Roadtrip Sud

Making the most of the 14 juillet long-weekend, heading down to the Bordeaux region with Sibylle.

Vinyards of Saint Émilion.

Les enfants gâtés

This is what the Todra-leg was all about. Some sublime outdoor climbing, on some monster cliffs.

You can just about make-out Tom, seconding Les enfants gâtés, a 5C on Asamer, up in the top-right corner.

It was I who was l’enfant gâté — spoiled rotten — on this trip, getting to lead every route that we did; the perfect opportunity to test-out my new gear.

We were working off a fifteen-year old guide book from Guy Abert, who equipped a lot of the routes out here. I hope his map-drawing skills have improved over that time, because finding some of these routes, let alone identifying them, was nigh-on impossible at times!

But once they were uncovered, putting some chalk on this abrasive rock was rad, to the power of sick.

More Todra action.

The Life

We finished our trip with a few days in the Todra Gorge, where climbing was on the agenda.

When we stayed in Morocco, we went for the cheapest rooms we could find.

Up in the mountains it was a case of sleeping in refuges.

The night in the desert tents was fun, but less than comfortable.

Here in Todra, it being the off-season, we managed to score a winning rate on the hotel — where we were the only guests — which served the best food we’d eaten the whole time here. Lemon-chicken cous-cous, berber omlettes, all that jazz.

And then breakfast en terrasse like this, before a day of climbing, completely isolated from the rest of the world, is the shizzle.

Nothing but sand…

…and camel droppings.

Jumping right-on with the tourists with a camel trek out to the Western Sahara dunes at Erg Chebbi, spending the night in a Berber tent (ahem).

More sand here.

Roadtrip

Heading out east to the desert, via Aït Benhaddou & the Dadès gorge.