The red issue
Dickie Fincher has bought himself a Ducati DesertX Rally and wants to go and play in the desert. Now he just needs to find one. How handy that a new cross-country trail has just opened somewhere warm…
Photography Dickie Fincher, Chris Scott, Henry Barney
It is the end of November and, therefore, entirely grim outside. Cold to the point of freezing, mizzle to complete visor-fogging duties and, being after 4.30pm, now quite dark. Getting ready has been a layering caper balancing cold against bulk. I’m trying to pack as lightly as possible to make the most of an upside that is currently inconceivable. Allegedly anything worn now will be peeled off in three days, packed somewhere aboard the bike and transported across hundreds of kilometres of Moroccan desert. What could be more ideal?
As the most quirky, sort-of accessible and definitely most-likely-to-be-warm spot you can ride a bike in winter, Morocco’s appeal has been heightened by the Trans Morocco Trail. This multi-thousand-kilometre romp over mountain range, through gorge and along dusty piste has been assembled by Adventure Motorcycling Handbook and Morocco Overland author Chris Scott, and perennial desert biker Ed Gill. Using back roads and a mix of trail and piste, the intention is for 4x4s, bicycles and full-sized adventure bikes to be able to savour the country. For those who follow such things it’s more like the Adventure Country Trails (ACT) routes rather than the well-established lightweight adventurers’ Trans European Trail (TET).
I’ve ridden here recently on one of Chris’ tours. We rented BMW G310GSs, loved the mix of road and trail, found it all achievable and very enjoyable on the smaller bikes, and generally agreed there was no need for anything bigger. But that was last year. Fast-forward six months to the glare of a Ducati showroom and it became clear that not only was a DesertX the only way to re-enjoy my North African fantasies, but it would have to be the additionally suspended, carbon-fibre-bashplated Rally version.
Chris believes with some zealotry that if a bike can’t be paddled or picked up it’s not much use as an adventure bike. There’s a fighting chance he may be right. Can the Ducati’s sublime balance and suspension make up for its nonsensical seat height? I contacted Chris to advise him that not only was I returning to explore further, but I was now suitably over-equipped for such an expedition. ‘At least the bashplate will burn nicely’, was his response.
Fired by mutual curiosity and his desire to revisit the mouth of the Draa (surely a location from The Lord of the Rings), we agreed to meet up in Marrakesh and explore the Atlantic end of the TMT. ‘It’s the most interesting and photogenic bit of the whole route’, Chris confides. Hence you find me, padded out like a kendo target, unable to get my leg over the vertiginous seat of the loaded DXR. Unless I can find a squire and a portable mounting block there may be a very ignoble end to this trip.
Fortunately, a friend, freshly back from riding to Tibet, has decided to up his annual country count further and is joining me on his BMW R1250GS. Unfortunately, we are meeting an hour down the road towards Portsmouth, so Henry forgoes delivering on the only reason I asked him along. I somehow clamber on and we converge near Towcester to find ourselves bleakly withstanding minus temperatures down the A34. The hows and whats of the road to Marrakesh are covered elsewhere; the ferries ferry us, Spain is motorwayed in a day and we slow down once in Africa to start soaking in the late-summer temperature and superb roads that begin within a few miles of Tangier Med port. Wriggling our way through olive groves set onto green hillsides, we don’t need to rush so I’ve planned a few trails to get us in the off-road groove, test the tyres and check our navigation in advance of the TMT proper.
The roads wind through slowly flattening hills, the terrain turning slowly to irrigated ochre plains. As we head further south the traffic mix increases. Donkey carts, three-wheel trucks and random meandering pedestrians need to be accounted for. The road into Marrakesh is a dual carriageway with a dust shoulder that is also available for manoeuvres. Vehicles choose the clearest path and dart forwards. We pick a couple of boldly ridden scooters and cling onto their tinkling exhausts, weaving through an opaque soup of buses, carts, hooting cars and crocodiles of crossing schoolchildren. It’s heating up in every sense.
We meet Chris near BM-Attitude, the rental shop he uses. It’s also a Mitas dealer so I fit a pair of Enduro Trail XT+. The Trail+ we’ve ridden down on are barely scratched after 1000 miles of motorway, mountains and a few klicks off-road. In the interests of trying something else my DXR will wear the far knobblier 20/80 road/off-road XT+. I can play out my Dakar fantasies and practise leaping canyons; the others are intrigued to see if I fall off on the first corner.
The plan is polished over some excellent pastries down the street from the shop.
