Bob in the Desert

… and am back home feeling pretty tired still, but quite pleased with myself.

I’ll write something in a bit more details soon but, in short, it was a great trip and a great experience.  How can I begin to describe the Sahara… Big is a pretty good start, and not as you would probably expect is another.

Much of the ground is very stony – Hamada as it is called locally.  When I say stony, this can range from being small pebbles – ala Brighton beach – to big rocks.  This meant you were constantly walking with your head down to see where you were putting your feet to avoid slipping or turning an ankle.

And then there was sand.  Lots and lots of sand.  Most of the time this made for easy walking – that is until you entered the dunes, where it became quite hard work on the calf muscles and ankles as you were constantly slipping.  My trick of trying to jump up the smaller ones lasted about five minutes when it became obvious that it was (a) bloody tiring and (b) not all that efficient.  Don’t forget that where there is sand there is sandstorms, and I can tell you that the bloody sand gets everywhere.

Climbing the giant sand dune was an experience I won’t want to do again, that was really hard work – one step forward three slides back most of the time – and that’s when you find that little people have a definite advantage over big old buggers like me, they don’t slide half as much!

The final days walk was over a flat featureless sand-flat – miles and miles of emptiness with no shade and the mid-day temperature hitting 40 degrees.

But we all made it through, and had a good day and evening in Marrakesh to get over it. 

I’ve taken about 400 photographs which I will edit and put into an on-line album and will paste a link up on this site to it once it’s done.

Thanks again for all your support and for the many text messages I got while I was away and when I got back – it was incredible to stand in the middle of a desert with nothing around you for miles and still get a mobile phone signal…

Cheers

So this is it then, well almost.

Tomorrow (Friday) is departure day – it’s come round very quickly!  I’m looking forward to it and seeing minus one degree on the car dashboard this morning makes me think a few days in the sun is going to be a good thing.

Taking this on has opened up a lot of feeling about Hannah that I thought had been put to bed a long time ago, and I am under no illusion that the time spent wandering around in the sunshine is going to add to them.  Sometimes it’s difficult, but one thing I have learned is to focus on the positives, to think of the many happy memories that I have from her short time with me. 

Even though it’s over 25 years since she died I can still hear her laughter, and can still visualise her gummy toothless grin.  And as ‘Whispering’ John said to me last Saturday, “When you get tired, just remember why you are doing it…” I can’t think of a better form of motivation.

I won’t get a chance to update this until I get back – though I will try to stick something on when we get to Marrakech next Friday – so that just leaves me to say thank you , once again, to everyone for their fantastic support and generosity.  Perhaps between us we will stop someone else going through what I went through 25 years ago come 28^th March – if that’s the case then every blister I collect, and every penny you have donated will be worth it.

I really can’t start to say how grateful I am to you all.

See you when I get back.

Bob