WITH TWO TICKETS FROM POOLE TO ST MALO PLUCKY DISABLED RIDER ROBIN MATTHEWS AND FRIEND ROY DAVIES FROM RUARDEAN WOODSIDE SET OUT ON A 'LITTLE RIDE' THAT TURNED INTO AN EPIC CROSSING OF THE SAHARA. HERE ROBIN TELLS THE STORY ...
LIKE Roy I had been part of a sorry bike crew called the 'Outlaws' all my adult life, and finding ourselves approaching our mid-40s we felt it was time to see a little more of the world.
My bike was a 1,340cc Harley Davidson FXDWG that I had built myself; Roy's was a 1,000cc Honda Fireblade sports bike.
We decided to ride down through France to Spain, and then maybe cross over to Africa just to say we'd been there. The trip would need to be no longer than two weeks to fit in with Roy's work commitments. This was not a problem for me because I am disabled (I have a paralysed right arm), so family commitments were my only consideration.
A week prior to our departure date on August 10 we decided to combine the trip with generating funds for some worthy cause and contacted the charity Barnardos who immediately put their PR machine to work.
We soon found that we had put ourselves on the spot. A day or two before we were due to leave, local media and a HTV crew turned up. They asked us to give them a few details regarding our forthcoming trip. The trouble was we hadn't even worked out the fine details for ourselves!
We revised our plans and set a target of crossing the Sahara to make it more of a challenge, travelling up to 600 miles a day.
We had some idea about the European leg of the trip, but the sum of our Africa information had come from my son's school atlas.
After the ferry crossing we travelled through France, passing the night on a garage forecourt just south of Nantes.
We made an early start the following morning, and headed towards Bordeaux. On the way our European map blew off Roy's bike. We were too tight to buy another one so we decided to rely on memory. Our 'short cut' proved to be a mistake, as we got hopelessly lost in the city streets of Bordeaux and then ran into miles of French lorry drivers staging a protest.
We eventually crossed the Spanish border at Behobie. We slept behind a Spanish service station on tarmac next to a stubble field, somewhere near Madrid. I was surprised, as this was twice as far as I had ever ridden since losing the use of my arm back in 1978. We had now covered 825 miles in total.
We continued to use our memory for route to Gibraltar. All was well until we reached Granada. Roy knew that our next major city began with an A, and when he saw a sign for Almeria he headed off in that direction. We stopped at a garage just before Almeria when Roy's clutch cable broke. I noticed my horn was hanging by a wire as the bracket had broken. We took my horn off and bodged up a temporary clutch cable.
Then we found that we were heading in the wrong direction (We should have been heading for Algecirias). We turned round and headed for Algecirias, stopping at the sea resort of Estepona after 550 miles.
Roy's clutch cable broke again but we clamped a pair of mole grips to the release mechanism. He now had to operate the clutch with his right leg.
We passed the night by a golf course, having completed 1,275 miles in total. We were completely exhausted; over the last two days we had spent 34 hours in the saddle.
After repairs the next day the crossing took 2 hours 30 minutes. The Moroccan customs officials were corrupt and made it plain to us that we were going to incur difficulties unless we handed them some cash. This was a thoroughly unhappy experience, but I did manage to ruin his designer clothes by spinning my bike wheel in the gutter! We headed out of town towards Rabat, then we slept in the bush.
We broke camp around 10am, travelling past Rabat and on towards Casablanca, which was at the end of the Autoroute. From there we rode on towards Marrakech, stopping about 70 miles short of the city. We slept in a ploughed field.
The following morning my bike failed to start. I left Roy sleeping and took a taxi (unsuccessfully) to find a battery.
The taxi driver told me the distance to the Western Sahara via Agadir (our chosen route along the coast) was some 700 miles, much more than we had anticipated. He suggested what he called a 'hilly' route that would take us to Zagora, the gateway to the Sahara. I woke Roy up and we discussed our options. We had come too far to give up now. We decided to push on (Literally in Roy's case!).
I put my faith in my bike's charging circuit, because if it gave out I would be stuck. We headed towards Ouarzazate, where we found the 'hilly' bit to be the Atlas Mountains.
We travelled for miles without seeing a petrol station, so we stopped at a little cafe in the mountains. We discovered that the nearest petrol was 80k away, not good news considering that we estimated our fuel to be good for only 50. We reasoned that half the distance should be downhill.
After a while it became clear that Roy was ill; he was shivering uncontrollably in the heat. We managed to make it to the nearest garage. It was in a small village where we ate a pretty good (relatively speaking) meal. We passed on through Ouarzazate but when we reached Agdz Roy could not travel any further. We booked into a cheap but air-conditioned hotel to try to recover.
We had now completed a total of just under 2,000miles but my bike was getting increasingly hard to start.
It was hard to convince Roy to move the following day, but by late morning we were ready to move. We stowed the gear on the bikes and felt that we looked like natives, sporting bright blue shamags.
My bike refused to start with a push so we tow started it with some wire we found. It was really hot, and common sense went out the window. We stripped down to shorts and boots, and pulled into a garage in Zagora. My shamag had all but fallen of and everyone started to laugh. I should have bought a colour-fast shamag, because my head was bright blue. Still, I saw the funny side when Roy took his off.
We stopped the far side of Zagora to let a camel train pass by and took up the offer of a camel ride. I had lots of aches and pains from the bike ride, but the few miles we covered aboard the camels gave me a whole new bunch!
My trip meter was reading 2,030 miles and we started back later in the evening. We made it as far as Ouarzazate where we both were suffering from heat exhaustion. Our total was now 2,150 miles. We booked into a hotel room, and this one had a very efficient air conditioning system. We turned it full on and quickly fell asleep.
The cold air blasting from the air conditioning system woke us up around 9am. Nevertheless we felt refreshed somewhat; almost ready to tackle the mountain roads once again. We had thrown up a dodgy meal we had eaten but seemed to be suffering no long lasting effects, so we set off once more.
Everywhere we stopped, miles from anywhere, traders would pop up! We arrived at Marrakech late.
On Saturday we decided to take a look at Casablanca. The beach was very commercialised, and sectioned off into separate pay only leisure sites. We managed to convince a hotel worker to let us in through locked gates but he had disappeared when we returned and we met half a dozen definitely unfriendly Dobermans. Out of that scrape, we set off for Tangiers.
After that we took the ferry back and arrived in Spain at 3.30am. We tried to get our heads down on the sea front. We were soon moved on by the local police.
Calls to the RAC failed to fix us up with a battery but I eventually tracked one down and we decided to take in Portugal on our return. On our way Roy had a bag stolen from his bike.
We finally stopped in the early hours of the morning at a French rest area, 60 miles south of Nantes. We had now completed a total of 3,900 miles.
We left for St Malo the next morning, but I was in pretty bad shape. My good arm was not so good any more, and I was forced to make frequent stops for 'deep heat' sessions. We rode out from Poole in thick fog around 2:30am. We got back to the Forest of Dean around 5am, and we were both totally shattered. My trip meter told us we had ridden 4,216 miles.
I slept for two days on my return, and it took me a couple of weeks to recover. The total amount that we collected for Barnardo's (by the time we had collected in all our pledges) stood at a respectable £1,534.29p. Not at all bad for one week, considering our lack of preparation. I am now planning another trip for 2003. I've doubled my Open University courses for next year to give myself the necessary time. I am being a little more ambitious as I intend to travel overland to Australia.