Monstrous floods hit Morocco a month before the more widely publicised Spanish disaster. Reports from early trail trialists are coming back suggesting some sections verge on impassable. An advantage of publicised routes is that diversions and options are always being posted on either the Horizons Unlimited forum or the TMT Facebook page, which is already getting quite well travelled.
The first day is a couple of hundred kilometres down the N9 to Tazenakht to hook up with stage T (out of A-Z) of the TMT. It sounds like we’re linking right near the end, but there’s a good 800km within those final few letters of the alphabet. This road certainly delivers the good stuff we came for. Finally into the High Atlas, we are in an area of turbulent geology. Great bulges of layered rock burst from the ground in multiple shades starting with brown-greys, reddening and yellowing as we ride south. The roads slice through them, freshly laid – or sometimes being re-laid after rockslides. This element of jeopardy turns what could be an Alpine pass into an African one, hence holding a little in hand however enticing the upcoming corner appears.
It’s soon clear the knobbliness of the XT+ isn’t going to be a limiting factor. They turn a tad slower because of their squarer profile and the bike moves more, but in a predictable way. Anyway, the scenery demands riding at adventure rather than head-down pace, and very soon any concerns at riding a big bike on a ‘dirt’ tyre are parked in the ‘remember to reassess if it rains’ portion of the brain.
Tazenakht is a gateway town and rolling down the busy main drag there’s a mix of charcoal griddles, crammed general stores and tyre menders that characterise this region. We pick our way past carts and errant scooters on unfathomable errands to pull into the lodgings. The Bab Sahara is a common layout; shaded walkways around a central courtyard and no water in the pool at this time of year. Better not get pissed and fall in; fortunately there is no beer to facilitate this because that’s the last thing we crave after a long dusty day. Oh well. We tuck into the first of many tagines washed down with mint tea.
The accommodation sets an ongoing trend for odd bathroom layouts. All the relevant components are there, just a little jumbled up. The combined shower and loo with enclosing curtain makes timing ablutions and rearranging the towels, drying washing and toilet paper depending what stage you’re at somewhat critical. We nevertheless manage to set off refreshed and only damp in parts.
Chris rode through this area a few days before and the planned route wasn’t much fun. He also points out that slavishly following the TMT isn’t in the spirit of the thing. Read his books and he stresses they are guides; for riders to build itineraries around. There are enough valleys to choose from to pop us onto the other side of the Anti Atlas and we still get to mix tarmac and trail.
The winter sun throws excellent shadows from mid-afternoon onwards, making the clash of darkness and colour painted across the mountains even more striking. An oasis adds a streak of green into the glowing ochre. We’re chased along its length by fleet kids after a pen or sweets – Bic or bon bon. Breaking free, spiky acacias line a fast, gravelled run towards Aguinane where a twisting dust road between square, flat houses scattered up the valley side gets us to a small hotel on a vantage point looking down the valley. We stand on the roof and watch the sun drop, then post-tagine head back up to stare at the stars.
The following day Chris makes another call to deviate after reports of post-flood mayhem. An earlier rider cracked an engine casing crossing a riverbed on the infamous baby heads, round stones formed and spread densely by flooding. We are now in a wide valley sided by waves of rock that have undergone ferocious force in the past. It curves up from the ground in vast layers of red sedimentary stone. Everywhere we look, every day of the ride we are in Big Scenery.
We break off the road onto a track and soon hit a river crossing with the bikes needing different techniques to handle the stones. Henry uses balance, torque and irresistible mass to roll through and over the rocks. Chris’ much lighter bike can bounce across the surface, with the low seat height allowing firm dabs when it’s deflected off-line. I haven’t got a hope of finding firm footing from my perch so rely on the suspension and steering damper to hold the line, closing my ears as rocks twang off the bashplate. The tyres protect the rims despite taking some vigorous hits. It’s the first time the additional scope of the bike has come properly into play, and I’m liking it.
The evening’s accommodation in Tata is most bearable. There’s a pool complete with water and a bar complete with beer. And a tagine. A young Belgian couple on ageing BMW Dakar 650 singles are here on their first overseas biking adventure. They’ve been inspired by the TMT and are somewhat amazed the living personification of it has turned up in their hotel. They are following the route to the letter and found the chewed-up bits pretty tricky – but got through. Youth and enthusiasm can still triumph.
