{"id":15595,"date":"2016-11-22T21:41:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T21:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffjones.com\/?p=15595"},"modified":"2016-11-22T21:41:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T21:41:07","slug":"larache-kenitra-lifeday-25319","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/?p=15595","title":{"rendered":"Larache to Kenitra. Lifeday 25,319"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Must<\/a>
Must be a village soon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The weather forecast \u00a0yesterday was so, so right \ud83d\ude41 I awoke to very wet roads a very threatening sky and a wind that was going to be in my face all day long and a very long day at that.<\/p>\n

The breakfast at the neighbouring cafe was excellent 2 fried eggs, bread, coffee, orange juice and a small pudding all for less than \u00a31 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I finally hit the road at 8.11 a whole hour after sunrise, must be getting old. The wind was awful, straight into my face especially with the frequent rain squalls \ud83d\ude41 plus the road was quite dull essentially like the fens with long straight roads and abrupt bends .<\/p>\n

The tiny poverty stricken roadside settlements were marked in Romanian style, loads of rubbish dumped on the village boundary. The kids run out and try a grab stuff of the bike, very annoying. One advantage of the rain was it kept the number of kids down.<\/p>\n

\"Road?<\/a>
Road? Wheres the road<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I reached the area where they are constructing the new Kenitra – Tangier rail link. What a mess they are making of the road, it now comprises islands of tarmac separated by gravel\/sand potholes. Totally a nightmare to bike on.<\/p>\n

The rain became heavier and me more and more fed up with the traffic, I eventually reached Kenitra in the dark and raining heavy, not a good combination. I eventually found the station hoping to get a train to Rabat. Suddenly I heard shouting\u00a0when I was wheeling the bike to the info boards. A very brusque guard made it clear that bikes are not allowed in stations and certainly not on the trains \ud83d\ude41 He escorted me to the parcels office outside (identical to the Red Star at Cambridge Station of old). They said my bike would go overnight to Rabat. I said no way and left.<\/p>\n

\"Donkey<\/a>
Donkey & cart procession<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I found an equally miserable coffee place to rethink. Booking.com hotels were all sold out \ud83d\ude42 so I checked maps.me to find there was a \u00a0Hotel Europa. I zoomed around arriving\u00a0like the proverbial drowned rat. They had a room on the fourth floor as long as I didn’t mind the bar music! after 80 miles biking in those conditions they could have had an orchestra playing and I would have slept, especially after lugging the bike all the way up the staircase.<\/p>\n

Strava says I did 80.1 miles and 1,473 feet of climbing at 9.4mp<\/a>h probably one of my toughest days ever,<\/p>\n

Some pics are on dropbox here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather forecast \u00a0yesterday was so, so right \ud83d\ude41 I awoke to very wet roads a very threatening sky and a wind that was going to be in my face all day long and a very long day at that. The breakfast at the neighbouring cafe was excellent 2 fried eggs, bread, coffee, orange juice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,3,11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-biking","category-europe","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}