Category: Travels

Today is the day when we get our first panoramic view down to the dunes of the Moroccan Sahara. The day starts with a straightforward climb over the Laouj Pass, from which, we will see the dunes of the Erg Chegaga laid out in front of us. At this point we will be able to see exactly where we are heading for the remainder of the trek – including the far-off mountains close to the Algerian border and the endless plains of the Iriki Salt Flats, a popular passage for the 4×4 vehicles and motorcycles in the mythical Paris-Dakar rally. Today should be much calmer and from the pass a clear path takes us down some 500m to the plains below. Before reaching the dunes we will cross an area of low desert vegetation interspersed with tamarisk and acacia trees, as well as small date palm oases, and eventually setting up to camp overnight in the dunes at Erg el Rhoul.

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I imagine I am starting to smell by this point.
I’m probably whining a bit as well.

This is our last full day in the Jebel Bani range and today’s hike takes us on a gradual climb along the ridge of the range towards the Tizi Laouj. “Tizi” means “Pass” in the Berber language and throughout the day the dunes will remain hidden from view by the mountain ridge, leaving something magical to look forward to on Day 5. The pattern of the days will start to establish themselves as we get into the rhythm and pace of the desert and tonight’s camp will be set up below the pass. Dinner and overnight wild camp below the Tizi Laouj.

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After our first camp breakfast we start our trek with a days hiking across the Jebel Bani. The Bani is a wild range of mountains to the north of the dunes of the Sahara, and the first three days of the hike takes us across an open landscape of Hamada (rock desert) punctuated by acacia trees and the occasional palm oasis. Today’s hike offers a relatively easy start with a gradual climb over the Col de Foum Laachar (1100m) with lunch in large mess tents before a plateau hike takes us gradually down to Sidi Bou Twama which sits at 850m above sea level. Here we’ll set up camp and enjoy another evening under the stars.

Donate to The Prince’s Trust here.

Today we head out into the wild.

Setting off after breakfast in a convoy of private 4×4 vehicles we will head southwards on a dramatic route over the spine of the highest and most extensive mountain range in North Africa, the High Atlas. At 2260m above sea level, the Tichka Pass is one of the country’s highest paved roads, as well as one of the most scenic. It provides a sinuous passage between the plains and fertile lands of the north and the oases and stark mountain ranges of the south. Crossing the pass we’ll notice a change of landscape as the desert begins to make its mark on the physical environment. The south is characterised by sweeping desert landscapes, big skies, palm oases, mud villages and emblematic earth-brick Kasbahs. En-route we will stop at one such Kasbah – Ait Benhaddou – a 12th century fortified village with film-set imagery and excellent views over the surrounding expanse of desert and mountains. After lunching in a restaurant in the Ouarzazate region we’ll continue down the Draa Valley (an immense date palm plantation) to Zagora, the gateway to the Moroccan Sahara. Shortly after Zagora we will head off road for the last hour or so as we complete our journey in the Jebel Bani Mountains. On arrival at our first camp we will meet our team of cooks, guides, camels and their handlers. Here we will have a welcome dinner and camp at Fejia.

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Good day fellows.
I’ve managed to queue a post for each day of the trek as I won’t have any kind of signal and I figure you might be interested. I’m just taking the details from the itinerary I’ve been provided with.

When this goes live I will be up in the air.

Upon arrival in Marrakech, we will be met at the airport by our group tour leader and taken by private minibus to our city centre accommodation. Having settled into the hotel, we will be given an introductory briefing by the group tour leader before heading out for a group meal on the celebrated Jemaa el Fna Square.

Donate to The Prince’s Trust here.

I’ve finally stopped moving. It’s the first time in a week I’ve been able to say that. I flew from Southend to Amsterdam, back again, and then on to Glastonbury. Today is the first time I’ve not had to go go go. It feels pretty sobering, and sort of awful with it. I’d like to continue this model of just disappearing off on jaunts, of having adventures, but that’s what my whole writing gig is about, it’s what I want to do. I need to fund these things by working and until someone pays me to write, I work for a living, rather than getting to live for my work. 

