Syd Stelvio – waxing lyrical in Morocco.

The dawn-chorus in Tangiers begins at 4.30, more than an hour before first light, with first one minaret and then a second, both with large loudspeakers that might as well have been placed a few feet from our bedroom windows, and very quickly there are four more, all competing with one another. This is then quickly followed by the barking of every dog in town. Dawn arrives with the sun coming up over the Atlas Mountains soon after six, and by then the cockerels are joining in.

So no blame can be attached to the rally organisers then for an indecently early start.

We are all eager to get going. The docks were several hours of frustrating form-filling – not a patch on the slick service we all received last year when arriving in Tunisia, but the comforts of the Moorish-styled five star El-Minza hotel tried to make amends for battered nerves and served a splendid pre-rally breakfast.

The route south did its best to avoid the Rif-Raf of the Rif Mountains, hugging the Atlas foothills and its avenues of cork trees. One narrow climb with a snaking ribbon of tarmac little more than one-car’s width was set the adrenalin rushing for nearly 50 kilometres and half the event lost some time in reaching the summit…. although at least one Bentley as well as the V12 Lagonda were able to wait for the right time at the finish-control.

We then ambled downhill into Fez, and the luxurous spleadour of the Palais Jamais, just opposite the centuries-old kasbah, probably the best souk in Morocco.

One Bentley needed a shot of liquid-metal in a king-pin, several cars suffered overheating problems, and on arrival were given the traditional treatment of lifting up the back of the bonnet to aid air-flow, but all arrived in good health.

Fez to Erfoud

IT ain’t half hot, mum! Temperatures are soaring as we head ever southwards, and the forecast for tomorrow is 35C, which in old money means bloody hot, particularly for the large contingent of open cars.

We are heading into the region of giant dunes, several are higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the roads today have been splendid, truly open-road motoring with hardly a soul in sight, as we pound our way southwards. The scenery is changing, with what our American competitors regard as the best rock formations this side of the Grand Canyon. Road-side fossil collectors get quite a few drivers to stop…. after the lunch-stop at the market town of Midelt, the Morocco scenery just gets better and better.
Ray Carr Jnr has had problems with the brakes on the ex-Richard Prosser Rover Three-Litre, and the Banhams have found plenty to do in the car-park of our base-camp, a new hotel on the outskirts of Erfoud, the Xaluca, which is being voted the best hotel we have visited for a very long time.

Drums and castanets of the rally buffet by the pool we could all do without, though…. when there is so much to talk about. Tomorrow is to be a particularly early start, catching the sun breaking over the giant dunes a few kilometres out in the Sahara east of here.

Erfoud to Zagora

MOUNTAINS left and right but we barrel down a ribbon of good tarmac across vast open plains, marvelling at the exposed contours created by layers of old volcanic rocks left over from the clearly turbulent Jurassic past of this remote region. And to think all of this was once heaved up from under the sea.

It’s another long hot day at the wheel, we are on the road at 6.30am, extra early even by rally standards, in order to get out into the giant dunes for breakfast. Most of the rally catch a camel train, first up is Ray Carr, wanting to know why he hasn’t been given spurs, Richard Fenhalls looks worried when he’s told he’s now on the Camel Trophy Regularity and must average at least 40 kph. The Timbuktu Café with its breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup washed down with orange juice has set us up for a remarkably different start to a day’s rallying. A few take up quad-biking but we are soon back in more earnest action, with a Sahara Test before heading west to the Valley of Draa, where Moses and many another biblical epic was filmed, which takes us to Zagora, once an oasis and final trading post on the road to Timbuktu, which was raided often by looting tribesman from Morocco.

We are now in the Hotel Reda, which has been used by the Dakar rally, and about to tuck into an extensive spread out by the pool. The only fly in the ointment is that the heat today dropped rather suddenly this evening, which causes desert mistrals to swirl up all around, and there is dust and sand everywhere. You can’t even hang your knickers out on the balcony without getting a good sprinkling of Sahara in your wet hair.

Tomorrow, we turn round, and head back up the valley…. we are now so far south and east, it will take two good days to reach Marrakesh. All are well, although some of the cars are complaining of aches and pains.

More soon, providing a hotel has the right plug, the right bit of wire, the satellites are in the right place, and the bloody line can stay open long enough for Syd’s Communications to bounce earthwards to you.

That’s all for now, folks, results (and this is not supposed to be a very competitive event) are elsewhere on this site and speak for themselves.

Ends.