Route Guide
Detailed Route Guide (PDF)
Our pre-rally route plan covering the full distance from London to Morocco and back, with waypoints, distances and notes.
Download route guide PDF13Days
5,061Miles
4Countries
The Road Taken
13 days · 5,061 miles · 4 countries
The Moroccan Rally 2024 launched from Tower Bridge at 6:06am on the 31st of May 2024, the first Rusty Rhinos rally in a decade, and Red’s fifth. Over 13 days we drove 5,061 miles (8,098 km) across 4 countries, averaging 389 miles per day. The route took us through France and Spain, into Morocco via the Ceuta ferry, deep into the Sahara, and back the same way. There were, as ever, unscheduled detours.
The European section was a near-continuous sprint. After launching from London we pushed southeast through France towards Dijon, crossed into Spain and stopped for breakfast in Barcelona, and reached the 1,000-mile mark just 27 hours into the drive. We completed the 1,600-mile run to near Algeciras in around 40 hours, crossing into Morocco via the Ceuta ferry on the morning of the 2nd of June. Our first stop was Tetouan, where we picked up local maps and local currency, before heading up into the Rif mountains to the blue city of Chefchaouen, where one of the local cats declined to leave the roof of the car until we were ready to depart the next morning.
From Chefchaouen we drove an epic 422 miles south to Fes for a lunch stop in the old medina, then on to Merzouga and the Sahara. The following days were some of the most demanding of any Rusty Rhinos rally. We drove from Merzouga to Zagora largely off-road through 42°C heat and a sand storm, straying within a few miles of the Algerian border where the Moroccan military escorted us back to the correct track. After a full day of car repairs in Zagora (rear suspension, fuel filters and more), we took on the rocky off-road trail from Zagora to Foum-Zguid via Tagounite and Iriki, spending an entire day navigating the dunes and getting briefly stuck in soft sand near Ramlia.
The return leg took us through the Atlas Mountains, including a night drive on precarious mountain roads stopping at 3:15am on a mountainside under a starlit sky, past sections still being rebuilt after the 2023 earthquake, and on to Marrakesh for a lunch of Tajine and Pastilla in the medina. We headed north through Casablanca and Rabat, overnighted in Asilah just south of Tangiers, and crossed back into Spain at Ceuta. From there it was a straight run north through Spain and France to Calais and home. We finished at Epping Forest after 13 days, the place, as it happens, where Rusty Rhinos adventures started with mountain biking some thirty years earlier.
Route Guide
Our pre-rally route plan covering the full distance from London to Morocco and back, with waypoints, distances and notes.
Download route guide PDF