On going back to bed. And the drawing board.

I have Man Flu and I have gone back to bed…again. Beck isn’t 100% either but of course she’s managing better than I am.

We just thought a mini-update on this might be in order but don’t expect much good news :)

In a nutshell:

Freight ships north are out. Covid has done for them in almost all cases, despite laudable promises of a RoPax line between Dakar and Agadir when it was launched. As someone who has volunteered in the local planning sector, this set off my Overpromise To Get It Through Alarm. But who knows?

Lorries north—across multiple borders—seems tough too. Same reason. Freight is the focus and if two cyclists mess up The Important Bit we will not be viewed favourably.

This is all good to know and we are still exploring the Morocco section by truck and some other options out of here and in Mauritania. For example, we hope to take up our pal Issa’s promise of a guided tour of Mauritania. Nice.

Our iPad is properly dead. We have some sort of relatively recent backup and other stuff is on the cards it was captured on. This is making me a tad nervous and we look forward to getting a replacement device (probably here) to get us making art, blogposts, and what the kids might call content again?

I’ve been doing a stack of bicycle maintenance when not laid up. I do need a clearer head to tackle replacing my rear brake lever at some point but stuff is progressing well generally. As usual, spotted some things, like this horrible crack in Beck’s kickstand clamp.

Beck has been looking after me and doing loads of the other maintenance that goes along with our tour. Our panniers are nice and clean again etc. etc.

We have extended our stay here a bit to give us more time to sort the next phase. We loved the riding and visiting stuff we did between Guinea-Bissau and here, and we look forward to this again when we get somewhat further north. Or we may just have to brave bits of Insane Saharan Heat and Headwind to get us outta dodge.

What’s important to get across is that none of this represents any issue for us in terms of our wider plans. We could even cycle the whole west coast route again but, honestly, that’s going to lead to us questioning what on earth we are doing…which, remarkably, hasn’t been a question we’ve asked ourselves thus far.

There’s also a big government demonstration going on nearby which we can hear so stopping indoors seems like the right plan for today.

Right-oh. Update over. Night night all x