ANOTHER EMAIL REPLY (maybe useful)

What kind of tent did you take? Also any essentials you recommend taking with you?

for camping, we took a North Face Tadpole 23. Very light and pretty quick to pitch, as well as being solid in strong winds, it also has the option of just pitching the inner, which is nice on warm clear nights so you can look up at the stars before you sleep. Light one season sleeping bags were warm enough for the coldest nights, and we also brought sleeping bag liners which were good when it was too hot for the sleeping bags. Essentials... hmmm...
- big water bottle holders (taking standard supermarket 1.5 litre plastic bottles) attached to your bikes. We found these pretty handy.
- a Trangia camping stove running on meths/alcohol - sometimes you'll want to eat something warm.
- Sporks! they're made by Light My Fire, and they are pretty much indestructible plastic fork/spoon/knifes all in one. Really quick to clean as well. Useful for eating yogurt in the middle of the day from those big pots, or spreading jam on delicious french bakery bread. Keep them to hand in the top of your panniers.
- Waterproof map holder which attaches to the handlebars of one of your bikes. Really really useful, and for me, an essential. Means you don't have to stop and dig in the bags whenever you need to look at the map, which will be very often!
- Light raincoats. It rains in France in summer sometimes, especially in the North.
- Some long trousers. Good to protect against mosquitos in the evenings. Also to fit in more when you get to Morocco. Moroccans almost never wear shorts, except on the beach. Unfortunately if a woman you will probably get a lot of unwanted attention from Moroccan men if you don't have a top with a high neck and long sleeves to wear in the streets. A scarf to cover your neck is also useful (you shouldn't feel forced to wear it as a headscarf, though). Apologies if you've already been to a muslim country and know all this already!

SOME INFO FOR POTENTIAL CROSS-CONTINENTAL CYCLISTS

Hi!
We've had a few emails recently from folks who've seen our blog and contacted us for more info. I'm just gonna post my replies on the blog from now on so that people might be more likely to have their questions answered before having to ask them. So here's the first one..




Thanks for your email, I'm glad someone else is taking up the challenge! Here's some info.

HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE?
Claire and I took four and a half weeks to cycle from Cheltenham to Gibraltar. This included two days off. Except for a couple of exceptions, we covered at least 60 miles a day, and often we did a bit more. One day we did 100 miles. You might want to set aside a few more days as off-days. Our original plan was to take one day off every week but that plan changed after we got itchy feet on our first day off. We found it uncomfortable to be stationary for an entire day, but on the whole I think it is healthy once in a while! Sundays are an ideal off-day because things don't open early in the French and Spanish countryside, if at all, so it's hard to fuel up one the road.

IDEAL ROUTES?
It may be hard to work out our route from our blog, so I'll briefly explain. Approximately, get a map of Europe and draw a straight line between Caen (Normandy), and Perpignan (Languedoc-Roussillon), then bend it slightly to the left to avoid the Massif Central mountains in south central France. We didn't cross the border at the coast, but further inland on small roads south of Amelie-les-Bains. Once in Spain we kept to the Catalonian mountains to avoid the crowded and industrial coast. We hit the sea just before leaving Catalonia, at the Ebro Delta. We then kept to the coast until just before Valencia, from where we went inland on a trajectory including Albacete, Alcaraz, Jaen, Baena, Campillos, Ronda, and finally Gibraltar.
It turned out to be a very beautiful route, and fairly quick, especially the French bit which avoided mountains altogether until the Pyrenees. The Spanish bit was pretty much unremittingly mountainous, but I think that's hard to avoid in Spain.
Possible variations which I'd do if I had more time... - staying on the coast in Spain rather than going inland, taking in south Valencia and Murcia (I've heard their coastlines are incredibly beautiful).
-Going straight throught the middle of the Pyrenees for some epic mountain cycling would take in gorgeous Aragon and leave out Catalonia, which I found a wee bit industrialised and free and quiet country roads.
-Following the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal all the way would take a lot longer, but would, I think, be the most beautiful way of doing it. If I had eight weeks or so free this summer, I'd be off like a shot.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR?
-Sundays: hard to buy food if you're only going through villages. This applies to France and Spain.
-Spanish mountains: bigger and steeper and denser than you think. All over the place.
-Brake pads: carry plenty of spares. They can get worn down very quickly on a lumpy day.
-Rain in Northern France: common and comes without warning.
-Cycling from Algeciras to Tarifa, so as to reach the southernmost point of Spain: the only way is along a very busy motorway. Believe me, we tried to find alternatives for two whole days, and failed. You could do it if your coming from the West.
-Ferry to morocco: From Algeciras or Tarifa, I wouild recommend getting a ferry to Ceuta (the spanish enclave in morocco) and then goin over the border by road. This avoids Tangier altogether, which is great, because it's not a nice city, the ferry terminal is full of nasty people, and the customs process is a long-winded waste of your time. Basically walking over the border at Ceuta is a nicer introduction to the country.

