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Saturday November 8th finds us back in emailing territory at the beautiful St Catherines monastery in Southern Sinai. We have spent the last two days cycling only upwards - around 100km - to get here. The road goes ever on and on, as Tolkien said, and it certainly felt like it at times. Brian was the fall guy who took a tumble today - the roads here a little sandy and it can catch out the unwary cyclist
Last night we had Shabat together - a whole goat was roasted for us although as a veggie it was a little lost on me (we spent the night beside a penful of its cousins). Last night was slightly fraught for the girls as we were billetted in a compound which the Bedouin clearly regarded as their. The men gathered - with hookah pipes - to watch the spectacle of us trying to remove our dreadful cycle shorts in our tents. Eventually they did leave but one kept returning to make bread. He made more bread than they could eat in a month. It was, in the end, too funny to be irritating
Great moments so far - Louise having tea with the driver under the bus, swimming in the red sea, visiting the monastery during a service, long talks around the camp fire, rest stops, shooting stars, sleeping on the beach making bread, riding camels at the pyramids, folk dancing with Emir and Asaf by the side of the road under the shade of an acacia, new uses for chamois cream, aloe vera gel, the only scorpions we've seen being in a jar, snack bars, the group dynamic, the chivalrous chaps who help us along when it's windy, the fantastic girls who reduce the worst moments to laughter, cold snickers, Fi's sense of humour, eating bread we made, finding a downhill bit (there haven't been many) and the glorious pink rock of Mount Sinai beneath a rising moon.
Tomorrow we climb Mt Sinai which is in contention for being the original Mt Sinai - along with many others. Our glorious leader Dr Kessler has kept us all together, focussed and very aware of what we're doing and why. There are, of course, times when the gradient is steep and we experience the odd twinge of doubt (probably rather like the children of Israel when they came this way, although I'm not sure Ed would want to be compared to Moses.

Here ends today's blog.....
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