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Sahara: A Line in the Sand

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Michael's journey begins in Gibraltar, and with a 21-gun salute in honour of the Queen's birthday ringing in his ears, Michael crosses the Straits to Tangier in Morocco. It is only after pausing in Fez and Marrakech, and scaling the High Atlas, that Michael's "Line in the Sand" enters real desert. This is hard, hot country, controlled by the Polisario Front who have been in confrontation with the Moroccans for over 25 years. But this inhospitable land is softened by the warmth shown by the Sahawari people, who guide Michael south to the Mauritanian border. Here he climbs aboard the "longest train in the world", breaking his journey at Chinguetti. There is just time for Michael to defeat the local champion at a game of desert draughts, played with stalks and camel droppings, before he gets literally taken over by the 24th Paris-Dakar Rally and its sole surviving British entrant, Dave Hammond from Cirencester.
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Writers:: Michael Palin

Director:: Roger Mills

Stars:: Michael Palin (Himself)

Michael travelled 10,000 miles over a period of 99 days to make this series. edit »

The filming for this series took place between February 2001 and February 2002, with work on the book squeezed in between various trips to the desert (the longest of which was a virtually non-stop seven weeks from Western Algeria to Timbuktu). edit »
This episode was recorded on the 10 June 2002. edit »

(on Gibraltar)
Michael: This corner of a foreign land that seems forever England is a gnarled limestone rock, nearly 4 miles long and 1400 feet high, tucked into Spain's lower regions like a prostate, dominating the dozen miles of ocean that separate Europe from Africa. edit »