Rabat and Sponsorship

by Jeremyroute, sponsorPosted on 3 Comments

Just a quick post from Rabat, we arrived this evening after stopping overnight in Chefchaouen last night. We are going to get our Mauritanian visas here tomorrow hopefully! Keith will put another update post on here with some more details of where and what we have seen.

I just wanted to let everyone following this blog know that we are trying to raise a bit of money for a couple of charities to try and make a difference in Africa as well as just have a bit of an adventure in Africa! The sponsorship page is now fully online and you can see links to it on the top and on the right of every page on this site.

There are two charities we are trying to raise money for and we hope to raise a total of around ten grand split across both charities if you all dig deep in your pockets. Unfortunately there is no easy way to sponsor both charities with a single donation so it would be great if you could either split your donation across both or chose the one that is a bit behind the other!

As we are both seeing here in Morocco, your pounds, euro and dollars go a lot further and even a donation of 10 pounds can make a huge difference over here.

The just giving website is secure and it will even claim back the tax if you are a UK taxpayer! So what are you waiting for?

To those who have donated already we want to say a big thanks for your support.

Look for further updates on the site over the next few days as Morocco has an abundance of internet cafes for about 50p an hour – a godsend for two techies without their laptops!

Last day in Andorra

by JeremyroutePosted on 2 Comments

Today was our last day snowboarding in Andorra and we have had a ball of a time here. The snow has been perfect and the sun has still been out in the day! Great conditions for boarding, in addition we have enjoyed relaxing in the small village of Soldeu and meeting some interesting people in the evenings, like the honeymoon couple from Iceland whose holiday was displaced from Kenya to Andorra, great people and they really spoiled us!

The people here in Andorra have been really friendly and we found a pretty good hotel with good food and a reasonable price.

There are some pictures of our European travels in the gallery.

  • European Leg
European Leg
European Leg

Photos from the European leg of our journey. Sorry we haven´t taken too many - Europe just feels like home so you are less likely to just pull out the camera!

12 Photos

Tomorrow sees us heading south again along the east coast of Spain towards our crossing to Africa in a couple days time. If the weather is reasonable we are going to try our first night camping. A good chance to try out the kit and to test Keith´s hardiness out a bit more!

On the eve of our departure

by JeremypreparationPosted on 2 Comments

You know the feeling – you just left the house to catch a train or a flight and you have that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something back at home! Well I’m about to embark on the biggest trip of my life and I feel completely nervous thinking about what Keith and I are about to embark on. It’s one thing to have a dream but it really is another thing to actually act on it! I feel like I’m now falling into a new more dangerous category, as you can see from one of my favourite quotes:

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.” – T. E. Lawrence

Well we have read the books, watched the dvds, bought the bikes, packed up our lives, sorted a million and one things, spent way too much money on kit, had the leaving party and now tomorrow Keith and I will be making our departure from this cold and wintry country and start heading south! I wish I could say that I feel we are ready, but I would just be kidding myself! I’ve only just completed the last few bits and pieces on my bike today and Keith’s didn’t even start this evening! (He had left his heated grips on and the battery was flat!) So there’s going to be a mad panic tomorrow morning as we sort out the last few things on our lists before we head off.

We have cut it fine, but I guess for there is only so much you can do for a trip like this and then you just have to go for it! I’m sure that as we go along we will find out a lot more about ourselves, each other, the bikes and the world, what an adventure! Still you guys who are reading this are all our great friends and I would love it if you did even one small thing to step out of yourself this coming week as an act of solidarity with us, act on a dream or start training for that marathon you always said you would do, be a dreamer of the day!

I’ve uploaded some pictures taken at our leaving party in London, however the camera came out a bit late so not everyone who came was captured.

  • Leaving London Party
Leaving London Party
Leaving London Party

Our leaving cocktail party in London, the camera came out a bit late though so I'm sorry if you don't see yourself in the pics.

17 Photos

On the admin side of things I’ve updated the sponsorship pages with details of how to sponsor Dignity, one of the projects we are raising money for, however charity: water still haven’t been able to get registered with JustGiving so as soon as they have that I will start pushing the sponsorship side of things a whole lot more!

Heavy Vibrations!

by Jeremybike, preparationPosted on One Comment

The KTM 640 Adventure has a 625 cc single cylinder engine, what this means in the real world is that it has huge amounts of low down torque and it vibrates everything to bits. No wonder these bikes area called big thumpers! The bike is really capable off road and on the dirt tracks that we will be facing in Africa, however the vibrations have a few disadvantages!

Last Saturday I went down to Bristol and back on the bike to see friends and get some stuff, on the way back I noticed that when the engine was at a certain amount of revs there was an almighty rattle and vibration in the whole bike coming from the bottom of the engine.

When I stopped to take a look I noticed that my rally bash plate was really loose and on closer inspection it seemed that the four screws that hold it in place under the engine had all come loose and fallen out! There were only two bolts on the front holding it on and the vibes had actually broken the bracket that these bolts were attached to!

img_1824.jpg
The bracket that was broken.

Thankfully it held together the last few miles back, I just made sure I didn’t site anywhere near 3000 RPM!

For those of you that don’t know, the bash plate is there to protect the bike and engine from any bangs from underneath, mine is a rally bash plate which means it has two built in tool boxes on either side for handy access and to keep weight low down. I don’t think mine will be doing much protecting till I get it all fixed up though!

The pictures below show the bike with the bash plate on and then the engine without the bash plate as it is now while I wait for a new bracket from Germany!

Jeremy KTM Front Sideimg_1825.jpgimg_1826.jpg

Last day of work!

by JeremyUncategorizedPosted on One Comment

So Friday was our last day of work, a bitter sweet thing for us both I think as we had worked pretty hard on the project and there was a great bunch of people that we were leaving behind. Still it was also great to be walking out the door knowing that in less than a month we will be on the road to Cape Town… and then who knows what adventures will happen.

For a bit of fun I’ve included parts of my leaving email and some of the funny responses I got from the office after the jump below. Enjoy the laughs at my expense!

Read more “Last day of work!”