The wild camping last night was fantastic and it turned out to be my last night in Spain, I had intended to check out the ferry schedule in Algeciras and find a campsite for the night in preparation to leave tomorrow, but the urge to move on was fuelled by an immediately available crossing, so I took the bull by the horns and went for it!

I’m supposed to be slowing down but my old ways are hard to shake, so I find myself in North Africa in less than a week from home, actually I think it’s only five days!

I disembark, the first off the ferry and the first through customs, passport control and the first out of the port. Tangier Med is one of the easier borders to enter Morocco and this was no exception.

i hadn’t had time to download offline maps so I bought some data from my provider, enough for 7 days apparently, google maps wouldn’t work on the poor coverage and running that app alone my data ran out in 29 minutes and it didn’t even work!!

i didn’t want to dig out my maps so I gave the Garmin gps a shot, that didn’t work either despite having bought the North Africa maps from Garmin, bless em!

So I decided to go old school and follow the road signs and guess what? I had a complete ball, concentrating on the roads and not looking at my devices, spotting the signs (and missing one, well almost, I caught sight of my turn as I entered an underpass) So I turned around and went back. It was just fine and I successfully navigated myself to Chefchoen.

Next problem was accommodation, without internet that’s another challenge. I pulled into a car park near the entrance to the town and the car park attendants offered me to camp there, I gave it some thought for a while as they showed me around the dusty and drug ridden encampment. Barking dogs (and a warning they might bite), every young person there was smoking dope and of course I was offered some too. I respectfully declined and a little later rode into town to find somewhere a little less rough.

Chefchoen is a lovely ‘blue’ town with many small hotels dotted through the medina, I picked up a fixer who arranged parking and found me a hotel, eventually!

We transferred my luggage and then the negotiating got underway, I agreed a price and paid the man not before he too offered me more drugs, he gave me a sniff and I have to admit it smelt great but not for me thanks.

My Hotel for the night is nestled deep in the Medina, it’s comfortable and clean with reasonable facilities and WiFi, result. Certainly a far cry from the dusty car park.

My bike is parked on the street with an ‘official attendant’ at a price of course!

I did try to camp but couldn’t find the campsite, I might relax here for a couple of days, wash a few things and try to sort out my IT!

Today was a bit too much to be honest, I arrived here in the dark which isn’t ideal, I really must slow things down a little. it’s been a very long day and I’m pretty shattered.

Chefchoen at night, not the ideal time to arrive!

A bit of free advertising for ATFF! One for you Austin Vince!

Morocco is calling

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