Our trip to Amsterdam was rightfully magnificent though. I call it ours because I took Kate. It was her birthday present, and although I would never have thought of it as being her cup of tea, she mentioned how much she would like to go there at the start of the year and I made it so. The joy of Southend airport now flying to Amsterdam is just awesome. It didn’t feel as though we were up in the air long enough for us to have crossed any real kind of boundary and so we found ourselves dragging our confused selves onto a train at Schiphol airport and wondering why tannoy announcements were not in our mother tongue. Twenty minutes later we were in Amsterdam. Ten minutes later we were on the Overtoom apologising to the owner of our rented apartment for being quite so timely. We left her to clean and wandered around the Vondelpark, eating paprika crisps and taking photos. When we returned to our 70’s themed lodging, we just dropped everything and took off for Central, not really knowing what to do or where to go exactly. 

The trick is to follow the trams. All the trams of Amsterdam appear to have a final destination of Amsterdam Centraal station and you don’t need to go far for the famous sights of prostitution, magic truffles and marijuana. Of course Kate wanted to do all three, simultaneously, whilst racking up lines of coke, kicking children with clogs and throwing brownies at swans. I kept her on the straight and narrow. We wandered lonely as a cloud, of hash pipe smoke, and eventually came across Baba, a cafe made famous by it’s appearance in my book of short stories Where Did All The Money Go?

(I should point out it was famous before I wrote about it).

Now, I have been told the best coffee shops are to be found on the outskirts, away from the well-worn tourist traps of Amsterdam central and that may well be but I’m all for embracing my inner tourist, especially when on a city break. 
Baba is just cool. It has everything you need, the staff have always been friendly and helpful, and their brownies are delicious if not somewhat paranoia-inducing. I treated Kate to a coffee and a brownie and then bought a couple of joints before we tried to walk back to our apartment. Somehow this proved to be a lot harder than finding Amsterdam Centraal had been. We walked alongside canals, over bridges, over more bridges, beside canals, over canals, beside bridges and eventually found our way to the Vondelpark, which we assumed was a small park set back from the city. By this point, I felt light. My eyes were a bit heavy but I was walking on the moon. I mentioned this to Kate. Being the man of the world I am, I wanted to make sure she was okay because she’s not one for sporadic drug use in any way, shape or form, and I have  something of a history of it, especially during my student days. Again, it’s all in the book. 
Our conversation went something like this:
Paul: I feel really light
Kate: Do you?
Paul: Yeah, do you?
Kate: No. I’m wearing Doc Martens, it’s impossible to feel light in Doc Martens.
Paul: Good point. 

We started on our way through the park. It was picturesque and dusky. Everything was beautiful and at peace and suddenly a deranged homeless man in double denim started rambling towards us. Ordinarily, I would have used the powers of reasoning and deduction to deal with the situation. For some reason they seemed to abandon me and so instead I entered into a game of Chicken with this poor man who had been fucked over by life. He reached out for me, and for a split second the delusional state I was in meant my brain was screaming ‘HIT HIM! HIT THE HOMELESS MAN!’
Luckily, another unfortunate sort on a bicycle came past and distracted him so we were free to go. For some reason the Vondelpark was constructed to meander all over the place like a snake playing jazz. We walked for what felt like three hours, trying to pretend everything was fine, and then it started raining and we ran back to the street to get our bearings. We were only about halfway back by this point, but being back on the main road made everything seem that much easier. 

