DIARY OF THE SINAI DESERT MENCAP BIKE CHALLENGE

Sat 24^th May 2003

Meet at Heathrow T3 for 3pm EgyptAir flight to Cairo.

Arrive 10pm (local time GMT+2).

Transfer to Movenpick Hotel at Giza. 45 minute coach journey across busy/noisy city to west bank of Nile and first sight of Pyramids.

Sun 25^th May

Guided tour of Pyramids at Giza and Sphinx. First encounter with local salesmen - buy headdress for exorbitant E£10 (approx £1.10!).

Lunch on banks of the Nile followed by 4 hour coach transfer to Ras Sudr on Sinai peninsular via Suez Canal (under not over!).

Stay at Concorde Hotel on the Gulf of Suez. First realisation of effect of Middle East situation - no tourists and miles after mile of half-finished hotel resorts. Along route from Cairo several military checkpoints at major road junctions. We have armed security guards on coach.

Mon 26^th May

Bike fitting after breakfast - quite a task for Theo, Philippe and the team as 22 saddles, pairs of pedals and bar ends need fitting and adjusting. Doug is the first casualty as he crashes at the first attempt!!

Mascots attached and after lunch Theo's first briefing (Derek may have been at this one). Set off at 3pm - first cases of the dash for the loo (incl. yours truly), but better now than later in the desert where facilities less welcoming!

Cycle 55 kms to Hammam Faraoun (Pharaoh's bath). Turquoise sea to our right (west), low limestone hills to left. Flat desert road, few scattered shrubs, noisy, diesel belching HGV's, blasting of horns to encourage (warn?) us, oil rigs in the distance. Wilf starts with all his kit on his back - obviously thought that there was not room on the truck for his bags! John spurns lycra and looks the part of a parson heading off for a quick spin in The Dales - bicycle clips and all! (It does not take long for us all to see how amazingly fit he is for his age). Theo does a double take as Denise sets off on her packaway 4 speed bike - the look says "you will not be long on that", little did he know what Denise is made of!

Arrive at 6pm after fast ride (2 stops). No casualties although Gwen dissects a large lizard en route, probably already dead but she just made sure! Back up team have set up Bedouin tents by beach. We relax in hot springs. Dinner and early to bed after Theo announces 4.45 wake up call for 6.00 start. Most sleep fitfully due either to ground conditions, guards talking through the night or state of stomachs!

Tues 27^th May

As promised a 6 a.m. start to get some kms under the belt before sun at its hottest. By midday 94kms done with 4 stops. Terrain changing as we move away from coast, some gentle ascents, hills more like large sand dunes/quarries. Stops at Abu Zanimah and Abu Rudays, industrial towns, not pretty and yet flowers alongside road. Buildings set well back from road. Army camps. Women in black on donkeys. Oil pipeline alongside road, large container ships on horizon heading to/from Suez Canal. Lots of fast HGV traffic, long flat road, few junctions just dusty sand and bare rock either side. At junction for El Tur we bear left (east) towards St Catherine. Major checkpoint. Lunch at roadside services - cooked by our team, nothing left to chance. Rest for 2 hours (Lew on floor of restaurant in black leotard - not a pretty sight!)  

Remaining  25kms after lunch are very tough - flat road through arid wide and dusty plain with a slight incline (one of Theo's "little hiccups") as we head into wide valley with soft sandstone hills either side. Camp again surrounded by craggy hills golden in the failing sunlight. After previous night under stars some jockeying for position to avoid the loudest snorers. Toilet and shower facility in constant use. Theo climbs a mountain (as one does after cycling 120kms!). After supper we are entertained by our Egyptian team with singing, dancing and cooking bread in the ashes of an open fire. Bed by 10pm - wherever you sleep you can hear Paul or Wilf "giving it some" and the danger of moving too far from camp is that during the night you may get a surprise from someone who decides he (or she) can't be bothered to walk to the toilets!

Wed 28^th May

Up at 4.45 (this is becoming a habit) and off at 6. Through a rocky granite gorge into Wadi Feiran and a beautiful oasis village with tall palm trees giving shade for several kms. Bedouin children shout encouragement (or are they asking for cash?) - various gifts of sweets dispensed along the way. Black goats wander about, camels, and everything is in a state of disrepair - walls, houses look as if they've not quite been finished but in reality they do what they can afford to do which is very little. This is an existence not a life. Car wrecks are used as animal shelter or storage.

Stop at a convent - rich with vines and trees and a very serene place in the midst of such a wilderness. As the ridges around us get higher we see more Bedouin settlements, very basic breeze block built single story houses with corrugated steel roofs. One small town has a mosque, hospital and police station but most notably there is one white washed two storey house with satellite dish! As we continue steadily upwards towards Wattiyah Pass granite ridges push up out of the expanse of sand until we are surrounded by massive peaks below which some of the limestone is weathered in such a way that you seem to see rows of embryonic Spinx's (definitely a case of sun stroke!). At the top of the pass is a tiny church. The granite seems to be turning redder as we reach St Catherine's for a welcome return to hotel accommodation at the Morgenland Hotel. Today we have covered approx 80 kms and gone from 300m to 1500m - it has been almost imperceptible as the road is a steady gradient the whole way (Israeli engineering!).

