Hereford to Morocco by Tandem.
By Ali Straker




Stiff muscles, aching joints, sore back, general fatigue... It was only when high fever completed the list that it became apparent that the symptoms Ali was experiencing were not purely those associated with the early part of a long-distance tandem trip. We had had no idea what was to come when, six months earlier, and equipped only with a day's experience on a borrowed tandem and a lot of naïve optimism, we decided that to mark the start of our lives together a tandem ride would be ideal.

The first decision: where should we go? We decided that Hereford to Morocco had a suitably epic sound to it. How far was that? We did some measurements and it seemed surprisingly reasonable (in fact we had been reading the map scale wrongly and it was twice the distance, but we only found this out once we were well on the way through France). Friends regaled us with horror stories of bike helmets melting on their heads in the heat of the Spanish interior. And what about the luggage? Should we pile everything onto a trailer? How many changes of clothes were we allowed? Should we take mobile phones/satnavs/laptops? In case it’s not already apparent, we had not done any kind of long-distance cycling before.
Eventually, taking the advice of Robin Thorn, we decided to go ruthlessly minimalist. Out went the consumer electronics (save for a camera), all but two changes of clothes each, and what camping and cooking gear we needed for day to day survival. We experimented packing it into our four panniers, and it fitted, just. We didn’t even have to saw the handles off our toothbrushes.

The weekend of the departure suddenly was upon us, and it felt like there were still lots of things left to do, tying up the loose ends of our lives in a way that would allow us to take six months off. Malcolm had just returned to England and had given up his job in Oslo to do so, and Ali had just screeched to the end of a demanding fixed-term work contract. Consequently, our ‘ends’ were somewhat looser than they might otherwise have been, not least on account of the bureaucracy of two countries’ tax systems with which we were contending. We didn’t feel as prepared as we would have liked and certainly had not managed to do much by way of practice rides, but the point had come to cut loose.

When the big day arrived we both had streaming colds and felt dreadful. But we realized we just had to do it: shut the front door behind us and wobble off into the warm light of a May evening, en route for the Forest of Dean and the first campsite of the hundreds we would stay in on our way south.

We were less than a fortnight into our six-month trip when our plans got put on hold. We had taken the advice of a fellow cyclist with whom we had shared our ferry crossing to Roscoff, and were following the Nantes- Brest canal south. This was a dream come true – well-maintained cycle track along the canal side, plenty of wildlife, sufficient camp sites and not too many people. Then came the tick.

We met Helen and Brian, the fist tandem-riders of our trip (also on a Thorn) just a few miles short of Redon. Over a cup of coffee we exchanged a little of the bike-related gossip with which we were just getting to grips, and shared our new-found secret of the canal tow-path. With what seemed to be almost absurd precaution we hung back in town to get Ali’s tick bite looked at by a doctor as the people at the previous night's camping ground had insisted we do. We got a full account of the possible problems that could arise. We laughed them off and cycled on. A day later when the full symptoms of Lyme's disease were upon Ali we couldn't have been more glad that we knew what to look for.

The details of the week that followed are best not shared, but suffice is to say our knowledge of the French medical system is now much more extensive than when we set out. Once Ali was finally able to find enough balance to stay upright for a few hours, we teetered on towards the Loire. For once that all too common tandem quip of 'she's not pedalling on the back' was not far wrong. And yes that original line in humour does cross national borders – we heard “Hé monsieur, elle bosse pas par derrière” in France, and although we didn't understand the words, we felt pretty sure we got it in Spain and Portugal too! There is something about the manner and tone of voice that removes much doubt.

Following our enforced break in northern France, we made our way down through central France, past picturesque old towns and fields of cows, en route to a welcome break staying for a week with Ali’s parents in a rented gîte near Albi. We then looped east through the Haut-Languedoc and down to the lovely fortified city of Carcassonne, where without having planned it, we fortuitously managed to coincide with the arrival of the Tour de France cyclists on Bastille Day. The fireworks that evening over the turrets and towers were magnificent.

We took the easy route to Spain: rather than tackling the Pyrenees head on, we had a wonderful week cycling along their northern side via St Gaudens and St Giron to Biarritz. We continued to be lucky with the weather, but as we passed through Pau, we took what seemed like a golden opportunity to get the groundsheet of our tent rewaterproofed. The owner of the shop detained us for hours with postcards and tales of old Pau as we painted some noxious-smelling compound that left us feeling headachey and slightly giddy. (In fact, it turned out to be completely ineffectual, as was amply proved a month later in northern Portugal when we found ourselves floating in wet sleeping bags after an unusually heavy downpour that turned our pitch into a waterfall.)

It’s fortunate that Pau is a beautiful place with fantastic panoramic views of the Pyrenees or we might not have such fond memories of it – the other way in which it is memorable is for the replacement back tyre we bought. The independent bike shop had been recommended to us, and the kindly and knowledgeable salesman (whose father used to ride the Tour) sold us his best and toughest tyre. It lasted us all of a hundred miles and terminated in a dramatic blow-out. The back tyre problem was our only real bike issue for the trip, and we couldn’t find a panaracer for love nor money wherever we were.

However, it was a pleasure to be living a simple life in which the biggest concerns were where we could find a new tyre, or how we could manage to get ourselves up and over the next hill. On some occasions this latter challenge was more entertaining than others. There was one particularly memorable climb that saw Malc sweating in a lashed-together harness made of bungee cords, gaffer tape, tent guyropes and an old stick. This contraption had been made on the campsite the previous evening and the other ends of the strings were tied to the handlebars of our heavily laden tandem. And grasping those handlebars, pushing hard, and trying to steer a course through the rocks of the steep and rough mountain track was Ali.

We were high in the Picos de Europa, in northern Spain. Local opinion in the town of Potes, two days previously and around a thousand metres below, held the track to be rough but passable; we were putting this to the test, and suffering for it. Still, the weather was glorious, and the dizzying views into the valley far below and the beautiful cows quietly grazing beside us made it worthwhile. Arriving at the top was a high point of the trip in both senses of the word. We allowed ourselves a long rest as we contemplated the joys of the free-wheeling ahead of us. We had our harness dismantled, and had fully recovered our composure when a groups of ‘serious’ mountain bikers arrived. They looked at us and our road tandem as we lay nonchalantly in the sunshine with a certain disbelief. We smiled cheerfully and used our lack of Spanish as an excuse for failing to offer any explanation of our mysterious presence at the mountain top.

From the Picos, our road took us through the arid northwest of Spain, down the Portuguese coast, along the southern coast and back into Spain via Seville. On the third of October, 141 days and 3,183 miles after we left Hereford, we cycled nervously across the airport runway and over the border into Gibraltar. This is where our beloved tandem got packed up and shipped off home as we continued south in to Morocco by boat, train, bus and camel, but that’s another story.