Tag: tour

The King’s Highway Day 4: Dana Ecological Reserve – Wadi Musa

Distance: 24.38 miles

Time: 2:36:35

Elevation: 2,064 metres

Average Speed: 9.3 mph

Dana village was a long way down off the main road, which I was now regretting, but my anticipation increased as I approached. It was an ancient Bedouin village, with roots back some 500 years, perched over the precipice of Wadi Dana. Large parts of the village were now crumbling ruins, but the buildings that were still intact were now available as holiday accommodation.

My host, Malik met me on the main road into town and we squeezed down a small alleyway and between some crumbling walls to reach the small block that he managed. The main part of the building was over 200 years old he told me. Looking out over the abyss, it was already pitch black, yet I could tell that I was looking out over a landscape of epic proportions.

Being a wilderness area, I was surprised to see tiny groups of lights, out there on the horizon. ‘Palestine’ Malik explained, perhaps belying the region’s cultural heritage: looking at a map afterwards, it showed that the area on the other side of the Jordan river at this point, was now Israel.

Malik had dinner with him, bringing a large casserole dish out of a bag. Chicken Maqluba, a chicken and rice dish, he flipped over the casserole dish onto a plate, before giving me a huge portion. He explained that he had been involved in developing a cooperative with several families where they provided their home-cooked food for the guests.

Malik was an interesting man, a biologist at heart, he briefed me at length about the flora and fauna in the Dana Biosphere Reserve, an area stretching in altitude from Wadi Araba at 100 metres, all the way up to the hills above us now at 1500 metres. He also had a day job, as an ecological adviser, advising wind farms about their effects on bird life. He had completed a Masters degree at Karak university, so knew the road I’d travelled well.

In the morning, the traditional breakfast mezze was very nice, a couple of flatbreads were accompanied by hummus, baba ganoush (aubergine-based), yogurt, and the highlight, a lovely pistachio paste that Malik recommended I should mix with butter. Along with this we had a pot of tea: the previous night the tea had been mixed with ginger, but this morning he had used cumin, of which I was less keen. That didn’t stop me having 3 cups though.

After breakfast, I took my bike out onto the terrace and paused a moment to take in the sensational view. Certainly one of the best locations I’d ever found for a spot of bike maintenance. Looking at the chain, it was clear that it was as parched as the surrounding hillside, and a little lubrication might not go amiss. Drizzling on a little oil, I released the gear cable, committed to setting up the gears from scratch. Within a few minutes, I was starting to feel optimistic.

Gone midday, I turned the pedals a few revolutions as I started to leave the village, I was delighted to find that the lower gears were working well, just in time to get off and push. Not that that was easy on this gradient.

Beyond the first corner I got back on and started to make a fist of it, until the road ramped up again savagely, and having battled up the first half of the slope, I succumbed to the inevitable. This climb might take some time.

Reaching the Highway once more, the road continued to climb until it reached a new high point of 1550 metres, starting to descend shortly afterwards, I flew by excited children on their way back from school.


Not only were the low gears working well, but all the other gears I tried were working well too, this was the best iteration of the bike I’d managed to achieve on this trip, that was for sure.

Finally out of the village of Al-Qadisiya, where Malik and his family stayed, I rolled out into open countryside, confident that today would be an easier day. Moments later, I hit a small bump in the road, and instantly thought, is that wheel going soft?

Less than 5 miles in, and I had a puncture. Checking the inside of the tyre for the cause, I found a small sharp shard sticking out. But when I tried to remove it, it only seemed to make matters worse, as if I was teasing out fractured shards of the carcass of the tyre. Having covered the area with duct tape, I got back on the road.

Passing over an open plateau, with animated wind farms showcasing the breeze, I soon tiptoed around the edge of another wadi, mesmerised by the precariously perched village clinging to the other side.


Making it as far as Shobak, I was starting to feel like I was getting somewhere, when, after 16 miles, the tyre went soft again. Pumping it up as best I could, I managed less than a mile before I had to stop and change it. To make matters worse, one of the spares – which I’d repaired the night before – also appeared to have another hole in it, so I repaired that too.


