Motorcycle Explorer November 2016 Issue 14 | Page 56

Travel Story: lawrence bransby - morocco
Risk is: Playing spin the bottle in the desert with
Frenchmen and you don't speak French!
In the late afternoon we stopped next to the
sandy bed of a small oed and set up camp.
Almost immediately the French riders
started pulling their outfits apart, doing
maintenance and repairs. They carried trunks
of tools and spares in the two 4X4 support
vehicles. If I had to do an arduous trip across
forbidding terrain, far from garages or help,
these are the kind of bikers I’d be happy to
travel with. While the spaghetti was being
cooked in a massive aluminium pot, one
rider, Vincent, got down to work and
replaced his bike’s worn rear tyre with a new
knobbly, then replaced his chain and the
sidecar’s shock absorber, working until well
after the sun had set.
Slowly we began to integrate with these
hardy, rough but most likable Frenchmen.
We sat down just outside their circle to
prepare our meal, not wanting to presume to
join them without an invitation, but one of
them held up a bottle of red wine and we
were drawn into their close-knit circle. As the
evening progressed, we clustered around a
gas lantern, sitting on jerry cans and tin
trunks and spare wheels, they talking
animatedly amongst themselves about the
day's adventures (I assume) while we sat,
part of the group, absorbed into their
camaraderie.
One of the French riders, we learned, was a
seven-time Paris-Dakar entrant. No wonder
they seemed to know what they were doing.
Much later, under a crisp desert sky, bright
with stars, a bottle of Sake was produced and
passed round until it was finished; then out
came a plastic bottle of whiskey. This too was
passed round. We played Spin the Bottle in
the desert sand to decide who would have
the last mouthful. The sense of bonding was
quite palpable.