The Expedition hits Spain - Again.

A day of riding/driving beckons as we need to get from Rabat in Morrocco to Seville in Spain. John takes the plunge in the hotel pool at 7.30 and worryingly decides to make it a skinny dip (and I hadn't even had breakfast - appetite lost). More photographs outside the Hilton Rabat and the hotel ask if they can use the photos as publicity shots - first time a gnarled looking GS rider and an Atom with the Morroccan flag has visited them, that's for sure.

On the road to Tangier by 9am. A long drag punctuated by coffee and petrol stops, where I meet a fellow Spanish GS rider heading for Ceuta (the other port near Tangier) who tells us a horror story of his mate, also riding a GS who was intently watching his low fuel gauge when he plowed in to the back of a slow moving lorry near Casablanca. Visit to a hospital sounds dire, and the bike loaded on to a recovery truck in pieces for shipping back to Spain. We regale each other with 'travellers tales' (how fast you need to go to avoid detection on the police radar traps (105mph apparently); why to avoidTangier as an embarkation port (slow and officious); why to avoid off-motorway petrol stations (watered down petrol) etc etc.

John gets stopped - again - for speeding on the motorway but this time the Gendarme is only interested in asking him about the Atom (this is becoming habitual).

Get to Tangier Port and run the usual gauntlet of guys earning a living trying to convince you that they know how to process you through the bureaucracy for a few Dhirams or Euros. Make it on to the ferry to Tarifa with minutes to spare. The roads in Spain, once you head away fron the coast, are spectacular, and we find ourselves blasting up to Seville (150 miles away) in no time.

Eventually find the Cartijo El Esparragal at Gerena, some 20 kms north of Seville - a beautiful Hacienda where in years gone by bulls were run - it still has a private bull ring. We find ourselves the only guests and have the run of the place. Rooms are in fact suites and are bigger than the average house, filled with antiques, and oil paintings of the places colourful history. Refreshed after showers we leave the bike and head out for a cross country blatt in the Atom, up and down the winding country roads north of Seville. John lets me drive for the return journey to the Hacienda and I oblige by worrying the living daylights out of him by my impression of Lewis Hamilton.

Dinner and cigars and planning for tomorrow's continued adventure....