Afternoon Fewbie Desert Drive -South of Africa: Revisited - Abu Dhabi - 28 Sep 2025

[_luke_]

Thankyou everyone for being on time today. It was surely a hot one 🥵

We got our briefing underway at 14:00 on schedule under the only tree nearby... @Ale Vallecchi @ChrisW and @Aser laid down the expectations... Don't turn a refusal into a stuck, no overtaking, and no stopping as we had a lot of ground to cover.

Our convoy lept into action picking a slow but steady path through the debris field by riding high on ridges and avoiding as much of the vegetation as possible... As we moved towards the fence, the terrain started opening up allowing for some nice high ridge riding and criss cross maneuvers across the dunes. 

Next we pushed south crossing ridge after ridge to get around the fence zone and head into the 'even bigger dunes' section that had us looping around and through giant behemoths with the farms in the distance to give the height done perspective. We were making pretty good time at this point, but normally convoys slow down after the first break...... NOT US!

We turned the pace UP and started heading south west to find the construction road which let us cut up towards the sabkhas, but instead of cheating and making up speed in the flats... MORE RIDGES AND DUNES 😎

As we entered the faya/khatm small technical dune zone, we unfortunately lost @diego and @aser to passenger sickness as they had to take an exit. Thanks @aser for making sure everyone got out ok!

The rest of us pushed along the fence and finally got the days reward... The completely untouched long range dunes of Faya... Ridge riding, Sidies and smiles were the order for this section, playing freely until we started losing the sunlight and had to take the track home to exit.

We covered 75km in 3:45. That's excellent pace for a FB drive, and everyone handled the terrain perfectly. 

Thanks @Ale Vallecchi for finessing my lines, and to all of you for the great end to the weekend. 

@Steve Farmer @Krinesh @ChrisW @Diego @Zsolt @Aser @Sam Selim and our trusty sweep @Glenn W 👏👏👏👏

See you all again soon!

[Steve Farmer]

Such a great drive yesterday, thanks again all.

And apologies, I tried to upload my one decent pic from the drive, but the platform never seems to like the jpeg files I upload. This time it resulted in 4 blank files in our gallery! I'm at the point of giving up.

Does anyone else ever have this problem with the website?  Any tips for avoiding failed uploads?  (I already reduce the image size by half, but still seems to jam a lot)

 

 @Luke K P@Sam Selim  @Zsolt @Krinesh @Diego @Glenn W @Ale Vallecchi @ChrisW @Aser

[_luke_]

7 hours ago, Steve Farmer said:

Such a great drive yesterday, thanks again all.

And apologies, I tried to upload my one decent pic from the drive, but the platform never seems to like the jpeg files I upload. This time it resulted in 4 blank files in our gallery! I'm at the point of giving up.

Does anyone else ever have this problem with the website?  Any tips for avoiding failed uploads?  (I already reduce the image size by half, but still seems to jam a lot)

 

 @Luke K P@Sam Selim  @Zsolt @Krinesh @Diego @Glenn W @Ale Vallecchi @ChrisW @Aser

I used to get random blank ones as well. but it magically stopped. Now I just upload from the phone. If u wanna send me via insta or whatsapp i can post it 4 u @Steve Farmer 

[Andrew John Melvill]

12 hours ago, Luke K P said:

Thankyou everyone for being on time today. It was surely a hot one 🥵

We got our briefing underway at 14:00 on schedule under the only tree nearby... @Ale Vallecchi @ChrisW and @Aser laid down the expectations... Don't turn a refusal into a stuck, no overtaking, and no stopping as we had a lot of ground to cover.

Our convoy lept into action picking a slow but steady path through the debris field by riding high on ridges and avoiding as much of the vegetation as possible... As we moved towards the fence, the terrain started opening up allowing for some nice high ridge riding and criss cross maneuvers across the dunes. 

Next we pushed south crossing ridge after ridge to get around the fence zone and head into the 'even bigger dunes' section that had us looping around and through giant behemoths with the farms in the distance to give the height done perspective. We were making pretty good time at this point, but normally convoys slow down after the first break...... NOT US!

We turned the pace UP and started heading south west to find the construction road which let us cut up towards the sabkhas, but instead of cheating and making up speed in the flats... MORE RIDGES AND DUNES 😎

As we entered the faya/khatm small technical dune zone, we unfortunately lost @diego and @aser to passenger sickness as they had to take an exit. Thanks @aser for making sure everyone got out ok!

The rest of us pushed along the fence and finally got the days reward... The completely untouched long range dunes of Faya... Ridge riding, Sidies and smiles were the order for this section, playing freely until we started losing the sunlight and had to take the track home to exit.

We covered 75km in 3:45. That's excellent pace for a FB drive, and everyone handled the terrain perfectly. 

Thanks @Ale Vallecchi for finessing my lines, and to all of you for the great end to the weekend. 

@Steve Farmer @Krinesh @ChrisW @Diego @Zsolt @Aser @Sam Selim and our trusty sweep @Glenn W 👏👏👏👏

See you all again soon!

What an amazing sounding drive! Very jealous! Need to get my car sorted out ASAP.  

[_luke_]

9 minutes ago, Andrew John Melvill said:

What an amazing sounding drive! Very jealous! Need to get my car sorted out ASAP.  

we've identified some good spots to go back and checkout once your car is sorted!