When we got in, we shook off the rain, made tea, sat on the balcony and had a joint together. As I’ve said before, there’s something beautiful and bonding about sharing a joint with someone, it’s like the peace pipe of the modern age. It was a really nice experience. Then we settled down to watch Kill Bill and freak our freaking noggins off. I can’t really remember what happened but Kill Bill is a very intense film to watch when high. The colours seemed sharper than blades. We didn’t say a word for over an hour and then my intense cotton mouth meant I had to head to the kitchen for some juice. Then, something like this happened.
Paul: Here you go
Kate: Thanks
Paul: It’s tropical
Kate drinks
Kate: Goddamn, that’s some good juice. 
Paul: I know! Do you want some crisps?
Kate: Really badly
Paul goes for crisps
Kate: Bring the biscuits in as well
Paul returns with both crisps and biscuits
Paul: I need to shut the curtains, people can see in
Kate: Don’t worry
Paul: I’m not, I just need to shut them
Paul gets up and shuts curtains
Kate: Oh my god, it looks like the walls are closing in on me, open the curtains
Paul: Kate, don’t be silly. It’s fine. 
Kate: No, I don’t like it
Paul: Oh wow, come and feel this fabric, these curtains are amazing. 
Kate: I can’t! My legs don’t work!
That seemed to settle the matter and I returned to the sofa. Everything became very funny, see.
At some point, I put Kill Bill Vol. 2 on, but I couldn’t remember doing it, and we freaked out over the fact we had forgotten which parts of which films occurred in each. Then we went to bed. 

The following morning we went to Anne Frank’s house. Kate had recently read her diary, and it was to be a key part of our trip. We arrived at about ten o’clock by which point there was a queue of about two hundred people already outside. The problem of being in a city for three days is you can really only do things if you aren’t going to spend upwards of four hours queuing for them. We decided to take a canal boat cruise around to the other side of Amsterdam and visit some museums. The boat ride was really nice, and we pulled stupid faces at each other to pass the time.

We went to the Van Gogh museum, made famous by it’s appearance in Doctor Who, or if you’re not a fan, then it is made famous by the fact it is a museum dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh. I’m still unsure how to pronounce Van Gogh. 
Seeing his artwork was really inspirational. The famous pieces (Sunflowers, self portraits etc) are all there, and it’s nice to see such a memorable piece of art live up to it’s name and reputation (go fuck yourself Mona Lisa). 

We also visited Amsterdam’s sex museum, which has some of the best unnecessary erotica I’ve ever seen. Regardez, a lice comb:

That evening we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, which boasts some marginally memorable pieces of memorabilia, like the thing someone wore once, or a guitar held by a guitarist etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a geek for that sort of thing, but when there are so many Hard Rock Cafes around the world, the genuinely impressive pieces can get a little sparse. That being said, their Alabama Slammer went down a treat.

After that we went back to the apartment, I had another joint and we watched Donnie Darko, until I fell asleep and missed the ending, and Kate had to carry me to bed. 

Third and final day in Amsterdam, it’s a Tuesday lunchtime, we go and look at some girls in windows:

Note: This is not actually a part of the Red Light District, and is in fact a picture of the back of Kate’s head (excellent bob), beneath a sign in the sex museum. Kate is not a part of the sex industry. 

It turns out that Amsterdam don’t really bring their A-game when it comes to girls in windows on a Tuesday afternoon. Don’t get me wrong, they were all charming, insightful and delightful creatures but they didn’t inspire lust in the way I guess it is expected for the whole thing to work. I’m not sure I could ever pay for sex. Not beyond the way I do currently, the way we all do currently in fact. You buy a girl a drink, technically you’ve paid for sex. Take her to see Frankenweenie at the cinema, technically paid for sex. It’s a tightrope and we’re all dressed in macs, pressed against windows, dribbling. 

We also went for pancakes. One of our favourite films (500 Days Of Summer) has a brilliant scene in a pancake house which spells the end of the relationship between ZDC and JGL.
Wow, I’ve just realised they have initials like airport abbreviations. Cool. 
Where was I? Right. There’s a scene in 500 Days where Summer says “I love these pancakes”, and it’s something we say to each other a lot. If you aren’t us, which odds state you aren’t, then you might not get it, it’s fine. It’s just one of our things. 

So in summary. Go to Amsterdam. I described it once as “Disneyland for students”, but it’s also Center Parcs for drugs, Alton Towers for drink, and a donkey ride down Brighton beach for prostitution. 