GENERAL ADVICE?
Plenty more to tell, but I'm not sure what would be useful. If you need more info, feel free to email me.

Matt

This is our final blog entry

Here is our last blog entry... we are back in drizzly England, back to normality (of sorts).
We went to collect our bikes from RAF Lyneham the-day-before-yesterday (thanks Commadore Parr!), and spent yesterday cycling! we cycled from Matts Grandparents in Didcot to oxford, a lovely un-challenging cycle. It's really good to be pedalling again.

Anyway, we had planned to still be in Morocco...so why are we back????
We had to leave our charity project in a hurry when Claire was struck down with a vicious bout of DYSENTERY! Spent a delightful couple of days in hospital and bed-bound in Marrakech hotels while Matt organised last minute flights back. Claire was reeeeaaaally poorly! (dehydrated, delusional and unable to eat or drink). The return flight did pass without 'incident' because she had not eaten for a while.

She's better now, though, and is raring to run and jump and cycle cycle cycle! She just needed home cooked food that wasn't veggie couscous - thanks Claire's mum!

Thanks to everyone who followed our blog - we like hearing from people that they've been avidly following our progress!

And thanks to all our sponsors. We're putting together a report which you will hopefully enjoy. We got a letter from WaterAid thanking us and you for all the money - the amount we raised (over £3000) is enough to pay masons to work on wells serving 30,000 people!

What we have been up too in brief...

so...we left you in Azrou....
¤ we travelled to Marrakech wiv our friends nadia and gregg in there hippy van (matt had the shits, but took a bum blocker so survived the journey,

¤ on the way we camped on top of amazing waterfalls,

¤spent a night in Marrakech, claire was poorly and tired so not much happened,

¤took off to Essaouira on a nice bus because claire felt poorly,

¤spent three days in Essaouira, it was rubbish, touristy, wasternised and lots and lots of hassel due to the extreme poverty just behind the affluent waterfront, our campsite was so sos so so windy and sandy, we did however find a lovely resturant and matt took claire for a lovely meal because she still felt poorly,

¤too cheer ourselfs up we rented a car for 4 days to take off southwards to explore the lesser known morocco,

we....
discovered amazing argan oil and bought a big big bottle from a happy bloke on the side of the road,

drove to tafraoute which was hot and beautiful in the middle of the anti atlas the most dramatic mountains matt has ever seen!
we bought claire some pretty moroccan shoes, matt knows the proper word as always...babouches

we then drove further south the next day...too the desert! the beginning of the Sahara! didnt see any big sand dunes just rocky wilderness,

we visited an oasis with lots of palm trees, but found people to be very odd in a scary way so retreated to some hotsprings to set up camp! claire had a swim in the ladies only srings and was a real hit with her cool (blonde) hair! unfortunately there were also strange people there and we were kept up in the night by wife beating and plain madness!

we obviously skidaddled in the morning... We got completely off the beaten track, abandoning the tarmac for dirt tracks; we discovered an amazing, lush valley in the middle of the hot desert hills where a trickle of water had inspired people to settle and turn the landscape green!

We then headed back northwards, hitting the coast on the way; we stopped at a brilliant beach (no tourists, just moroccan lads larking about in the surf). We joined in the fun of confronting the huge waves - we got tossed and turned and battered and slept well that night... in Tiznit, the town where everyone wes trying to pick our pockets (so we retreated to the campsite and our tent).

Yesterday we returned to Essaouira, via the Souss-Massa National Park, Morocco's most important, to do some bird watching. Matt was thrilled... Claire doesn't like birds.

