So day starts off with a 122km warm up stage. Times don’t count but penalties for missing way points or speeding in control zones.

I managed a clean stage though some in the team have not been so lucky. I nearly missed check point three which was hiding in the dunes but I realised and went back to find it.

The day finished off with a very short prologue in the dunes which will decide the starting order for tomorrow. 2.5km was not really enough to get into my stride but I’d rather not start high up anyway as it makes navigation easier.

I’m now stuck in an interminable briefing in Spanish. Waiting for an English briefing to start. Should have just gone to the French briefing.

More soon or keep up to date on twitter @PaulCarlyle.

The bike sitting in parc ferme this morning.

Working on the roadbook.

I will be speaking in Moffat at the Moffat Motor Club on the 20th November and apparently my blog is out of date… Fair comment.

So at the moment I’m sitting in a hotel in Erfoud, Southern Morocco, after a Ryanair flight to Fez then a 6 hour taxi ride to the town where the Merzouga Rally will be based.

Tomorrow I start two days of training on the KTM 450 Rally, before scrutineering for the event itself on Sunday.

I will try to post some pics tomorrow. In the meantime here’s one from the window of the taxi.

After a fair bit of messing around, I am hoping to travel to Le Harve next week to collect a KTM 450 Rallye bike together with a spare engine.

A long way from Edinburgh to Le Harve but with luck everything will go smoothly and the road back to Dakar will have started. No doubt many photos will appear on the twitter feed as well as howls of anguish as everything goes wrong with “Expedition KTM Collect”.

It’s August 2012. The Olympics are in full swing. I’m just back from a 43km ride on my road bike trying to do some long Zone 2 training and it’s time for the desert blog to start moving again.

I got married to Alison in June which was fantastic. Mike Robertson arranged for a few of us to spend the morning of the wedding on the enduro bikes blatting round a forrest near Elgin. Proper silliness. 3 weeks of honeymoon in Italy and Switzerland helped to kick start my training after a poor year in the Scottish Enduro Championship so far.

I was elected one of the Vice Presidents of the SACU (Scottish Auto Cycle Union) earlier in the year so am trying hard to put something back into motorcycle racing in Scotland which has given me so much. A few projects running there which I think will make a difference for us and could be very exciting.

The 2010 Rallye Bike will be at a demonstration day at the museum of transport in Glasgow (new building – not seen it yet – excited about that) on 23 SEPTEMBER. Please come along and say hi. I’m hoping to use that day as a soft launch for my next Dakar attempt.

The aim is 2014 but depending on how fund raising goes it might be 2015. I need a new 450 bike and all the funds to train on it and then pay for my entry and support costs. Keep an eye on this site as I’m hoping to find new ways of raising cash and all assistance is welcome.

I get a lot of spam on this blog so real comments are welcome.

Have Fun

Paul

Wedding Photo – can’t be avoided – sorry

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