mirth and humour that evening... Brian demonstrated that 76 years old or 6 months old... there's not much difference. Andy once again lost the 'I bet I can hit you before you hit me' wager... yes, just a normal night on the town.

Saturday's flight home was quick and even the weather on arrival at East Midlands mirrored that of the past two weeks. Re-united with pints of Pedigree at the one and only true Red Lion, Saturday afternoon provided a chance to reminisce and hand out the paltry collection of gifts we'd cobbled together (mainly from our looky-looky chaps) for our nearest and dearest.

On reflection... it's wrong to moan about somewhere, its culture or traditions unless you've actually experienced it for yourself. Morocco will never go down as anyone's favourite place because other than the roads and scenery we didn't like it very much. What it does do is to open your eyes to a whole host of problems which countries like Morocco have... poverty, religion, misogyny, corruption and the ludicrous ban on alcohol to name but a few. What is fair to say, however, is that when you take seven disparate blokes and send them to a different continent for two weeks together it's bound to be an adventure and this trip has certainly proved to be one of the best in that respect.

Well, it is the pic of the trip so worth putting up again

The first bike trip in 2010 was billed as a 'once in a lifetime' event and four years and five trips later we're still at it. With a bit of luck we'll be planning for 2015 too so if you've been in any way inspired to get on two wheels then you know where you can find us.

Click here for a bit of a look back... 

Born to be wild...

Shopping...

Abandoned and forlorn...

Thursday was an exciting day. Feeling slightly guilty that our noble steeds were parked idly outside the Andalusia Plaza we decided to spend part of the day back on the road. In now boringly familiar perfect weather we ventured up into the hills towards the town of Ronda along a wonderful 30 mile twister. There's nothing quite like spending your days riding these kind of roads and this trip, for all my moaning, has been blessed with very few flat and boring strips.

In the silent, shaded pine forested mountainsides, undisturbed by human influence for centuries, imagine our surprise when by chance we discovered... the mountain man... sasquatch, big foot. The photo is a bit blurred and indistinct but you get a sense of the raw animal nature of the beast.

Though not especially talkative he seemed friendly enough though had never seen a motorbike before (nor plate glass windows apparently either... odd) and seemed somewhat uncomfortable when we offered him a lift down the mountain. Unfortunately, by now, he seemed to have taken a liking to us and wouldn't leave us alone. He had also developed an unnatural taste for drinking Aftersun.

In a bid to get away from our new furry friend we went shopping. This is indeed a strange pastime and not one we recommend. In yet another twist, when we emerged from El Corte Ingles and returned to the Red Lion to regain our strength all that remained of our mountain man friend was a fake Rolex watch he'd bought from our looky-looky friends and a half empty bottle of Aloe Vera. The mystery remains...

'No, I'm sorry Senor, we don't do them in XXL'

This dummy looks familiar

Spain 1, Morocco 0...

The three days since we left Morocco have been considerably more relaxed than the three days before.

Leaving Chefchaouen, a quick wizz on Tuesday morning to Ceuta found the usual Moroccan bureaucracy at the port. We have now clicked on that the more backward the country, the more officious are their immigration officials. Eight unofficial port agents demanding a bung at the port had not bargained that we are now worldly wise to all this rampant corruption and so they received short shrift and before long we were through the border and back in Spain. TFFT (which apparently is a youth text abbreviation type thing meaning 'hooray' and completely appropriate here).

The 'new' Red Lion... sorry Dan, we like this one more

Civilisation is quite good, we like it a lot and Puerto Banus is the perfect antidote to the Moroccan 'situation'. We quickly found a Red Lion type establishment which was perfectly situated on the harbour and from where we could watch the world go by and pass comment on all the posh cars, life and all we think we know about it.

On Wednesday visitors arrived, RLB groupies if you will, in the form of former normal person Tony Matthews, who has been on a clandestine trip of his own but kept falling out with himself so decided to join us instead. And imagine how excited we were when we were joined by Sir Richard Titspervert who interestingly bought his own helmet with him but alas no motorcycle. Due to recent a recent photo-hacking scandal, Sir Richard now goes by the name of James Filer, estate agent. Football pundit and Welsh person, Robbie Savage also turned up as he'd heard we were here and fancied getting in on the act. Savage... no! 

It's probably time to come clean and tell you, our devoted readers, that actually on Tuesday and Wednesday we didn't do much motorbiking. In fact, we didn't do any. We were all a bit fatigued and so the opportunity to do as little as possible was too good to pass up. We did however send Paul out on his bike which meant that we could sit in the 'new' Red Lion while he was out taking the photos showing what a good day's ride it was. We are now seriously considering adopting this policy for future years.