Not confident in my aging puncture repair kit, and starting to run low on patches, I set off gingerly along the road. How long until another puncture? Uphill, downhill, a mile is a mile for a wheel.

After 24 miles – you know the rest. Signs had been informing me that Petra was still around 9 miles to go, and it was already around half past 4. I had just started to disassemble my bike to change the tube once more, when a pickup truck drove by and parked up along the road. For the umpteenth time today, the vehicle reversed back towards me, the occupant usually wanting to know if I needed any help, and where I was from…

But, on this occasion the man simply said, ‘Petra?’ ‘You get in?’ And that sounded good enough for me, I heaved my kit into the back and off we went.

Unable to engage my seatbelt, I didn’t get the reassurance I wanted when we started to go down the first hill. Instantly, the man cut the engine, pointing to his empty fuel gauge with a twinkle in his eye. Shortly afterwards, the rigmarole began again as he spotted a local man walking in the same direction along the road. Pulling over and then reversing back, the wily old man had another contribution towards his fuel bill.

Arriving at the hotel at 5 o’clock. It was too late for Petra today, but I had come too far to miss it now, I would have to go tomorrow.

The next day? Who knows.

The King’s Highway: On the March

On the run up to the trip, I’d had a busy few days at work, and then, two days beforehand I was struck down with a cold. The weather outside was appalling with gusting 50 mile an hour winds, so I retreated to the kitchen, and boxed up my bike in there. Luckily I’d ended up with an enormous bike box from Decathlon, but was it too big? Its length was 195 cm and the length for an oversized bag was meant to be a maximum of 190 cm…


Arriving at the airport in plenty time, I was relieved to see that at 21.2 kg, my box was comfortably under the 23 kg weight restriction, and that seemed good enough for the check in staff. Getting to the oversized baggage point, however, I was momentarily alarmed when asked to match up my 195 cm bike box alongside a 3D template of a 160 cm one. ‘Oh it’s ok, it’ll still go’ I was assured, ‘you just need to take it over to that room at the far end of the hall as it’s too big to go through our scanners’. Whilst I watched another member of staff opening up the box and carefully searching through all of the contents, it did make me think about all the other bike boxes that I’d brought to this airport that would have been too big to go through their scanners…


The two flights went smoothly enough, the final stretch into Amman circumventing Israel by heading further west over Egypt, and then approaching from the South. Rushing around the airport after landing, at midnight, I procured some Jordanian Dinars and a new SIM card before meeting up with the driver of the van who was hopefully going to squeeze a very large bike box in the back. As the driver didn’t speak English, the manager of the hotel had also come along in a car, to meet me off the plane.


Once back at the hotel he pushed me to pay for the return leg as well – as van drivers were difficult to procure – then proceeded to charge me an eye-watering fee given the prices that should have been involved. In my depleted state, I paid what he asked, but I had been totally ripped off. And, as I lay in bed that night, there was no way I could make the numbers add up to what I’d been charged, even if I paid for the ‘van and car’ combination both ways!


Looking at it pragmatically, if I placed a value – to me – of being able to get my bike to and from the airport in the middle of the night, and storing my bike box for a week while I was away, as well as somewhere to stay at the beginning and end of the trip, maybe the manager had achieved that figure. That’s the way I’ll look at it anyway, as long as the van arrives to take me back to the airport next week…

Jordan 2023: The King’s Highway

Up In The Air

At the culmination of my lap of Iceland in the summer, I was asked ‘what’s next’? I quickly responded that somewhere warmer might be nice, like a winter escape to Jordan… And it might be nice, I’ll find out very soon!

Usually, when I’m planning a cycling trip, it develops gradually into a vague outline and a smattering of half-formed ideas, then I book the flights, and quickly those half-formed ideas become a plan. On this occasion, after several months of agonising over which flights to book, a sudden price drop forced my hand, and only then did I think to check out the news flash about the Gaza strip which had just flashed across my phone screen.

