I was up pretty early wanting to ease my bowels. It was my first experience with the shovel and I managed it ok, having first made sure no one was about. That was when I noticed the tyres had been weed upon and I spotted paw prints; don’t know if it was wild dogs or wolves.

Just as I finished doing my business it started to rain lightly and I told Alison not to bother to come down from the tent until the rain had stopped. The rain didn’t last and Adrian was then down like a shot to play in the sand. After breakfast, just as were driving off towards Lawrence castle, a 4x4 passed by and we followed it to the site mark as the Bridge on the map. We got talking to the Silburt family and their driver/guide Ahmed, who didn’t mind us following him to the next site, Lawrence Castle.

We didn’t know where they were heading after that but we headed for a site marked as Alfaliah inscription. Then we continued heading north and saw that the track was getting less and less visible and I made the mistake of slowing down at an incline and then we were bogged down in the sand with tyres still hard for road use. We started digging and when we thought the tyres were clear enough we tried to move Tuah to no avail.

Just as I was about to turn to the last resort of getting the high lift jack out, Alison spotted a 4x4 truck and we waved it down. They said they would help us out as they saw we had recovery equipment, but it would cost us 100 Dinars. There was no arguments or bargaining as far as they were concerned and within half an hour with our warn winch line hooked on to their truck and deflating our tyres, we were out.

Thereafter I didn’t care if anyone was complaining about discomfort, and drove like a maniac every time I saw an uphill incline which appeared to have soft sand ahead. It was a lesson well learnt for me and we made it out to the Rum village first and then back to the visitor’s centre for a well deserved ice dream, but more like gin and tonic was needed for Alison.

One could see the 7 pillars of wisdom from the centre, which some claim to have inspired the title of T. E Lawrence literary account of the Great Arab Revolt. Others thought that modern tourists named the mountains after the book. Similarly many other places have been erroneously connected to the British writer, such as “Lawrence’s spring” or “Lawrence’s castle”, which in fact is an Ottoman ruins. In fact Lawrence road to Aqaba did not cross Wadi Rum but followed the route of what is now the modern road to Aqaba. Nevertheless, we had a great time in Wadi Rum and gained some valuable experience in the sand.

It was then time to bid farewell to Wadi Rum and left at 1440hrs giving us ample time to get to Aqaba in search for a hotel and a good scrub. We drove towards the South Coast and found a similar beach to that of Amman but decided against camping there after seeing the facilities in Amman beach, which was rather disgusting. We drove back into town and found where all the hotels were and checked in at Al Qedrah Motel at 45 Dinars a night for a large clean room with a sitting area.