Onward and upward

Monday found some sense of appreciation restored at last as we enjoyed a good trip from Rabat to Chefchaouen. This part of Morocco, whilst not the most dramatic, is by far the most picturesque and after the usual trudge through some dog-awful medieval villages the superb roads twisted and wound their way through green hills towards Chefchaouen which awed rather than disappointed when we arrived. Unlike the dirt coloured buildings found everywhere else in the country Chef is a white and lilac town set on a hillside, yep a bit different, but very pleasant. 

At the start of the day, Rob nearly had to stay behind when he found that his bike had developed a dirty wing mirror. An emergency call to Pidcocks resulted in advice that the bike may be dangerous if ridden with a dirty wing mirror and that he should definitely not ride it. After much guffawing from the assembled masses, some reassuring advice from his mates that actually you can ride a BMW with a dirty wing mirror and some gentle persuasion with Carpet's Stanley knife we all set off. 

Our last night in Morocco arrives with some sense of relief. The more perceptive of you may have picked up that we're not totally enamoured with the country. It goes without saying that the roads and the scenery generally have been as good as anywhere we've been and by luck or judgement last Thursday was one of the best tour days in five years. But... the poverty gnaws at you, the people are 'difficult to trust', the food is dodgy and nothing special and the place is filthy. There are some contradictions here when you read earlier posts but when taken over the whole tour that's the feeling we're left with, which is a shame. 

It goes without saying that we're kind of looking forward to returning to Spain tomorrow afternoon but what we would all say is that we're grateful for the opportunity to have seen it for ourselves. 

Chefchaouen, at least, is a good place to bring down the curtain on Morocco. It is wholly different from the rest of the country in that the streets are clean, the vendors have neat shops of which they are obviously proud and there are not beggars and homeless people in every doorway. The hotel pool provided the backdrop to some interesting afternoon entertainment which was useful as it was blooming hot again and despite finding the evening's choice of restaurant closed we subsequently dined in a delightful traditional Moroccan where surprise, surprise, you could eat anything you wished for... as long as it was a tagine or kebab... come on chaps, sort your national dishes out, you're making English food look sophisticated!

'Of all the bars in all the world'...

The coastal cities of Casablanca and Rabat are far more cosmopolitan than any we have previously visited in Morocco. The only downer is that being coastal the roads are pretty flat and boring so both days were short and featureless. Enough said...

...however, of note is that we have acquired a capable and willing social secretary. The role is new and a very important one carrying the responsibility for researching the availability and suitability of the best restaurants in the location we happen to be lucky in which to find ourselves. 'Mr Secretary' Paul Haynes has for the first time on any bike trip actually bought something called a guide book and bothered to find out in advance where the best places to eat may be found. We found this strange as preparation has rarely been a RLB trait. This new forward planning has served us well as we normally wander round town aimlessly til we find somewhere, or worse still... ask a taxi driver. 

For Saturday night in Casablanca, Mr TripAdvisor had selected a French restaurant to provide the repast and well received it was too. Well, mostly.

Sunday in Rabat was slightly less successful. The golden rule of restaurant selection is, first and foremost, the availability of liquid refreshment and, woe is me, Sunday night's Italian was dry, barren, arid, completely devoid of beer or wine. Paul's position was seriously under threat but in usual RLB apathetic style no one else would do the job anyway and so he lives to pick our grub another day.

As inconsiderate as it was for the Football League to arrange the end of season play-offs whilst we are here, Sunday afternoon provided top entertainment. Not only had the bar got a telly but they had the common sense to put on good old English football. Burton Albion at lunch and the mighty Derby later, the Grand Prix too. We didn't feel as though we could sit there all day, however, and went out for 45 minutes to buy Carpet Mark a belated birthday present. He is now the owner of a very heavy tagine... the perfect gift for someone on a motorcycle.

The end of Morocco is in sight... Monday we head to Chefchaouen, our last stop before returning to the cuddliness and cleanliness of Europe with its clean pint glasses and, well, clean everything.

Sick note...

It's a bit awkward writing a post when while describing the days in question you were actually semi-comatose and 120 miles behind everyone else. Luckily for me, Marrakech turned out to be a bigger version of the dump I was still stranded in and therefore there's not much of a constructive nature to say about it. I think I'll let the photos do the talking...

