A bike ride to Morocco

During these cold winter weeks, most of us spend our days daydreaming of the heat of summer and where this year's holiday will take us. To help inspire you to Stay Grounded in 2012 and go on a trip with a difference, we got some of our adventurous, travel-loving friends to tell you all about their own Epic Flight Free Journey. Today's post comes from bike-loving Hermione, founder of The DoNation. This trip was the very beginning for The DoNation, a social enterprise for getting people to sponsor you not by paying but by doing.

Two years ago I had a life-changing experience: I went on a cycle ride.

To Morocco.

I set off from London as a total biking novice, naively rolling into France with a poorly photocopied road atlas and barely a muscle to be found on my legs, but returned two months later as a committed cycle-touring convert, fitter than I’ve ever been and brimming with tales from the road.

I’ll share just one story now, from the very last day of our ride.

We’d been cycling up into the High Atlas Mountains for about a week; it was hot, dry, there was little shade and limited water. Food was hard to come by, I’d been struck by a violent out of food poisoning, and no one spoke our language. Hostels and hotels were sparse, so we found ourselves sleeping anywhere from brothels (unbeknown to us at the time) to the ruins of an old barn, with children throwing stones at us while wild dogs prowled and howled around our tent.

On top of that all, it was hilly. Darn hilly.

But we were on the adventure of our lives, so our feet kept pedalling and our spirits soared higher than the mountains themselves. Being on a bike, you’re automatically more approachable and more intriguing than when travelling by car, bus, or train; wherever you are people want to stop and help and to hear your story. So we were constantly experiencing the incredible kindness of the local people: women opened up their houses to us and shared their dying mother’s food with us (quite literally, although again, we didn’t know that at the time…); villagers invited us into their wedding celebrations; and truck drivers pulled over to share pomegranates and dates with us.

With their encouragement, we were able to keep on pushing up into the heart of the Atlas
until we’d almost reached the final pass.

Almost.

On the final day of cycling, after covering 3,500km with not so much as a puncture, my chain snapped. We’d been climbing a long sandy road for three hours, with no shade and no civilisation in sight; we were tired, hungry, thirsty, and helpless. I’d carried a heavy chain- repair tool in my pannier all the way from London, but of course, we were two girls: we
hadn’t the first clue how to use it.

Having sat there in the scorching sun for a good hour or two, increasingly irritated with our lack of mechanical know-how, I admitted defeat and removed the chain, using our final bit of energy to push on up the road by foot. It was almost 20 miles to the next settlement.

But within just ten minutes we reached what we’d assumed to be yet another false-hope horizon, and were overjoyed to realise that this one was in fact the real peak. So we mounted our bikes and I started to freewheel down the road. Down and down and down
and down…

The scenery changed, arid rocky landscapes turned into olive and almond orchards, the road wiggled and wound down the mountainside, down, down, down, mile after mile, until we saw ahead of us the huge shimmering Lake of Bin el-Ouidane. 18 miles of unbroken descent, freewheeling the entire way, until we reached the small lakeside town.

And what did we find in the centre of town? A bike shop.

Our journey to Bin el-Ouidane turned it into the most magical destination imaginable in our eyes, although in reality, I’m sure it was a pretty drab, charmless little place. That’s the main thing that struck me throughout our trip: how much your appreciation of a place is heightened when you travel there by bike, wherever it is and no matter how adventure-
packed the journey there is.

(All images: Hermione) 

When arriving in a destination direct from Heathrow, you get a fairly one-dimensional perspective of the place; when arriving there on your own steam, via it’s surrounding countryside and neighbourhoods, you get a whole other experience. You understand how it fits into the land and the culture, and you’re filled with an enormous sense of satisfaction, as though you’ve truly earned every moment there.

Destinations that are otherwise ‘nice’ turn ‘magical’, those that are magical turn otherworldly.

So go on, get on yer bike this year. Go cycling.

SHARE THIS