The following day we’re in a wide valley with a train of humpy, many-layered hills pacing us to the south. It’s as if they want to remind us we might come across camels… which dutifully make an appearance to ensure another Moroccan experience can be ticked off. Now, how about a stage of the classic Dakar route to close the deal?
What are these? Small cairns dot across a dried-out clay pan detailing an old stage from the ’90s. Here’s a fine place to test the DXR’s credentials. Rallyists exceed 100mph for miles; I manage 85mph before fear overtakes me and flags me down to a saner pace. My suspicion that a loaded adventure bike, albeit with fancy suspension and decent tyres, won’t match a dedicated race machine is some consolation but the key element missing may be in my nether regions. I wait for the others under a tree, humbled, when a text arrives from Chris asking where I am.
Given that I am in the middle of what most would call a very deserted desert surrounded by mountains, this is one of the great reassurances of riding here: you’re almost always in touch. It appears my enthusiasm has fired me 20km in the wrong direction, so I head back contemplating the surroundings rather than generating a brown streak across the chott (tellingly also pronounced ‘shatt’). It turns out that riding the terrain is the pleasure – reading river beds, wind-blown sand, clay, gravel… it’s so engaging. It ties into the geography around you, and nowhere is this subject quite so in your goggles.
Our speedy rally route turns into a stony cruncher of a trail pretty much at the point Chris suggests it might. He uses the term ‘beyond the last village’ in Morocco Overland, which suggests any further exploration involves following the footsteps of lost Roman legions. More prosaically it indicates a track to said village is properly maintained and those onwards are probably an old shortcut that’s been rendered irrelevant by the ongoing tarmacification of the south. This is one of these. Again, the Ducati steals a march, but then so it should – it costs four times as much as the CFMoto, which resolutely arrives intact. The GS simply gets there, as per usual. Our suspension, luggage mountings, tyres and internal organs are given a vigorous working over but there are no casualties. We later hear our Belgian chums snapped off a top box on the same trail.
On to stage Y of the TMT. Very near the end. We’ve had the Anti-Atlas to our North and the River Draa to our south for the past 150km; now we wind back over them where there’s around 50km of trail before hitting the N1. On this penultimate trail Henry’s rear tyre picks up a proper cut a couple of klicks short of the road. We wedge in three gummy strings and manage to hold a few psi in the tyre to creep up to the tarmac. We’re now losing light and I head off to the hotel to check the path.
The Ksar Tafnidilt self-describes as a ‘4x4 hotel’ and they aren’t kidding. In the dusk it’s clear there is a very stony track with long patches of deep sand and the odd camel to pick my way through. I plough on and spot a slightly less formidable route to try on the return. By the time we meet up it’s dark, but our lights are bright enough to safely chug along, with the GS’s flat at least giving Henry traction in the sand. We arrive through the gate to find a large group of French riders on a guided tour are sitting down for supper. We hastily dump clobber in rooms to join them. They have ridden down the Plage Blanche, a famous beach ride to the north, and are taking our route tomorrow, in reverse.
They set off before us in the morning and take the sandy side of the old Ksar, making a spectacular meal of it and tumbling off with disconcerting abandon. We go the other way and miss the fun. By the time we get into Tan-Tan the Mitas has run for over 60km with no air, including 15km of off-road. If you’re going to get a puncture, it may as well be in a tyre that can get you out of trouble. Meanwhile, I’m on fumes and run out 200m from the fuel station. I’ll take that bit of luck. A tyre shop is a little further into town and I’m not saying GSs get everywhere but the guy has the Torx sockets in his hand before Henry’s switched off the engine. It’s a big split but the carcass hasn’t degraded and the repair is sound – there’s a big difference between what’s legal in northern Europe and what works in the rest of the world.
The final haul to the end of the TMT is on the road to Cap Draa because the ford across the river is impassable. Seeing the Atlantic opening up in front of us, complete with breakers rolling up the estuary, is quite strange. The past 10 days have been rocky, vertiginous and arid. A big wide blue ocean is at odds with what we’ve acclimatised to, but it certainly feels good to jump into.
Celebratory pics happily snapped, it’s four hours up to Agadir then three hours on the motorway back to Marrakesh. Henry has added another couple of countries to his list, Chris has revisited the mouth of the Draa and I have given the Rally a proper deserting. We’ve checked out a chunk of the TMT and agree the balance between road, trail, exploring, experience and challenge is indeed sweet. What a complete motorcycling experience.
