My Series 3 Lightweight ground up ongoing rebuild

Yes great update Nitch a nice story behind old landys.

Here's some more stuff. Reiterating that this was still an age when 35mm film was the norm, taking a snap wasn't as easy as it is now and you had to get prints developed anywhere you could find. A smart phone and a Facebook page would have been a Godsend.

Here's back to the arrival in Africa. It's great that I annotated the map as I went along and then kept it. My pal Matt Anning and I crossed the Med and arrived in Spanish Ceuta on the 17th December 2002 and spent the first night in Asilah, a beautiful town on the coast of the Atlantic. From here we made our way down to the capital Rabat where we stayed in a hostel for a few nights.

Morocco is a splendid place and I would recommend it to anyone with a sense of adventure. Very geared for tourism in the north. The Atlas mountains, highest point over 13,000ft, split the Mediterranean part of the country from the Sahara and that is of course where things become more remote - good Land Rover country.

Hassan's tower in Rabat. A 12th century site but wrecked by the Lisbon earthquake in 1755. The minaret remains along with 348 columns.

Moving on to Fez for the 21st/22nd of December 2002. The medina is the second largest in the world, second only to the one in Istanbul. Very narrow streets and one of the few times I've ever employed a guide. Cars simply won't fit and it was very common to find a man with a donkey coming the other way, overloaded with crates of Coca-Cola, and there was barely room to pass. If I recall correctly something like 14,000 streets and 85,000 very small businesses. Aromas of spices, wood fires, sweat, all crammed in. The leather tanneries are well known and use urine to cure the hides, and the fires to provide the heat are fuelled with olive stones as they burn very hot.

Our guide asked us not to give money to children, pointing out that such acts keep them away from school. Better to give the money to the old and the infirmed.

Stayed in Fez for only one day and two nights because it was cold and the bedding at the hostel was damp!

Photo of the tanneries:

One of many memories of about that time. We stopped in a conventional fuel station to get some more petrol. It was attendant service like the old days here at home. Having topped up the Landy I extracted a zippo lighter from my pocket and asked the attendant if he had any way of refueling that too. He simply pulled the thing apart and directed the petrol pump nozzle at it and gave it a blast, pushed the two halves back together and promptly sparked it up to prove the point. Blowing up the entire fuel station was clearly not on his mind.

Left Fez and headed south. Journey took us through the Atlas mountains, our first view of real Morocco. The mountains are quite spectacular although I feel that we missed some of the best parts due to travelling in the dark and this was a mistake; we should have stayed up there as you get a great view. I'm told that in winter you can stand two feet deep in snow and look down upon the Sahara.

Having stayed near Rachida on the night of the 23rd, we continued to decend out of the mountains the next day heading for Erfoud and Merzouga. Rachida was still at around 5000ft.

Not sure exactly where the next three images where taken but it was part of the over the Atlas leg.

Still heading south out of the Atlas and into the town of Erfoud. Here's Matt having a brew with some local people. Very hospitable and they take tea drinking to an almost ceremonial level. Drunk from small glass cups with huge amounts of sugar and no milk, poured from a pot from the greatest possible height!

Matt is the one with sunglasses, the chap to his left wearing a flat cap was a philosopher come poet.

Getting close to Merzouga just south of Erfoud. Below is an image of a deserted village about 10 miles off the Algerian border. The camp we stayed at was outside of Merzouga by a a couple of miles but I don't have any images of the ground around it. I do recall that it was well set up and surrounded by huge dunes, remote and simply stunning.

One of my memories was walking out into the desert on Christmas eve, on my own, and scrambling to the top of a very large sand dune. I laid on my back at the top for a long time, staring at a vast array of stars, galaxies and far off worlds, and listening to the gentle hiss of the sand sliding back down the dune.

What an excellent thread revival! Both of you ought to approach the magazines to get this out to a wider audience.

Noted and thank you. I've yet to see how many more photo's I've got. As the trip progressed I took fewer of them sadly. However I'll post some more of these this evening or during the week.

Chassis is now stripped of parts ready for cleaning, welding and galvanising.

Near the camp at Merzouga. I think we did a local trip for the day and returned to the camp for the evening. Matt with some of the folks. And me. The Land Rover constantly drew admiring looks too.

Having departed Merzouga on the 27th we followed a track on the map towards Zagora. That night was spent in a large awning type of tent that you associate with Bedouin encampments. Collected a hitch hiker somewhere along the line too. We were genuinely miles away from anywhere at this stage.

On the same trail having collected the hitch hiker. Still on the way to Zagora.

On one occasion we happened across a Bedouin family on the move. A lasting memory and an indication of a different culture, The camels were at the front, followed by the men, followed by the boys, followed by the women and young children. Spread out over a mile.

It was on the night of 28 Dec 02 that we literally slept out on the desert floor. Yet another fond memory, there is/was zero light pollution out there and laying in a sleeping bag you could see millions upon millions of stars. The sky was so black and the air so clean and clear.

I also awoke in the night as I could hear a rasping sound worryingly close to where we were sleeping. It turned out to be the stubble under my chin rubbing on my sleeping bag. In the desert the silence is shattering.

Getting close to Zagora we stopped for lunch.

I'm not sure what we did in Zagora, I simply don't remember however we stayed there 29/30/31 Dec 02. The next leg was to Tan Tan on the coast, and we turned off the road and back onto a track once more. We followed vague tracks through the region, through small villages that look large on the map but turn out to be nothing. Food and fuel get scarce, as do the people.

Now back on the track for a while. We learned a few more points about journeying through the desert and the region. When driving through sand you need a low gear and lots of revs. As soon as you try to change gear the resistance of the sand simply stops the Land Rover dead in its tracks. You have to get going and stay going. Secondly the region suffers from petrol shortages and we nearly ran out of fuel near Foum El Hassane. I don't remember how we solved it however I suspect we just got lucky and found a fuel station.

This prompted the thought towards diesel. It was a decision when rebuilding the Rover to keep the original petrol engine as I was familiar with it, had it, and also a vague thought about it being the engine that Land Rovers have. However the whole continent runs on diesel and if all else fails you can simply flag down a passing truck and negotiate to syphon some fuel out of it for a fee. If I did this again I'd fit a diesel engine, and a 5 speed gearbox, and an electric winch! The Tirfor winch was simply too much work especially if you had to use it many times in the same day, which we did on occasions.

We also learned that twigs from thorn trees are hard to come by but camel dung burns a treat. The wonderful thing about an adventure like this is the joy of simple things. Two blokes sat at a small fire, making our own bread rolls out of flour, salt, baking powder and water, cooked on the hot rocks at the side of the fire. Not sure if we had a beer available at the time.

The image below was on 02 Jan 03.