It was 47 years ago, the summer of 1974, the year Abba won
the Eurovision Song Contest, West Germany beat Holland in the World Cup Final,
and the Watergate scandal was unfolding. After months of work in the Brymbo and Shotton
steelworks I had scraped enough money together to go to Morocco. The big day finally
arrived. A gang of twelve left the York Road in Leeds one morning in a brand-new
hired minibus. There was me and Penny, my brother Paul, Dave, Jacky & Bill,
Leigh, Jill & Ron, Ann, Mike, and Terry. Most of us knew each other from
college.
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| Traffic queue at Ceuta. |
We headed for Dover to catch the night ferry to Calais. This was the
first time in my life I had set foot outside the UK, so even being in France and
Spain was an exciting adventure. We drove all night and all the following day. I
think Leigh and Mike did most of the driving. There was room for three to sit
at the front on what we called the flight deck as we headed south towards Spain,
listening to music on cassettes most of the time. I think Mike Oldfield and
Pink Floyd were the popular choices. We crossed the Pyrenees and arrived in the
town of San Sebastian in the Basque country. In a restaurant the twelve of us
tried to explain to the waitress what we wanted. She didn’t speak English and none
of us spoke Spanish. She walked away and hadn’t written anything down.
"She is
ignoring us because she doesn’t like the British", I spluttered
angrily.
Within minutes she had returned laden with exactly
everything all twelve of us had ordered. I could not believe it. The following
day we had our first mishap when on a mountain road we were hit by another bus
which nearly forced us off the road and into a ravine. One side of the vehicle
was quite bashed in, so we drove to the nearest police station to report it for
insurance reasons, but they were not interested and ignored us. Spain was still
run by Franco in those days. We carried on through Bilbao, Burgos, Valladolid
and Salamanca. Then we were stopped by two cops on motorbikes. They didn't
speak English but handed us a card printed in English which they conveniently
had on them. It said something like,
YOU HAVE TRANSGRESSED ONE OF THE TRAFFIC LAWS,
YOU ARE FINED 600 PESETAS, UNLESS YOU PAY THIS FINE IMMEDIATELY YOUR VEHICLE
WILL BE IMPOUNDED.
They must have just parked by the road and wait for vehicles with
foreign number plates to come along. They were little more than licensed
bandits. We had no choice but to give them their money and we drove on, heading
south through Toledo, Cordoba, Seville, Jerez, and Cadiz. I liked Andalusia. We
finally reached the port of Algerciras where I had another encounter with the
police. I was strolling down the street dressed in only a pair of shorts and a
cop told me put a shirt on, which I hurriedly did before he arrested me. That night we set sail for Africa. At dawn I stood on the
deck and watched dolphins follow in the wake of the boat as we sailed towards
Morocco. When we set foot on African soil it was disappointing to find that we were
not yet in Morocco, but in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
It took us sixteen
hours to get through customs because fearing a coup the Moroccans were
searching every single vehicle. Finally, that night we drove into Morocco and
set up camp on the first beach we found. Within five minutes a man arrived who
wanted to sell us some herbal stuff called Kif. He also started bartering to
buy our big tent, but we wouldn't have it. I
wandered off along the beach and lay on the sand staring at the sky. It was as
black as ink but studded with thousands of stars. I had never seen such a
starry night in all my life and every couple of minutes there would be a shower
of shooting stars. I could see why the ancient Arabs were great astronomers. Every
night in the desert they would have had nothing to do but study the sky.
The next day we visited the town of Tetouan where we paid
one boy to guard the bus while another acted as guide. We moved to a camp site
called Camp Africa near a town called Asilah where you could rent little huts
with straw roofs which were nice and cool. They had a bar there where you could
buy bottled beer called Stork or Bock. It was weak and barely worth drinking,
so we gave up on it and drank Fanta instead. The cigarettes were awful, but
cheap. Casa Sports were about tuppence for twenty. After resting up at Camp
Africa for a while we headed along the coast road, reaching Casablanca which
turned out not to be a romantic Humphrey Bogart type place, but a dirty
industrial port and we did not hang about. We carried on south, finally
reaching Essouira where we stayed for a while. Then we headed inland to
Marrakech, the fabled city.
It was a place I had always wanted to visit, ever since
reading about it as a kid. The Souk at night-time was
interesting until Paul got us involved in an argument with a gang of angry
people. Leigh had to sort out the argument. Another unpleasant incident was when we went
to the swimming pool one afternoon to cool off and the Moroccan boys went crazy
at the sight of white women in bikinis. Apart from that, the Moroccan people
were genuinely nice to us. We often got invited into their houses so they could
practice their English. We had been told that we would be robbed in Morocco,
but it only happened once, when an Englishman on our campsite stole our large tin
of Nescafe. We left Marrakech and headed to Agadir through the mountains. That
was an interesting journey through mountains inhabited by Berber tribe’s
people. We discovered to our surprise that Agadir was a modern city because it
had been flattened in an earthquake 11 years earlier and completely rebuilt.
On the
campsite there we met two nurses from Edinburgh called Zibby and Eska who had
flown into Agadir to check out the 'freak' scene. They were really silly. We
also met some Americans who I think were draft dodgers and nice people. One
night we were all huddled in a tent. Zibby was banging on about the freak scene
and Dave said,
"Any minute now, the floor will open, and
the pools of hell will pour out".
Zibby looked at Eska and said, "Come along
now Eska, it's getting late, we should get back to the hotel". When
they left we laughed our heads off. After Agadir we headed even further south until we were
almost near the Spanish Sahara. The heat was becoming unbearable. One day there
was a windstorm from the Sahara, the temperature was about 120 degrees
Fahrenheit. Celtic types like me do not get tanned. I was suffering from
sunburn with blisters as big as golf balls. I left my camera in the bus, just inside
the windscreen and it melted into a mess of plastic with a glass lens floating
in it.
The journey home was quite uneventful. Dave had a funny
incident in Spain. In a little village called Tarifa he met this Spanish girl
and arranged a date with her that evening. He came back to camp disappointed
because she had turned up with her uncle who had come along as chaperon. When
we finally arrived back in England it looked pleasant and green after
journeying through the barren landscape. We heard the news that Nixon had
resigned. In Morocco we had forgotten all about what was happening in the outside
world. In Canterbury we sat on a wall outside a chip shop and fish and chips
never tasted so good after all that couscous and kebabs. Then we fancied
a nice pint of beer and went to a pub.
"We are not serving you, how dare you come
in here dressed like that, no hippies!”.
Suddenly I wished we were back in Morocco where we were treated like royalty. Anyway, we
got home that evening. I was glad I was not the one who had to hand back the
minibus because it was battered. That was the end of our adventure to Morocco
in those far-flung days of 1974.
