rallye de tunisie - race ready!

left soon after bill and kates wedding on friday, meeting jago and patsy at gatwick to catch our flight to tunis and then drive the van down to tozeur. after the 6 hour drive we arrived at our hotel at 0300.

nick had driven from heathfield to marseille, caught the ferry to tunis, brought the van with the bikes to the airport and planned to fly home, mais non! the authorities decided that since the bikes had been put on his passport to enter the country, they also had to leave with him...... hmmm.......so nick climbed into the back of the van and joined us on our trip to tozeur and became driver and spanner for the week!

what the hell! aged 10 i used to have to help bump start my ma's 2cv each morning.....

scrutineering started at 0930 on saturday so up at 0800 to grab breakfast and get my bearings. it was great to see old faces from the rallye du maroc and settled into the rhythm of the rally quickly.

jago in team desert rose colours, i still don't have one : (

we were done by lunchtime, so spent the afternoon sorting out kit for the next day and popped into town for some shopping.....







this was part of technical scrutineering!

i'd tried my hardest to get plenty of rest during the final week, but found myself getting to bed later and getting up even earlier.....running on adrenaline!!

my gleaming bike with stickers and new tyres : )

rallye de tunisie - preparation

leaving for tozeur on friday afternoon, the starting point for the rallye de tunisie 2011! jago is returning from  a month down under with his family; i think he is either arriving thursday afternoon or friday evening - if there's one thing i learned about jago, is that he likes to fit a lot in ; )

due to lack of numbers on the desert rose team, pats has offered to do all the driving and spannering on her todd, bloody incredible support if you ask me. had we known about this earlier we could have organised sharing the driving rather than flying; just hope she survived the red kite enduro this weekend!

knee braces been sent off for repair, due back tomorrow or i'm going to collect them myself. ordered new body armour as my dainese gear has seen better days; tried on the latest gear down in bristol last weekend, incredible protection but so much of it i'll cook, so trying armour suggested by adventure spec, fingers crossed that will arrive tomorrow as well; going to try two brands, ufo and forcefield. ordered a new pair of gloves, and will order more lenses - mr norman, if you're reading this, did i lend any to you in morocco? hopefully biking my bulky gear to patsy's tomorrow night

squeezed in a days riding in sevenoaks earlier this month, thanks to enduro kent and to ross, who kindly lent me his bmw450 while tony set to work on my 400, preparing it for the rally, (he was also replacing the piston rings, valve clearances, etc after my recent fun and games in morocco and the new forest).

rob (white lid) coming through the crowd

it was just an open day, but it was perfect training, hot, dusty and it was bike fitness, that you just cannot replace in the gym. a very short course, but with a good set of climbs and descents and although not particularly technical, riding the 450 made it a bit harder going - which is good. 

first few laps were interesting, the engine mapping was set for fast open trails and so i was doing 360s on the corners and taking off any jump, the bike was bonkers!  the course was halted for a short while, after a rider was taken to hospital with a broken leg, leaving us without any first aid. during this unexpected break, ross explained that i just needed to remove a little device which controlled the mapping and hey presto i had a bike with a little more forgiveness. billy joined us from newcastle, he'd driven all the way for the session! rob also turned up for a ride out, so a good little team to enjoy the day with.

that's actually a steep incline, honest!

don't know how many laps we completed, but rob and i were the last riders on the course, always satisfying and we came in, most of the riders had gone already!!

hein completed the dubai challenge, but was let down with flat tyres; mooses i say, even if one has thrown me off my bike and the other has come close to self combusting, they do take a lot of abuse and don't puncture!!

ben's escaped to ghana, reckons it's safer living on a rig off the north-west coast of africa than coming out drinking and trainig with me in the cotswolds, haha!!

anyway, heading to gatwick straight after 'the wedding'', arriving in tunis at about 2000hrs and catching a connecting flight to tozeur at 2145hrs. scrutineering starts at 0930 the following morning and race day 1 starts on sunday, yeh!!

although run by the same organisation who run the rallye du maroc (npo), this event will see us staying in bivoacs for 4 nights, out in the desert proper which will be a new experience, can't wait. it's gonna be hot, plenty of sand dunes and north african sun to mess around with our minds.

i think this is where star wars was filmed back in the 70's - we'll even be passing through a town called tataouine!

just been informed that the internal flight has been brought forward by 45mins so now cannot make the connecting flight out! plan b, joining patsy for the drive down from tunis, so should arrive in time for the start of scrutineering!

will keep you posted on our progress or if you have time and are so inclined track us each day on the http://wp.npo.fr/rallyetunisie/

dakar route 2012 - mar del plata to lima!