Having made it through the formalities of Saudi immigration, we made it out of the port & onto the open roads of Saudi Arabia, albeit with a bit of a shadow, courtesy of the authorities. One of the features of the roads were the amazing constructions on some of the roundabouts & check points.
Many were used as reference points in the road book, fairly obvious in some cases.
The roads were superb, especially as we were just transiting the country, so smooth tarmac dual carriageways were ideal.
We made a couple of fuel stops & found a major design fault with the carb installation done in Greece. We couldn't check the oil level. There had been mention of it in Greece & I did think that it had been sorted. With the injection & twin carb installation the dip stick runs straight down into the sump & when I had fitted my baffle, I had made a hole to suit. The single twin choke manifold ran directly above the hole, so Motorman had cut the tube & bent the dip stick to suit [or not]. After about 10 minutes of trying I managed to get the dip stick back in but when it was pulled out it was wiped, so no level reading.
As there was some signs of oil from the redundant fuel pump I popped a litre of oil in & made a mental note to sort the dip stick at the first opportunity. Then it was back to roundabout spotting. What with ship roundabouts & fish ones we were soon trawling the road book for more nautical notes.
The scenery on the way was stunning, one minute you would be driving over predominantly flat country, then it would suddenly change to be very rocky, we even saw quite a few camels. It was about 5.30 by the time we got into Yanbu. There were hundreds of people at The Tulip Inn. Another super welcome for the competitors.
Our rooms were pretty good as well. Richard grabbed the double, I had 2 for my split personalities,
then there was a kitchen & then
we had a bit to share.
After a shower [yes there was loads of hot water] we even had a chance to take a walk along the sea front [The Red Sea] before dinner.
