The Shifting Sands

While the Al Qudra cycling track is easy to access and has great facilities, after some time you get a little tired of the terrain and you wish for something a little more. While most of the UAE is flat, the border region with Oman provide some smooth and wide roads to the mountain tops on the border. The car park at Jebel Jais with a shelter shed and clean toilets. Impressive! My first outing was to Jebel Jais, on the western edge of the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, about 120 km north of Dubai.   For this little adventure, I convinced Paddy, my running buddy and neighbour, to dust off his bike and join me for one last adventure before he and his family relocate back to the UK. We set off at 0430 hrs under a starlit ski and no wind but by the time we passed through Sharjah, 20 minutes to the north, everything had changed. The scene would have done George Miller proud,   Sharjah was doing its best impersonation of a apocalyptic wasteland.   Winds ...

The "Vegas End" of RAK, UAE's northern Emirate I was sorted at last.  After some heartache, I now had a car and a roof rack and the ability to move my sea kayak.  We had left some clothing in a Hotel Room at Ras Al Kaimah when we stayed in a hotel to watch a friends band and, I would like to say that there was a great story behind our stupidity, but I can't. Anyhow, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do some paddling as well as recover our lost property. The new wheels with my difficult to obtain Thule cross bars. After some reconnaissance on Google Earth, I decided that the northern tip of the sand island that protects Umm Al Qwain harbour was a good bet. There isn't a lot of surf in the UAE but that is not to say that there is no surf. There was an ebbing tide early in the morning and a slight NNE swell which, combined with a river bar that you could easily see from the images, should have provided some fun. I was able to be on...