The Intended Route (part one - To Morocco)

A Good Traveller Has No Fixed Plans and Is Not Intent on Arriving  

Lao Tzu (c. 500 BC)

Fair point, I can see where young Lao was coming from but to plan on spending 9 weeks wandering aimlessly across North Africa would be barking even for me!

That said whilst I below show the outlines of the plan, it will be subject to change....frankly if I am enjoying a particular vista*/find a great eatery*/get invited to some Berber rave*/break-down*/get pissed*  (* delete as appropriate), I may decide to stay in a particular area for a bit 🙈🙉🙊

The Starting Point

Every journey starts somewhere and for me that is the fantastic community of Kirkby Malham in Malhamdale, North Yorkshire....the map below may help orientate any soap-dodgers who were not geographically blessed at birth.

A truly beautiful dale with the Cove at its head and the village itself a truly caring and inclusive community with (as all great English villages), a parish church and a pub, 'The Vic' (do make the effort to go,  it is fantastic ( Victoria Inn)), at its centre. 

So I will be leaving God's Own County on Monday 11th Feb and heading via Cheltenham (where I will be spending a night with my sister and brother in law and trying their local Bill of Fare) enroute to Portsmouth to get the ferry to Santander in Spain

Cumulative miles so far - 300 ish

The Land of the Moors

On the way down to the ferry across the Med I will be taking a fairly direct route  for 2 key reasons:

1.  I want to get to Morocco as soon as I can.

2.  As I will be sleeping in the roof tent I am reluctant to freeze my b0**cks off staying in the Sierra Nevada's!  

That said, I will be stopping for a night in Salamanca.  Really looking forwards to getting into the centre of Town to try the local delicacies.

The one I am most looking forwards to is the Hornazo Pie, a traditional regional meat pie made with flour and yeast and stuffed with pork loin, spicy chorizo, and hard-boiled eggs. (It could be a good job that i will be alone in a well ventilated Landrover on the following day!!)

My route south then continues south to Seville where I will be out for probably a couple of days seeing this great City which was at the heart of Muslim Spain during the 500 years of Moorish rule.

 

Of course I will be eating Tapas, I am not mad!  The drink for me here though will be the Vermouth del Grifo

I only have bad memories of vermouth from growing up with my old Dad . Almost always, these memories—pulled from the locked up part of my brain where things are sent to be forgotten—revolve around a dusty old bottle, found at the furthest corner of the highest shelf in the pantry. That vermouth was a sad thing. Tasting of bitterness and despair, it was old and forgotten, the last resort for moments of “oh Jesus, we’ve run out of booze”. 

But in Seville, I hope to develop a newfound appreciation for this drink. When made well and treated right, vermouth is the nectar of the gods, and a perfect way to start a meal. It’s a drink that was once all the rage throughout the courts of Europe, and is now making a comeback as the aperitif of choice for bespoke-culture millennials (so the young-pups tell me)!

Spain developed its own vermouths a little after the Italians created their signature iterations; starting in Catalonia. Most of the most iconic Spanish brands still come from the small towns that first started this trend, with names like Miró and Yzaguirre. Although they vary by region (Andalusian vermouths tend to be a little less bitter), Spanish vermouth is typically a sweet and amber-coloured drink (courtesy of caramel being added to the base liquid) with strong flavours of cinnamon, cloves, citrus, and vanilla.

Assuming I wake up without a hangover the size of Manchester, it is then to the Port of Algeciras where i will take the 90 minute trip across the Straits of Gibraltar to the Port of Tangier....more of that part of the route tomorrow ;-)

Cumulative Miles to date - 1,050 miles

Next blog will be The Intended Route (Part two - Morocco & the Sahara)