So another year over.  Right now I'm on the plane on the way home feeling totally shattered. It has been a great 9 days!
The Taureg is a German run 8 day rally through Morocco which starts and finishes in Almeria Spain. It covers about 2500 kms of mostly off road going. Navigation is by a road book of directions and GPS coordinates. We basically go south for 2 days, race round the sand dunes of Merzouga for a few days then take another couple of days to go home.
Last year on the rally there were only a couple of Honda CRF 450X. This year there were loads with 7 on David Lambeths truck alone. Not one of them had a major mechanical breakdown, and all but one finished. Rupert Shaw unfortunately wrecked his collar bone and didn't finish.
After scruitineering all day and getting paperwork sorted we spent a night on the boat to Nador in northern Morocco. Day 1s racing included 3 quite tricky technical sections to test us out. Davy Patterson and I had decided to ride together and we got through everything fine. Made all the check points and secret check points on time. Some guys had got away from the port slow and ended up missing checks on time, our plan had worked! Get away quick and get on with it. The special test went fine apart from arriving at a secret check point in the wrong direction, could have been a penalty but turned out ok.
Day 2 was another 400kms with 2 specials. The first was a fantastic blast up a very narrow rocky pass, same as last year and great fun. A few people ended up upside down on the way out of it! The 2nd special was a bit of a disaster for Davy and I. We got lost and ended up 70 ish for the day. Not good. When we did get going it was flat out to the stop. Eyeballs out on stalks!

We were now down at the massive sand dunes of the Erg Chebi. Our accomation was a desert tent in the grounds of the hotel which was great. I had decided to cook all my own food as I had been so sick last year. Everything was going well.
Day 3 started badly for me. The first wave of sand dunes were disastrous, my mojo was totally gone! Kept falling off and riding like a twat. Quickly got it back and started passing plenty. We were flying. Our result for the day was around 15th which was good out of 150ish. We were happy.
Day 4 is the big day, they call it the King stage.  Approximately 250 kms in nothing but deep sand, all navigated by gps waypoints. The organisers keep tightening the times on 4 laps throughout the day. If you don't get in on time you are out and will suffer a load of penalties. Traditionally under 20 people usually complete this day so there is a lot of anticipation. To make it all a bit more exciting as well they have a Le Man style start as well. 150 bikes lined up. Everyone has to run to the bike and then go. Gets the blood and adrenaline pumping! Davy and I had a lovely run round in what I can only describe as probably the best days motorcycle riding you can experience. Challenging yet just so enjoyable. This year over 50 people did all 4 laps which was amazing. Davy and I now had moved into the top 20 overall. Day 5 is seen as a bit of a fun rest day. They describe it as a sand motocross, but I can assure you anyone coming from motocross may disagree with you. You are given a maximum of 3 hours to complete 4 identical loops of nothing but deep sand and sand dune. The loop is marked by GPS coordinates to follow and is basically not that difficult to navigate therefore very fast! The sting in the tail of this day is that the very last check point where you have to hand in your time card is at the top of one of the biggest sand dunes they can find. Last year my heart nearly jumped out of my chest trying to climb it! Davy and I had a nice fast flowing clean run apart from the car on the roof we came across on the top of a very high dune, I still can't work out what he was doing there!  We got to the bottom of the big dune in just over 2 hours. Lots of bikes were lying on their sides that hadn't made it up. I rolled round the bottom bowl and made the wee 450 go like hell. As I reached the top the people on the top had to slow me down, they thought I was going to launch myself off the top of it.. Davy got to within 6 feet of the top and climbed the rest. It felt real good. We were back to our tent by 12pm and celebrated with soup and stew for lunch! An easy afternoon of getting packed up and chilling out was planned. Then the unforseen happened. The rain started Northern Irish style.. Quite quickly we realised the pourous desert tents would not stick it so we packed up and found an abandoned hotel room. Yee ha. This was much to the disgust of another German rider who I still reackon told on us! An afternoon of mayhem ensued. the tents collapsed the bikes got washed and everyone wondered what was going to happen the next day.. Day 6 is the first day of heading home. This year we all stood at the start with the rain running down our necks feeling more Weston beach race that Merzouga dune race. Normally this would be the start of a racing special test. Surely in these conditions it would be cancelled. Rainer the main man had no such idea! We headed off at our normal allocated start times, today Davy and I rode with Paul Cook as we thought sticking together might be a good idea. We started in the top 20ish and started passing people quite soon. Alot of people were crashing. Our UK wet weather experience was obviously paying off. For the first 20 or 30 kms the tracks and sand were very wet with plenty of big puddles but basically nothing to stop us. Davy and I were enjoying it quite frankly! After that we started coming to some large open areas fully flooded with plants sticking up through the water. These felt a little more treacherous as there was no indication to what was under the water. We managed fine but it was obvious conditions were gradually getting worse. At about 70kms we passed through a very deep river which Mick Tomkinson had tipped his KTM into the drink, it was now in bits. The last 5 was all good. At the end we were being held by the orga and not allowed to move on. We only saw another couple of riders come in over the next hour.. something was up. It turned out that behind us people were being stranded on sand banks, cars were being turned upside down and a couple of people nearly drowned.. We had got to the check at 10.30am, some people didn't get there til 4pm. Rainer sent us on via the road book to the boiler pass promising us a fun ride?! On a normal day the boiler pass would have been a lovely little tricky run up some rocks. Today with the rain it was slippy and miserable. I kept falling off, smashed my road book switch, lost the cover to my road book. YUK! Orga stopped us all again and wouldn't let us go any further. We hung around an abandoned building on the top of a hill trying to keep ourselves amuzed for another hour or so until orders came through to just get back to the hotel at Missour. This was a long cold miserable road section. I thought I was going to freeze. We arrived wet and miserable with no bags waiting for us. We were there about 4.30pm, there were still people coming in at midnight. Day 7 the rain had passed and everyone was just keen to get back north to the ferry and finish the rally. Rainer had cut out several sections due to high water in the queds which meant we would have quite alot of road to ride... bugger! The special was a 50 k  quite technical on navigatition. Really enjoyed the rocks, queds, green barley. We had a really clean run and were top 20 for the day. By the time we got to Nador Port we knew Davy and I were sitting in 13th and 14th overall after our weeks graft. Day 8 way a quick 100k blast up the coast with nothing timed or difficult. All we had to do was get home safe and sound. We had some snacks on the beach, rode in through the town to the hotel at Mojaca. That night we had a bit of an after show party but by this time it was all over and just wanted to go home! Thanks to Davy for putting up with me for the full duration and helping us both manage to get Tuareg Heads, ie no penalties for the whole rally, only 16 people out of 150 odd managed that. Thanks to David Lambeth Jesse, Reg and Dave for all taking great care of us every evening even when I got stroppy in the rain.. Thanks to Chippy Wood for his great pics. Thanks to Rod, Big Andy, Matt, Robin, Paul, Adam, Rupert, John Mitch, Tina, Terry and Wes all for contributing to a great rally and helping me not go old just yet..

George