October 18th - Quick update from Belmin

I'm writing this in Belmin, which is the last place before we enter the Sahara. After leaving the mountains we cycled to the coast and two very lovely cultural experiences where we were invited into people's houses. The first time was for lunch, and we went to this house with 19 of them living there! We were given a meal of cous cous which we all ate sitting round a circle and dipping bread into. Ideal for me as I hate knives and forks... That evening we were invited to stay the night in another huge family. When it was time to go to bed it turns out we were sleeping in this massive room on the floor with an ancient old woman, her daughter and two of her grandchildren. I went to bed after mum and it was a big surprise to see them all lying on the floor together...

The next day we arrived in Sidi Ifni after a beautiful ride along the sandy coast. We spent a day there, enjoying the beach and the town. We stayed in a campsite which had a "guardian" who was incredibly annoying and overattentive. He spent hours watching me cleaning my chain, he kept following me round the campsite with a chair to sit on, he found mum making omelette fascinating. I soon gave up on being polite in the hope that he'd get the message, but at one point I was lost in the town (v scary) and he suddenly appeared on his bike and gave me directions. I had to suck it up and be grateful.

After leaving Sidi Ifni we tried to be adventurous and do some piste. After a while we decided this was a bad idea, but were too proud to turn around so we cut across. This was a nightmare, with around 15km (it's just three parkruns) on pretty much uncyclable trail. We stopped for a drink in this tourist complex which was huge - it had three hotels and we were the only customers. We kept cycling until dark and wild camped down the road. During this day we actually didn't make any useful progress. Oh well.

Today we're setting off along the road we're going to be on until Mauritania. 1100 km away... I'm not sure how I'll cope with this as I'm easily bored and frustrated (needy) and like lots of variety. Mum's much tougher. Hopefully they'll be some camels doing tricks or something.