Team GWA, Paris – Dakar Rally

Had four very rewarding days back in Morocco to get some more last minute road book training in. The first two days were using GPS with the first day hampered by some unseasonal  rain that had recently fallen filling some previously dried up river beds, and making for some tricky crossings. The area we were aiming for turned out to be completely inaccessible by our off-road route and we ended up doubling back and doing a stint by road eventually getting in just before dark. The second day was a combination of fast trails, open desert and a large stone field, I spent the last few hours riding alone and arrived at our hotel shortly after Tamsin Jones & Andrew

which pleased me on my pace. The third day we used a road book from a previous Dakar event and ended in the sand dunes at Mersouga riding in the dark for the last hour which made navigation pretty tricky and me very thankful of my xenon headlights. The last day was by road book and was a previous maroc rallye stage starting with 90 km on the road followed by a deep rutted sandy trail that seemed to go on for ever. We then had a variety of fast stoney trails, some open desert plains, a boulder field and some beautiful mountain pistes. We rode 560 km in total, 370 of which were off-road and took a total of twelve hours, we only stopped the once for around half an hour to take on fuel and some very welcome refreshments.