Friday 7th April 2006

Early eat all you can breakfast, thus stuffed with plenty calories, then pile on to coaches for a 220K journey over mountains, desert and oasis towns to the remote town of Ait Saadane. Handed our road books and quickly realised that the organisers were determined to maintain the reputation of the race as being the toughest of them all. There were a lot more mountain and dune stages than previous years and, although the long day was shortened to 72K, it looked like it had particularly difficult sections.
En route there were a couple of pee stops and then a lunch stop where we all de-bussed in the middle of the desert for a picnic in the searing heat. It was whilst sitting there I encountered my first scorpion crawling around the rocks. A handy reminder why we had to carry venom pumps. Dozens of children then appeared from nowhere and scrounged the remnants of our lunch. Back to the buses which took us to the road end and we were then loaded into the rear of army lorries to continue the journey into the unknown. Visions of the executions in The Great Escape sprung to mind. Eventually we arrived at our first bivouac. 100 sack type tarpaulins held up by sticks and laid out in a huge circle. We were allocated ‘tent’ areas by nationality. Mark, Barry, Ron and myself found four blokes in tent 87 who were happy to share. Phil Hampden-Smith, a Financial Director, from Singapore, Darren Schlosser a food importer from Kent, Neill Morgan, a drug dealer (medical) from Coventry, but adamant he is Welsh, and Guy Peters an IT Consultant, also from the West Midlands. To add a spot of luxury to the accommodation we cleared the ground/bedroom of the biggest rocks checking for scorpions and camel spiders. So this was it for the rest of the adventure. 3 Scotsmen, 2 Welshmen, and 3 Englishmen, one of whom lived overseas. The banter started straight away and rules were laid down about no talk of sheep, 1966 or the Ashes. The laughter continued until our plane home. Didn’t realise there would be so many flies out here. Perhaps they would go once we started to really smell.
Once we had checked our kit we were amazingly provided with an excellent 3 course meal, wine included. A very impressive achievement catering for around one thousand people in the middle of the desert. An uncomfortable night of farting and snoring ensued, with Neill providing me with fierce competition. The majority of the time, however, was spent marvelling at the stars and worrying about what lay ahead