These days I've my work cut out reaching Tangier Tuesday afternoon at the latest.

I passed a Carrefour in Rabat Sunday afternoon so could stock up on groceries. It feels really good to start the day eating muesli and yogurt at camp again; not stopping at a roadside café; breakfasting listing to ducks on the water's edge where I ended up yesterday evening, having passed a woodland park on the way to the beach. When the sun had set I returned. There were a few cars with families packing up their picnic for the day among mature trees at level lakeside. I continued further along the lake and put the tent up in darkness, which reminds me I've to buy new batteries for my headtorch.

There is an incredible steep incline away from the coast. A little too steep at the start of the day. Then descending into Kenitra I wasn't expecting such a large sprawling city.

A stop for coffee. At least a double espresso in a glass then topped up with hot milk. I reckon I'm drinking the caffeine equivalent of what beer or wine I'm not drinking here.

Once moving again the city thoroughfare goes on and on until I pass through a roundabout with no signage and as the sun is on my right, it seems as if I'm going inland away from my coastal itinerary. A taxi pulls to a halt on the shoulder in front of me and as I pass on the outside, the driver seems to have read my mind, as he leans out the driver's window and asks in near perfect English, are you looking for the way to Tangier?

His directions are straightforward enough. But I manage to get more lost, ending up on a commercial thoroughfare back into town. Then turning right at traffic-lights and doubling back, I ride along a long serious of narrow streets until coming to a tee with a market street where I turn left and it is only a kilometre until I'm riding out into table flat irrigated farmland upon route N1, which swings inland for the next hundred and fifty kilometres.

By lunchtime I reach an agricultural market town. Lots of eating places, but well, not many places you would want to eat at with the smell of offal and donkey dung in the air. Though after much looking I come upon a place doing kebab-like sandwiches. A refridgerater glass cabinet display with sausages, chunks of chicken breast and mince meat mixed with onions and herbs, my favourite. Fried on a hotplate like a burger, the herby mince is put with onion and tomato salad between a sliced half round of bread. When I finish eating, I order a second sandwich, then coffee. The lot comes to 38 DH. Good valve.

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The wind gets up in the afternoon. A crosswind. Everytime a truck passes I hold hard to stop going off onto the loose shoulder. When trucks come the other way, turbulence almost bring me to a standstill.

By five the level countryside is coming to an end with low hills ahead and I enter a largish town. Perhaps I'll be passing a BIM supermarket, I think. And pigs may fly. Once I've had a coffee I ride on from the café and find no supermarket, but find a kiosk where I buy a bottle of drinking yogurt for muesli in the morning and fruit from a stall. A couple of apples and grapes will do for supper.

Entering the hills along a wide valley I come to a large beech tree plantation. Straight rows of equally spaced young beech trees with a carpet of decaying leaves underneath. I push the bike many rows in until almost the other side, which is closed off by railway noticeable as throughout the evening at about half hour intervals a passenger train thunders by.

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The last time camping in Morocco and as it turns out, my last night in the country. Generally wild camping here is possible with a little care. Much of the countryside is subsistence farming. Small farms and people just about everywhere. I feel lucky to have come to this large plantation, though that woodland park near the beach the previous evening had quite a few people about that turned a blind eye to the presents of my tent.

And for the second morning it is good to have muesli. A little thing like this I miss. Outside of major urban centres supermarkets are few and far between. There are traditional markets, but as a lone cycle-tourer, how do you leave a bike with panniers and go off traipsing in among stalls.

The day has come after so many riding a hundred and twenty plus kilometres, and today, my last, one-hundred and forty to Tangier. A long one on N1, rejoining the coast at Larache. A pity the wind gets up in the afternoon making for tough going and meaning I don't reach Tangier until near nightfall.

Ten kilometres short of the city and feeling extremely thirsty, I pull into a gas station. In the shop I buy a big bottle of coke, come out and flop down in a seat outside the café. A man comes over and complains. I can't sit there unless I've bough a coffee. Rising I think him a little mean as I go and sit against the wall by the bike.

Another man sees this and comes over, befriends me, telling me not to pay attention to him and take a seat.

"You cycle from south?" I nod affirmatively "You like Morocco?" again I put on a positive face. "Yes it's okay" I could hardly say otherwise. Rightly it has been worthwhile. I've seen a country I've thought about cycling in for many years and now have crossed that bridge never to return.

Tangier is much bigger when coming in from the south west. Continuous tenement blocks from the gas station onward with big billboards advertising cheap return hydrofoil to Tarifa. The city goes on and on and I wonder is it the same city I left five weeks earlier. The place looks nothing like the city. And there are no signs for the port, nor can I see the seafront. Then there are port signs, but small. You would easily miss them. They lead toward the train station where at last I recognize where I am. I pass the foul smelling waterway and see the IBIS hotel. I won't be staying there. Having lost the port signs I ask a traffic policeman at a roundabout, who points me along the main boulevard leading eventually to the port.

A guy outside the ticket office insists on leading me in to the right desk where I buy a ticket for 390 DH, plus 150 for the bike, using up most of my remaining six-hundred in currency. Then before I know it with my passport in hand, fills in the slip of paper to present to passport control. I thank him and he says "any tips!" I decline giving anything as I didn't ask his help and perhaps I would need my remaining dirhams to buy something to eat on board.

As it turns out they only except euros on the ferry, so I left the country with five or six euros worth in dirhams. Hopefully I'll meet some one going to Morocco I can give the coins to.

As always is the case it is a long wait on the quay until they begin waving cars on. Who would've thought one minute I would be sitting relaxed and next as everything starts moving forward, I would plunge into shock at what happens.

I see the slots between short ramp sections which allow cars to drive up off the concrete quay onto the ferry ramp proper, but I must be tire, not concentrating fully, riding I meet the ramp at an angle and the rear wheel is at an angle as I begin riding up the ramp. The rear wheel suddenly slides on the smooth sloping metal and goes down into the slot. I'm off instantly supporting the bike as it falls sideways with the wheel between the two ramp sections. Then lift the bike out and push the bike the remainder of the way up into the car deck, thinking I caught the bike in time before it leant down on the wheel, damaging it. But shortly notice a regular squeak of the rim rubbing the brake-pad. When the man waves me in to where I should leave the bike, I lean the bike against the ship structure and lift the rear up and press down on the pedal with my foot, spin the wheel. The wheel wobbles. The rim moves in to the left seat-stay on each revolution and stops on the brake-pad. Buckled. A moments stupidity. My bike's most important part is compromised. A man with a French accent comes alongside saying something like how great it is to have cycled in Morocco. I can barely hear him as it is like being punched and seeing stars as I recover from what has just happened.