Day 3 Merzouga - 'Bob track'

An unbelievably hard navigation test for first stage, er, failed the test... Got SO lost... Ended up on wrong side of mountain range, had a lovely 'tourist' ride though some amazing, rock strewn terrain and past some beautiful Moroccan, Berber villages made from sun dried mud bricks, the smiling faces of the children leaves me ashamed of our British yoof, the African kids have so little but are SOOOOO happy, brilliant tonic, riding in the wilderness, suddenly I don't feel a pressure or care in the world, I can smell the desert flowers....
I spend so much time smelling desert flowers the rally is almost over by the time I rejoin the course! I missed another secret check! Why do they have to hide them anyway, I can hardly find the published ones... Stop to help another stricken italian who had holed his petrol tank, used some of my duct tape resrves and got him going, where would motorsport be without duct tape. Rode a brilliant, grey shale/sand track (called the 'bob' track) for 40 or so kms, swoops, turns, berms, jumps, you couldn't dream it as good as it was... Saw table mountains every bit as good as monument valley in the states, endless dry river beds full of flowers, desolate rocky passes with endless desert plain beyond, saw blue sky, saw sun saw redemption in a dirt track...

Day 4 Merzouga - monster dunes day, navigation

Ah, dunes today, everone is so revved up to ride the dunes, I can see people talking themselves into a state of nervous hysteria, the dunes are literally towering giants reducing grown men (and women...) to a quiver, I quietly sit and watch the dunes as the sun goes down the previous night, they do seem to be growing...

The organisation have laid on a brilliant 60kms trail through the biggest dunes of a very big dune system, they have allowed for four laps for the qickest guys, I plan on three. GPS is playing up and I have to manually punch in each way point, inwardly I joke that I would be better navigating by the sun! GPS dies almost at the end of the second lap, decide to head for the highest dune to get a visual reference and head out, er, using the sun! Brilliant bit of virgin sand, so hard in the flat light of a mid-day sun, a bit like what I would imagine snow blindness to be, can't see any shape in the terrain at all, freaky, very slow ride bike past Berber tents in the sand, so mnay people live in the sand! Very happy people but they must be so tough...

Found a new power supply for the GPS in the bike loom during the afternoon mechanicking session, hooray, wouldn't like to be in the sand without GPS again... Walk to the top of the dune late evening thinking how tough I am to be slogging up there, catch up with a chap obviouly struggling with one working leg and one working arm walking to the top with a stick. Spend a life affirming hour talking to him about his ABILITIES walk with him to the bottom, feel choked and inadequate in the face of what he had just achieved with one good arm and one good leg. He's on holiday in Morocco for three weeks just riding buses and staying in hotel tents at 30 dirhams a night (£2) what a character, what a star...

Saw the crescent moon at whole new angle, feel very small in a country steeped in lost history.