Well, nearly. With all this riding down and around, we don’t actually have enough time to get back. Yes, it could be done in four long days, straight into European winter. Or we could park the bikes in Marrakesh, fly home and recover them in the spring at a more genteel pace. Perhaps via the northern end of the TMT. Or the Portuguese ACT. Or the Spanish TET. Or a bit of all three…
How to ride to Marrakesh in four days
What’s the point in having a fab adventure bike and not having adventures on it? If you want dirt and heat, Spain and Portugal have thousands of kilometres of long desert-like trails. Add in an extra ferry and Morocco is the closest place to feel totally foreign, and it’s warmer in winter. So that’s where we went.
Biscay was benign and reintroduced us to the idea that the further south we go, the warmer it gets. Brittany Ferries’ Thursday night to Saturday morning crossing from Portsmouth is super-efficient and gets us to Santander by 8am.
Spain can be dispatched in a day – bigger adventure bikes make chugging along at 75mph bearable, though the Ducati is not the greatest travel bike as it arrives stock. The GS just got there, shrugging off 660 miles as if it was on a warm down from riding to Tibet. Through Picos mizzle, the weather eases onto the Meseta Central. We stop the night in Seville and hit a brutal headwind on the final few miles in the morning. Ferry tickets to Tangier Med are sold at service stations as we near. We buy one for the next crossing and follow the signs. It’s all straightforward. Spain, we shall give you more attention on the way back.
The Strait of Gibraltar appear to operate the same rules as Moroccan city traffic, and our bold but underpowered ferry is nearly punted into the Atlantic by a tanker that enforces its right of way by steering straight for us and being much bigger. Suitably reminded of what’s waiting for us, we clear customs with a few questions, get the tiny white imported vehicle card, grab a local SIM card, buy 10 days’ third-party insurance at a rather fruity 50 Euros, and press on.
Tangier Med, east of Tangiers, is clear of much population. Within minutes we’re twisting up through a lush valley on tiny roads. It’s greener than we were expecting, and the ridges and peaks reach up over 2000ft. This is the far end of the Rif (rhymes with spliff). The villages are a fair distance apart and we can keep moving well at a pace suiting the bikes and the scenery.
We skirt Tetouan, aiming for a first night south of Chefchaouen. The less said about carting luggage up and down this bonkers blue city’s microscopic streets, the better. You can get to Marrakesh in six hours by jumping on the motorway at the port. But we had time to spare so poked around the north for a couple of days. It slowly turns more orange as you get out of the mountains below Meknes, then once past the phosphate mining centre of Khouribga it’s irrigated all the way to Marrakesh.
Goats in trees
Mountain goats are a byword for sure-footedness, but goats in trees? As the hardened bikers of this organ are so keen to remind me, my family business sells haircare products. One of the more successful of these lines is an oil that originally came from the partially digested fruit of the argan tree. This tree is a marvel, growing in almost barren ground and helping as a barrier to desertification, its fruit giving an incredibly versatile oil. Argan trees are very evident along the coast road, but could I find one covered in goats? I finally struck the required goat/tree interface just north of Agadir. It really is the least likely sight watching these creatures nimbly nibbling among the branches. Family connection or not, I didn’t feel the urge to scoop any of their golden poop.
How to find your way
Your GPS probably won’t have a Morocco map installed and using data for phone mapping could get very expensive – though buying a local SIM card is worthwhile to avoid epic roaming charges and can get around this issue. You can also download apps such as OsmAnd that work offline using the phone’s GPS.
I spent a lot of time prior to the trip messing around with phones, Garmin and the Ducati’s onboard system, with the result that we are standing on the shore of a very large lake that shouldn’t be here. We take a moment to assess why Henry’s identical satnav, a Garmin Zumo XT, is showing a road around this lake and why mine suggests we might get across.
There’s a crucial difference between ‘tracks’ and ‘routes’ when importing info into a Garmin, because one follows points on the map, and the other locks to roads. Since we are planning to ride off-road I tend to use tracks to allow us to aim at points and pick the best way there. If you’re an IT cheapskate and grab free maps, many won’t have ‘routable’ roads when imported into a Garmin, so even though the machine will find a road they won’t necessarily add in lots of other functionality like re-routing, distance countdowns or indeed noticing lakes. Henry bought the Garmin Africa pack, so has routable maps which misses out my watery interlude.
I graciously allow him to go in front to give us a fighting chance of not falling into another reservoir before we get there. We use tracks once we hit the south to avoid being rerouted back onto tarmac.