I call this one: Cock beside a cock.

When we awoke on Sunday I felt like I had lost half of my body, my legs were just dead weight, I hadn’t been prepared to walk that far. It made me wonder what I’ll be like when I’m out in the Sahara, and have to walk that distance every day. All I could do was hope that the weather was truly awful and that for the most part we would be confined to the inn.
By the time we had finished another hearty breakfast my good luck was in, wind whistled through the gaps in the old building and rain pelted the thin windows from all sides, there was no way we could really go on another adventure.

We took a quick drive down to Lynmouth, to buy some little souvenirs for friends and family, and then stopped in a cafe for tea, scones and shortbread. The weather was just unrelenting, and although we sat for a while and people watched we knew it was going to be a day where we were best of back at the inn so eventually headed back up the hill and settled in with some tea and biscuits to watch TV. I know that sounds like it isn’t the ideal thing to do when you’re away, but the fact of the matter was I couldn’t have done it with anyone else, and enjoyed it as much as I did with Kate.

Even when we did venture out to a pub that evening (under the promise that we would have lobster which was caught in the local bay) we found it so full of backwards, inbred, stitch-faced basterds that we didn’t feel comfortably and just went to eat somewhere we trusted we wouldn’t be gawped at for not being local.

Having spent a couple of days there I now completely understand why it is such big business in Kate’s house. Her, her siblings, and her parents have such a strong bond with the place, and have so many fond memories and it was really nice to be brought in on that, and to understand all of the references. I felt very lucky and very privileged.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday to start out on our big adventures. While Kate got ready I laid in bed watching The Hoobs and reading 1Q84 which is quickly becoming an obsession. Once we were both ready we headed downstairs for breakfast which was one of the best fry ups I’ve had for a long time. It was for the best because I knew we were going to be out walking for the majority of the day and I would need my energy.

From the inn we headed up the road and through a graveyard where we were told we could pick up the path that would lead down the cliff-face to the little seaside town. As we were making our way through we noticed that the church attached was open. There was a sign up to say that they never locked it, and that it was a place of refuge, so we went in. It was absolutely incredible. I’m not really one for organised religion but the stained glass windows and the ambience of this tiny church really got me. We were the only people in there, I’d never had an experience like that before. I had a go on the organ and we took some photos and then we headed down the coastal walk and back to Lynmouth.

From there we took the water-powered Victorian-era Cliff Railway up to Lynton. At this point I noticed that we were the youngest people in the town by about fifty years and that it probably said a lot about our tastes, not that it mattered, it felt like we had discovered something that everyone else was missing out on. At Lynton we sat outside the town hall and wrote funny postcards home and to each other and then we walked out further to the Valley of the Rocks, which is one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited in England. There are three huge hills at its centre covered in loose rock that people climb, including the White Lady which has a tunnel of rocks on its peak that from a certain angle looks like a lady in a hat.

We then headed down to Lee Bay to play in the surf, taking our shoes off and rolling up the cuffs of our trousers (or leggings) to splash about. We then ran out on the rocks that were still above sea level and made silly poses. We got back to Valley of the Rocks and had a pasty and some tea to cover our bellies before the long walk back.

I then stupidly bet Kate that I could run up the biggest of the three hills in two minutes, because I was under the belief it was about half a mile. What I didn’t take into account is that it is a lot harder to run uphill, so it actually took me eight minutes and about double that lying on a bench at the top to recover. Elderly couples passed us as we recovered with a cheery ‘hello’ as they made their way along the top with no signs of difficulty. From there we headed back along the scenic route and down into Lynmouth again before taking the Sparrow’s Walk up to the inn again to ease our aching bones in the bath and then prepare for dinner with Kate’s aunt and her partner who don’t live too far from where we were staying. It was a lovey evening and the surroundings and pleasant company eased the pain of having covered over ten miles in a day and talking to each other through gritted teeth at points.