Bought more argan oiland returned to Essaouira. In an hour we'll be on a bus to Marrakech to catch the train to Rabat to stay with our new friend Najib.

So where are we?..... Azrou!!!!

still having an amazing time... been to fez seen amazing things....seen women making carpets at the most phenomenal speed!!!!!!!!!!!!! most amazing women we have ever seen. we would love to decorate our home from the medina in fes...maybe one day. We also saw the most beautiful plate in the entire world, but more about that when we return home. While in fes we stayed in a hotel which had both the toilet (hole in the ground) and shower in the same 1 meter square space, smelly!! oh, i was using one of these holes to pee in the medina, as you do...and two rats jumped out of the hole.

Fes is a beautiful, really interesting city and one day is nowhere near long enough to get even a slight impression of its depth! We did spend the whole day in the medina and finished our day by watching the sun set over the city... nice!

now we are in Asrou, once again with our new found friends also traveling around morocco. we spent the day today on a day trip with them seeing a place where 36 springs burst out of the Middle Atlas mountains to form radids that gush down the hill... there was a freezing cold rocky pool next to one of them in which we swam escaping the dry heat... which was lovely.

at the moment we are meeting a morocco couple who we meet yesterday, they are the same age as us and have invited as to pass the night with them! we dont really know what this entails but are happy.

bye for now! our plan is to head to the south atlantic coast and travel as far south as we can.

First impressions of Morocco

First stop for us was Tetouan, a fairly big town that bewildered us quite a bit... had a crazy, maze-like old town that we lost ourselves in, looking for new clothes in the souqs; we retraced our steps when we came to the really smelly meat and fish selling part of the medina (this was right next to the tanneries, which made the overpowering ponginess of it all even worse.
The new town was easier to manage, but we were continually being hassled by guys trying to make us part with our cash.
Café-patisseries (french style, but with better stuff on offer - loads of juices, and really sweet honey-drenched Moroccan pastries) were a very good refuge for us, as was our lovely (but noisy as it was right on the main street) hotel.
Despite all the craziness, Claire still managed to buy a beautiful top and red headscarf and some good trousers.
Were now in Chefchaouen, which is a lot calmer, chilling out!

bye for now

Off to Morocco!

Thanks to Healthcare R.M., we have a nice hotel to go to when we reach Morocco tonight with no idea of what to do in a strange new country. This is greatly appreciated and will help us to recuperate after the past month's fun and giggles!

We bought lovely new rucksacks from the industrial estates, and had great fun packing them. Now we're ready to go!

So what now? who knows, we've got nearly four weeks of adventure until we have to be in Marrakesh for our IVS project. We'll keep this updated when we can.

Love from us both, X big kisses.

P.S Claire is the world's worst bag packer...this is her at 7.30 last night after dedicating the entire day to packing!

From us...

"So we have done it! It was hard but not as hard as I believed it would be at times. We didn't suffer from sun burn as I thought we inevitably would, probably because I insisted we stopped every hour to cream up with factor 60! I didn't swallow nearly as many bugs as i thought I would (you swallow less bugs the further south you travel). We took far less days off than we initially planned, and I rediscovered the extent of my determination I sometimes forget I have. I've definitely decided that I do really enjoy cycling up mountains, strangely addictive, and will definitely be doing more in future years, there are many mountains out there. In all truthfullness i didn't really know spain was so incredibly mountainous and perhaps if someone had pointed this out to me a year ago I may not be here right now...so ignorance can sometimes be a very good thing. I'm really lucky to have done such an amazing journey, and to be able to have such an amazing time you need to be in the company of someone you can really rely on" Claire.


"I reckon we're very lucky to be able to do a trip like this - cycling somewhere is a lot more expensive than flying these days, and the support of our families has been essential. I most want to thank my wonderful girlfriend, because I couldn't do a journey like this on my own. She made sure we got going at a decent time in the mornings (even when I was really slow, difficult and in a daze). She also made sure I didn't eat too many biscuits. I will really miss my bicycle these next couple of months but we have so much to look forward to!" Matt


So anyway, thanks to all our sponsors for supporting us, bring safe water to many people in the developing world, and changing our world for the better.