What I did to the DesertX Rally
At 19 grand, you’d hope most of the bike is sorted. But there are key bits to make it bearable over longer distances…
HAULING STUFF
Luggage is Kriega’s OS system which has a soft rack with a couple of 18-litre panniers – the whole lot detaches when parked up for the night and is juggled into the hotel room along with a tank bag, camera bag and rucksack. I never make the process look elegant.
COMFORT CARRY-ON
The original Rally seat is, it turns out, supplied by the Spanish Inquisition’s expedition department. The screen and mirrors that came with the bike also contrived to deliver such a buffeting above 60mph that I thought I was following an invisible jet. After much fiddling I settled on a smaller screen, adjustable mirrors and Wunderlich seat.
PRE-PACKED WHATNOTS
The Ducati Garmin Zumo XT, crash bars and their allegedly strengthened hand protectors are ridiculously overpriced but came as a package. I’ll swap the hand guards for something sturdier and eventually switch to phone-based nav using an old phone.
RALLYING FOR THE CAUSE
The Rally’s carbon bashplate makes an excellent noise when stones ping off it; much more exuberant than the tinny rattle from a metal one. Its upgraded suspension and wheels seemed to prove their worth in Morocco. I could ride more comfortably (and therefore faster if I wanted) than the other bikes over messy terrain and it just sucked it up. But then it’s a £19k off-road-focused adventure bike, so it jolly well should…
What tyres?
Adventure riders collapse into a quandary over tyres. They must be quiet, grippy on wet roads and not wear out on motorways. They have to be fun on a mountain pass, bite into trails, retain air ridden across jagged rock and fire over dunes. And last 10,000 miles. Can one tyre do all this? Is there a rubbery unicorn?
Perhaps backtrack and pose the question to the riders. Can we do all of this? Do we need to? We discuss seeking out sand and agree we’d rather beat our genitalia with a splintery plank than take a laden adventure bike into soft sand. Chris has routed the TMT to be accessible rather than a trial, and it turns out sand isn’t part of the mix. We are left with the requirement for a durable tyre that works on road, piste and rocky trail. We went for Mitas’ Enduro Trail+, a 60/40 road-biased chevron pattern with deep 11mm lugs on the rear. Surely enough bite and rubber to complete the trip, but would it lose any of the fun? The DXR is famously entertaining on the OE Pirellis. Happily, the canyon-carving is as joyful as any riding I’ve done, the DXR losing none of its poise and control. Add wet grip proven in the UK and Picos, and predictable trail behaviour, and I was happy.
On the GS, Henry thought the Trail+ were noisier over 60mph than the Dunlop Trailmax, but more predictable off-road: ‘They’re a true 60/40 rather than the Dunlops, which are more road-biased. They have plenty of life left after the trip so will be fine for the next one.’
‘I am the TMT’
Chris Scott could be viewed as the original adventure motorcyclist. There were plenty of adventurous bikers before, but he’s credited as being the first to coin the term and detail not only his experiences but how to replicate them. His Adventure Motorcycling Handbook, Sahara Overland, Overlanders’ Handbook and Morocco Overland are feted by folk like Michael Palin and Ewan McGregor. The titles suggest that when it comes to travelling over land somewhere hot there isn’t a lot he hasn’t seen and done.
His first passion was climbing, and he used bikes as cheap transport to despatch and get from London to north Wales. Since 1982 he’s travelled with 4x4s, trucks, camels, bicycles and pack rafts.
Now in his 60s and still travelling, guiding and writing, he lapped Morocco by bike and 4x4 for months to update the fourth edition of Morocco Overland. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his semi-arid life, Chris can be very dry. It comes across in his writing where you find serious points delivered in a witty, readable style. In person his experience is offered quietly, but thoughts on big adventure bikes take little prompting. He is a confirmed sceptic regarding overloaded overlanding – his view is if you can’t paddle or pick up a bike, it’s a liability.
When assessing a route, Chris’ depth of knowledge is verging on the mystical. He hasn’t been along parts of the TMT for years yet can predict almost to the metre how conditions will change. His vast internal databank and constantly updated notebook is now linked to a two-way feed of TMT social media. It’s like riding with someone who always has a terrain-following drone ahead (unlikely in Morocco – drones are illegal).
When we meet up with the Belgians, they are extremely keen to understand if we’re also following the TMT. As the first group he’s met inspired by his new project, this is Chris’ moment – and he doesn’t disappoint. He looks gravely across at them, exuding four decades of desert travel complete with thousand yard stare, and states: ‘I AM the TMT’. And then he can’t hold the serious face anymore.