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First Trip • Algeria • 1982 • p.9-32
My XT500 on the Big Day. Like almost everyone before or since, it was overloaded and under-equipped. Baggage in those days added up to sawn-off jerricans, a rack made of Dexion shelving and ex-army kit bags. I did-not-have-a-clue.
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Having survived the snowy ride to Portsmouth and a blat across flooded France where everyone thought I was part of something called "Le Rallye!", I got to Marseille. My money ran out when I realised I could not work my passage to Algiers like Joseph Conrad so I hung out around Cassis, got mummy to send out more cash and sailed to Algeria... |
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Riding into the Atlas, I met Christian and we teamed up. But - never ride at night they say - chasing him into the rainy night somewhere near Djelfa I got high-beamed, drifted onto gravel and crashed.
Next morning he realised I was a lost cause and so rode off, but around sunset I caught up with him with engine troubles and he decided we should stick together again.
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But C could still not bear the pace of my triple-hinged XT and tore off over the horizon again. I stopped and photo'd the XT by these lovely dunes lapping over the road, just before El Golea. After the rain, the crash and all the pre-departure aggro, I felt I was in the desert at last.
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A thousand kms later in Tamanrasset, like a dork I headed for the Tahat tourist hotel. In the car park was this mashed XL500, a victim of the washed-out tracks north of Tam (there was a whole lot to rain in '82).
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Next to the XL was this seized XR500, part of some 'Paris-Dakar Rally' I'd never heard of.
Next day, I tightened the chain on my crappy XT, filled up the jerries and headed south into the void:
"This luckless trip which had hardly got off to a promising start was about to turn on me with big boots and baseball bats".
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Sure enough, by the end of the second day my alloy tank had cracked, leaking out enough fuel to require an urgent change of plan. Lord only knows what trouble I would have ended up in had it not cracked...
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And so I scrawled 'Scott's Last Message to the World' on the side of a green BMW shell that had become my friend, and turned back for Tam. (If anyone ever gets a waypoint on this car, about 150 kms from Tam, send it over with a pic!).
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Things went from bad to worse, as they do. By the end of Day 3 I was up the creek with tyres full of thorns. And then the fortuitous event described on p.23 led me out of the desert... and on to yet more set backs all the way to Morocco and Spain.
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Broke again in Spain, I lived in this cave near Almeria with a French Canadian hippy until more money turned up. The fridge was just a door...
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Back home in Camden High Street only 5 weeks later, sporting my smashing new red anorak. By then the XT looked like it had been thrown down a cliff...
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... which could only have improved the original format. So I sprayed it all black and flogged it to some drunk guy one night; a successful ploy I repeated over the years.
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Second Trip • Algeria • 1984 • p.173
Trip Two was on something called a Benele, a 'worst of all worlds' mix of CD200, AJS Stormer (ever heard of them?), XL250, RD250, VW Beetle and B&Q.
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The Benele (ie: 'Tenerised' Benly, geddit) now with a 'long-range' RD tank undergoing mud testing in Surrey (it failed).
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I don't say much about the experimental Benele caper - a brain-out two-week dash to Arak and back via the Bol D'Or in late summer. It was p. damn hot; the engine oil would boil long after it was turned off.
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I don't recommend the Sahara with 45°C headwinds on a 50mph Benly. Lots of sandstorms and the faster you go the hotter it gets. In this pre-Camelbak era I had to stop every half hour for a drink. It was tiring.
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Third Trip • Algeria, Niger, Mali, Dakar • 1985-6 • pp.173-214
I scored some brain cells on the black market and bought a kickstart Tenere, a nearly-great machine. Baggage was still ex-army and soft, by now I knew, less is more and none is best. Tyres were Metz 'Saharas' (what's in a name...), hopeless on the piste as I was about to find out. |
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I'd also acquired a new fatalism and decided just to go as far as I got - in this case it turned out to be all the way to Dakar.
But not without the usual
mishaps...
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Back at Arak Gorge, I met Helmut, another lone rider on an R90 mobile skip which made my old XT5 look like a Sputnik desert racer.
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Helmut and I rode down to Tam, did a tour of the Hoggar (which rattled the old 90) and then checked out for Niger. How far would we get this time? By the look of his baggage mountain, not that far. |
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In fact it was about 100km beyond that green BMW wreck shell of '82. The exhausted Helmut broke his shoulder in Laouni dunes so while he rolled about in agony I torched his BMW.
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The morning after, we scrapped together the remains and I gave the injured Helmut a lift to In Guezzam. He flew back, I carried on.
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A day or two later, lost but near Arlit, my own baggage caught fire.
"slowing down had animated the flames which now tucked into my canvas bags as the breeze flicked of bits of clothing and peeling seat vinyl..." p.93.
Less it sure was, but none at all was a bit inconvenient.
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Finally in West Africa after all these years, I cruised down through Niger, up the river to Gao and over to Bamako where I took a short cut that wasn't (left) via Kita to Kayes.
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But by
the Senegalese border both the flimsy Metzs
were ruined and I put the bike on a train
to Tamba. Later, I got to Dakar for the end
of the Rally. Here's the late Gaston Rahier
signing a bike. The owner, Al Jesse from
Arizona has gone on to establish Jesse Luggage
Systems.
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Trip Four • Algeria • 1987 • pp.93-94
Learning the hard way, my machines were now getting better: decent tyres and a solid/soft baggage system. But in some ways this electric Tenere was not as good as the original. Still black tho' (Mad Max had made a big impression on us).
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Pete and I planned to ride across the Tenere from Djanet to Bilma. But near Illizi Pete's wheels collapsed at the very thought of it, so I went on to take the classic route to Tam. It was near here that I took the classic Desert Biking image which is now part of the AMW header.
I finally got to ride the Tenere in 2003 on Desert Riders. We'd never have made it in '87...
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Trip Five • Sahara Motorcycle Tour • 1988 • pp.33-154
Using that classic image from D.Biking, I announced a 'Trip of a Lifetime', a Sahara Motorcycle Tour no less, to Algeria - a disastrous venture which put me in debt for years.
About half of Desert Travels is taken up with describing the events and personalities on the tour.
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Trials & Motocross News and even the Kent Messenger were mildly interested in our adventure. This photo call on the Ridgeway was also rather wishfully assigned as a group bonding experience.
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That's temperamental Mike on the left, not bonding with Clive the cook, me on the wheel and Bernie, who only lasted as far as Marseille.
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One down, a few more to go, our route was the full tour of Algeria right down to Bordj Moktar. To bond a group you need a group, but systematically, the djenouns ate away at my esteemed clients. In the end only one made it home still riding.
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The Landrover 101 support vehicle was a kind of XT500 in 4-wheel form, but worse. We met this Kombi out of Illizi. They'd started building the 400-km road to Djanet then - it was finally completed in 2001, more than a decade later - and is already breaking up.
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Here's the clapped-out Landrover we assisted just below the Erg Admer crossing. Thirteen-up and heading for Libya with no starter or front prop and a plastic bag and rubber band for a radiator cap. But the old nail it was still running!
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Trip Six • Algeria, Mali, Mauritania • 1989 • pp.225-245
Lost my pics on this trip, thanks to Air Mauritanie, a long ride with 'Steve' on which I realised whatever the desert throws at you, you got to deal with other people too...
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