Habitual speeders, Brian (far right) and Richard (3rd from right)
seen later showing remorse

What does merit comment, and I'm sure the derision of all of you, our loyal readers, is that two of our merry band were today caught and summarily punished for speeding on Morocco's roads. The country must have a police force the size of the US Army; every street corner and road island has a johnny sat there next to a stinger looking for any opportunity to extract money from passing motorists and for the worst offenders a trip to spend some time with the Moroccan 'big' Bubba awaits. Richard 'lightning' Whitehouse and Brian 'supersonic' Reid both fell foul of the law on the road to Marrakech. At first it appeared that both bad boys would be dragged to dark and filthy jails until it was pointed out to Mustafa Kopper that our hotels have been pretty much the same thing in which case he generously provided a 'pay one, get one free' offer (no receipt provided) and our men gratefully scooted off only 70 euros the lighter though apparently a toilet stop was required shortly after. Mr Whitehouse, 48, said later, 'I can't believe those robbing policemen caught me but I was impressed by the flexibility of the Moroccan Justice system and they were very nice chaps'. Mr Reid, from Derbyshire, for once refused to comment.

The boys found a couple of Forest fans to
chat to in the Kazbar

The ride to Marrakech was, as it happens, a belter. At least 80 miles of tight mountain roads, high up, provided an exhilarating couple of hours riding under the usual azure skies.

Animal welfare is an oxymoron in Morocco

An example of a halal slaughter

Dust, dirt and the Moroccan menace...

The town of Boumaine is known for the Dades gorges which follow the river of the same name into the hills to the north (Morocco has many rivers, we've been crossing them all week and they all have odd names as you might expect. What they don't seem to have, however, is any water. Occasionally, we might gasp in awe at a trickle of silver thinner than Longford Brook but in the main the rivers here are dry but for a few weeks each year when melting snow turns them into raging torrents but, all in all, not the sort of place for Mr and Mrs Trout to have a happy life). Our run to Ouarzazate was short, a mere 70 miles and so we decided to use the spare time to make a brief excursion through the Dades gorges and were well rewarded for doing so. What followed were twenty miles of twisting roads with switch-backs more reminiscent of the Alps culminating in the sequence you can see here, and a well deserved bottle of pop in the café at the top. The road doesn't go much further beyond here so that was that. Or was it...?

There are certain times one can look back on as crossroad moments and a cursory glance at the map at that point was one such. You see, on the other side of the mountains there was another gorge road and the two are connected by allegedly four km of what they call 'piste'. This is basically unmade road, green lane or dirt track. How difficult could it be? After all, our bikes were just about capable and at worst we could always turn back...

55 miles of mountain sherpa tracks later...

Somewhere along the 'four km of piste' we possibly took a bit of a wrong turn. It's hard to tell as, well, there are no signs obviously... and not much road either. The next 7 hours served to make today the day of the trip, tested our bikes to the limit and us even more so. We climbed on narrow dirt tracks, the paths becoming rougher the higher we got with very steep drops it paid not to think too much about. Stopping in tiny Berber villages resembling nothing more than shoddy collections of ramshackle huts we were swarmed around by dirty, thin children begging for money and, strangely, for pens. Once we'd given away a lot of what we had and anything we could write with we headed on... up. The chances of finding a tarmac-ed road further up a mountain range you would think are a bit slim. Without really knowing where we were we just expected to turn the next bend and there would be our route, black and winding, down the mountain. Except it didn't appear. At 10,000ft (above which in an aircraft you must have oxygen), things were getting more serious.

Rob would have sold his now not-so-new bike for a tenner as long as it included a helicopter ride down and we all found the going very tough on bikes which were fully loaded and wearing road tyres. How Brian coped with this on a road bike at the tender age of 76 and without moaning is deserving of the highest praise. What we did get up there though was some of the most stunning scenery any of us has seen. Why Grand Canyon gets all of the plaudits is beyond us... has no one ever been here?

In true Red Lion Bikers fashion we pressed on (the only alternative being to go back and by now we were four hours in). Finally, the tracks began to descend, and despite a further 20 km of the same rocky mountain shale where the best policy was definitely 'don't look down!' we emerged in a village where our Brian bought something in a pop bottle he hoped was petrol and we were mobbed again by disappointed children who realised we'd already been fleeced for any spare.

A mere 150 miles to our destination to go... (I'm sure we only had 70 miles to do this morning... yes, we'd spent the entire day going in the wrong direction) we finally hit the black top and the gorge road we'd set out to find seven hours before.

What a day. Too long certainly (a bit like this post) but one which will be talked of in Herculean terms for many years but one also it would be hard to talk up.

A final twist on the way home, yours truly had been feeling a bit dicky for a couple of days but possessing the constitution of a concrete rhino put it down to Morocco's best effort to unsettle my innards. After emergency stopping three times in 30 miles I'd revised my opinion. The next two days aren't pretty to describe so I won't but I'm going off Morocco rapidly, unfairly perhaps.

More of Marrakech and Casablanca to come next...