The hotel is a marvellous setting - surrounded by peaks over 5000 feet (Ben Nevis is only 4400 feet). Some of us go to St Catherine's monastery (built originally 337AD and site of the burning bush) in the shadow of Mount Sinai whence Moses fetched the 10 commandments. Theo gives a wonderful description of the monastery and its rich religious history. A quick detour to the village (again deserted - no tourists) sees some of us buying ice creams like deprived kids and then haggling over arab garments in the souvenir shop. Every E£5 we knock off the price saves us 50p!! Back to the hotel for dinner and bed because as Theo says "tomorrow we make early start"!

Thurs 29^th May

This is going to be a tough day - 115kms and lots of ascent. We leave Mounts Sinai and Catherine behind us and go up and down the wadi's. There is huge contrast in the mountains - black, grey, red, pink and the sand. The tops look at times like layers of filo pastry and hills appear to be divided into fields by lines of protruding rock - what is missing is any sign of greenery. After passing a ravine there are some green shrubs in the dried up riverbeds. We are still high (1500 - 2000m) but the granite hills are further away and the road starts to pass through long stretches of sand with smaller hillocks which look like piles of builders' sand and rock. We are now in the teeth of a strong swirling wind and worse still a sandstorm - those of us with contact lenses start squinting and cycling faster. In places the road has been washed away by flash floods - it rains very rarely here but when it does you know about it.

At one of the stops a Bedouin woman greets us followed by a line of children coming across the sand in descending order of age and size. They make a fire (hey its only 35C!) and offer tea. Trade then follows in a series of trinkets etc - bartering seems mean when we are only talking pence but it goes with the patch. Theo did not want to stop here (it was only 16kms not his instructed 20kms from the last stop) but one wonders if Tareq and his mates did it to ensure that we spent some money with these poor people.

We continue through the worsening sandstorm seeing a small group of tourists setting off on a camel trek. I continue to see Sphinx's and even hieroglyphics in the windswept sandstone hills!! Several more Bedouin settlements, camels, black goats being herded by women dressed all in black. We pass a UN and Egyptian checkpoint - no one comes out in the sandstorm! The land really starts to open out into broad expanses of desert and we are very relieved to reach our lunch stop under a rock overhang where Bedouins sit with us, including their Chief, Sheik Hameed, to whom I give some notebooks and pencils for the children - they are too busy to notice as they sell more trinkets just like the lot we bought a couple of hours earlier down the road!

After lunch we start up "vomit hill" - it deserves its name but wonderful for photos at the top, which gives Doug the excuse to set off 10 minutes ahead of the rest. The next stretch passing through the junction for Nuweiba and Dhahab is one of the hardest of the whole ride - 20kms into the wind and sand with long uphill sections which bring many to a grinding halt. Nevertheless as always we regroup at the next stop, a Bedouin café on top of a pass, and then set off on a 20kms descent into Nuweiba sweeping down a wide stretch of desert and into a rocky pass with hair raising bends. It is exhilarating and fast - no one comes to grief thank goodness, it would be serious coming off the road at those speeds. As we enter Nuweiba for the Hilton hotel the sandstorm has a final vicious flurry which bites into the skin and leaves most of us cursing as we battle our way into the resort. The sky is now totally shrouded in a dust cloud which Theo assures us is good news because it may mean we don't have headwinds tomorrow (although as we later learn there are a few "little hiccups"!).

We relax on the beach or by the pool with the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba just visible through the cloud.

Fri 30^th May

Usual 6 a.m. start (last time!) and as Theo predicted the sandstorm has quelled the wind. Wilf projects his breakfast a world record distance across the restaurant patio (Jens unperturbed continues to wait for his omelette to be ready). The hills ("hiccups") are relentless along a busier road to Taba as we pass half-finished (started?) hotel complexes. We cycle with grey and red granite hills rising up on our left (west) and the Gulf of Aqaba on our right. Lunch is 15kms short of Taba at the Fjord, a wonderful spot overlooking an inlet in the hills and the long sweep of tarmac down which we have just come before a hairpin bend and 400m of steep ascent - each arrival is greeted with a rapturous round of applause.

After lunch it is an easy run down to Taba on the Israeli border. We stop 2 kms short of the Hilton and everyone, including Wilf who has been on a drip most of the day, cycles in together to banners and a champagne reception. After 5 days and 430 kms it is a highly charged atmosphere and several of us struggle to control our emotions. Group photos follow and then like cannibals Theo, Philippe and the rest start removing pedals, saddles and bar ends from the bikes - it's all over bar the gala dinner tonight!

Dinner is followed by presentations and a celebration at which everyone does a turn in a huge variety of acts superbly compered by Peter. Denise and Gwen bring the house down with a quiz in which they manage to mimic everyone. And so to the bar and eventually bed.

The following day one or two of us went our own way but most returned to Cairo to fly home, except Paul who joined the incoming group and started all over again - nutter or what? No in reality some of us were very envious, it had been a fantastic experience and we did not want it to end. Whether we would have had the strength to do it all again is another matter.