Steve's Cycling Blog

Somewhat surprisingly I managed to sleep last night – I had expected that my missing bike and bags would play on my mind and keep me awake, but thankfully that wasn’t to be.

A hotel breakfast, then Adam and I headed over the road to find a decent coffee – there was a surprisingly cool breeze blowing as we sat outside the cafe to enjoy our drink.

By the time that was done it was time to head back to the hotel for the second briefing session. More general information, an intro to the ‘week’ ahead and then a more detailed discussion of tomorrow. Here’s the high-level plan for the week ahead.

A bit of my TDA terminology:

• the week are the riding days, it doesn’t matter how many there are, riding days are the week, so this coming week is super short at only two days.
• the weekend are rest days – usually there’s only one at a time, but on a couple of occasions over this tour we get a long weekend, including a two day weekend in Freetown, and three day weekend in Dakar.

Which days of the week these thing happen on rapidly becomes immaterial, and often gets lost in the mists of time, hence the distinction above.

We also got the specifics of tomorrow

As you can see it begins with a photo opportunity at the Hassan II mosque on the coast, and then continues with a 19km convoy to get us all safely out of the city.

After the briefing it was time to head back out to the airport in the hope that my bike and our bags had arrived. I am extremely relieved to confirm that indeed they had. Some waiting round while everything was retrieved and I was soon back in the taxi – this time with everything I needed for the ride.

Ready to ride!

While I’d been in my meeting and to and from the airport Adam have been reacquainting himself Casablanca – he’s upgraded his opinion of the place since we were here about ten years ago – his current view is “it’s a large and dirty city with some nice parts” – this may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but trust me it’s a significant improvement!

The remainder of the afternoon was spent getting my bike sorted, shuffling things round between my bags and generally getting prepared for departure tomorrow morning. Oh, and loading our permanent bags and spare tyres into the truck / trailer.

The ‘dinner’ truck, which also carries all of our bags, sick / injured riders, the camp kitchen etc etc!

Adam and I have just returned from a very nice dinner at Bistro Chic – if you ever find yourself in Casablanca it’s well worth a visit.

Thanks for all the red socks, crossed fingers, offerings to deities etc – something clearly worked because after a fairly stressful 24 hours everything is in place and ready for departure!

View from my tent (hotel)

If you look on the roof-top at the bottom of the photo you can probably make out a collection of bicycles!