From that moment, an air of uncertainty hung over my planning: firstly when British Airways extended the duration of the flights in and out of Jordan, presumably deeming it prudent to take steps to avoid flying directly over a war zone; and secondly when they cancelled my homewards flight, offering up the possibility to postpone my trip until a time when the region appeared slightly less volatile. On considering my alternatives, I quickly realised that I would almost certainly end up claiming a refund on the flights to Jordan, then immediately replace them with cheap flights to Egypt, a country also bordering Israel and the Palestine Territories, but in which I had done no research at all. So, Jordan it was…


Jordan was somewhere that had appealed for many years, my interest piqued by photos of the red sandstone tombs of Petra glowing in the slowly-setting desert sun.
In recent years, the country had positioned itself as a safe haven for adventure in the middle of a turbulent region, so, when I first learned about the Jordan Trail, a mixed terrain mountain biking and trekking route running 400 miles down the middle of the country, I took notice. In calculating my remaining annual leave for the year, it was clear that I didn’t have enough days left to undertake the full thing, but surely I could find something to entertain myself?


In reading about the Jordan Trail route, there was regular mention of a road, ‘The King’s Highway’, an old communication path down the spine of the country, starting in Damascus, Syria, and finishing up at Aqaba on the Red Sea. Regarded as being one of the oldest roads in the world, it was documented in the bible and dotted with Roman ruins and Crusader Castles along its length.


The 250 mile stretch from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to Aqaba appeared to have some of the most impressive landscape features, bisected by the towering gorge of Wadi Mujib, tiptoeing around the edge of the Dana Biosphere Reserve, before descending to the spectacular desert landscapes of Wadi Rum on its final approach to the sea.


Oh, and in case I forgot to mention, it passes Petra along the way..

Lejog Day 3: Liskeard – Crediton

Distance: 55.4 miles

Time: 5:34

Elevation: 4096 feet

The day started well when the campsite owner, Kathryn, brought me over some porridge and a coffee. I was on the road at 10 o’clock and had unfinished business with the climb up to Bodmin Moor.

A brisk descent through Pensilva followed and then another stiff climb up to Golberdon, where my alternative accommodation for the previous evening had been. Down and up again through anonymous country lanes, then another brake-busting descent led to Horsebridge, where a medieval bridge aided my passage to a new county, Devon.

Devon welcomed me with a grinding climb; from 50m Horsebridge to 300m and the edge of Dartmoor. Under the shadow of Brent Tor and its ancient church, I chatted to a cyclist on a few day tour around the moor, laden with four panniers and with a rucksack strapped atop his rack.

The road dropped down to Lydford Gorge, and I stopped at the visitor centre cafe for ice cream and a scone. As I sat preparing my scone on the grass, I realised that I was at risk of committing a huge cultural faux pas, by ignorantly applying the clotted cream and jam in an order wholly incognisant of the Devonian methodology. I carried on regardless, if any interested party, Devonian or Cornish, wanted to see how a scone should be prepared, this could be a lesson to them. As it happens, the right way is the Devonian way, but I’d desecrated tradition anyway by having a fruit scone, and raspberry – not strawberry – jam.

Soon there was a distinct improvement in proceedings as I turned onto ‘The Granite Way’, a tarmacked former railway bed that crept around the edge of Dartmoor for 8 gloriously flat miles between Lydford and Okehampton. The cycle path was busy with other users and one man in particular appeared to be having a tough time of it, with a fixed wheel tagalong attached to his bike, his son seemed to be having a great time back pedalling up the climbs!

After popping into a shop on the edge of Okehampton for provisions, I committed myself to aim for Crediton, another 20 miles further on. Thankfully, the road stuck to major roads to Whiddon Down, and I felt good riding the shallower gradients. The going remained good until a sharp climb a mile from Crediton, and instantly the fatigue in my legs returned. When a further 9% ramp followed shortly after, I opted to push, after 48 miles I’d given up the battle for today.

The nearest campsite was 5 miles to the East, and with no response to my phone call I headed there regardless, largely because the route looked flat. Arriving at the Langford Bridge campsite at 20 to 7, the sign stated that reception was open ‘til 7, and the campsite was largely empty, I’d found my abode for the night.

Luckily, after the exertions of the day, my dinner couldn’t be simpler, a tin of Heinz beans and sausages, and, finally, a use for the stove I’ve been carrying.