Day 3 - Cycling to Kerak Castle 60km, staying at Dana Nature Reserve

We set off from the hotel and cycled along the Dead Sea with the mountains of Israel in the distance. The sea has white patches on the shore which look like the wash has beaten up a foam although it's actually the salt deposits.

We briefly stopped at a Nature reserve within a gorge with a freshwater stream riverthrough the bottom. It's interesting to contrast attractions between Jordan and the UK. In Jordan people are expected to take responsibility for their own safety so there are no guard rails at the edges of precipices and no yellow tape on the edge of steps etc. We climbed down a slippy swimming pool type ladder into the river in the gorge which was refreshingly cold! At the end by the road there were repairs to the bridge which had been damaged by flash floods within the gorge - hard to believe on the day we were there. I think Frasier, in the orange top, was doing a bit of twitching here (or perhaps the YMCA routine?) - he even brought a birds of the middle east twitcher's handbook along which we borrowed later.

Unfortunately the heat claimed 2 more victims, poor Kathryn was quite sick and Nic felt too ill to cycle. Started to feel like an Agatha Christie novel we were dropping so fast!

However, the journey continued on past the end of the Dead Sea and through Jordan villages. We still had the police escort although some stones were still thrown - I wonder if the children weren't being malicious just cheeky and trying to attract attention. We stopped for lunch at a deserted villa and settled down to our boiled eggs and laughing cow in some welcome shade. We then continued to Kerak Castle built in 1132 which is shown above with Sarah and I making 'interesting shapes' as directed by Becky. We had a group shot shown below.

I forgot to mention we had the Jordanian Cycle Champion, Ahmed - lovely guy, with us who is on the back row not far from me and our local tour guide Abdouall is in the middle although not looking up!