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Twing Raid 2026, A retrospective

7th July 2026

I did the Twing Raid 2026 this year, and it was an absolutely incredible adventure. This is the experience my best friend and I had doing it, although if you are to embark on this journey yourself your experience will vary depending on your approach to the event, your preparation, and to a lesser extent your french skills! Over time I'm also going to write up how we prepared the car and ourselves for the rally, as that's worth documenting, especially if you're not from France/dont speak fluent french. When we first registered for the event a lot of the documentation was exclusively in French, it did change as more international teams joined but it's still a primarily french event, and you will benefit enormously from being able to speak even just basic taxi French. All days are with respect to the official day scheduling for the event, given we had a long journey to do just to get to FICOBA in Irun, Spain, we set off several days before the start of the event

Day -2: Final Prep

As with all of these sorts of projects you never have enough time, so the day before we departed we had some minor jobs to do. The alternator belt was making a right racket so we tensioned that up, which was complicated by yours truly absolutely mullering a riv nut in the belly pan we installed. We also packed the car with everything we could in advance to save us doing it at the crack of dawn the next day, as well as making a trip to Sainsburys to get the food for the solidarity donation. This was also the day I woke up to a text from Brittany Ferries saying our original UK to France travel plan (The Portsmouth to Ouistreham ferry) had been cancelled, so we scrambled to book the channel tunnel LeShuttle service instead, which was a bit more expensive but really no big deal in the grand sceme of things. Final things was give the car a good clean and finish stickering it up, we planned to not clean it until we got back to build up a nice patina.

Day -1: Hampshire to Le Mans

We made a reasonably early start on this day, which would be a recurring theme for the next two weeks. The trip inside the UK was very uneventful, the M25 and M20 presented no fuss at all and we got to the LeShuttle terminal with loads of time to spare, this let us get an earlier train than anticipated which is always nice. The first few days I hadn't mastered the correct posture for driving the car and sitting in the drivers seat for longer than an hour or two absolutely killed my back, but I got a good posture figured out eventually. Once on the french AutoRoutes we discovered a fun problem, the speed sensor went on the fritz and would drop the speed to 0 KPH, which would also just turn off the power steering, this is mildly inconvenient but not the end of the world, we originally planned to try and get a new one in Le Mans at the French equivalent of a Euro Car Parts, but ended up going a different route. With the big knobbly tyres and relatively sedate performance overtaking was always a hilarious affair, but given enough time we could get up to 130kph and hold it there and just fly across France. The fuel economy we were measuring was absolutely shocking, but we did end up figuring out that was partially due to the speed sensor, as it wouldn't increment the odometer or trip counter when it wasn't working. We figured we were getting 350km to a ~35L tank which was surprisingly bad. We stayed the night in a cheap Airbnb in Le Mans, which was a bit sketchy to get in but was reasonably nice. This was also about the time I made my yearly re discovery of the fact that continental europe really isn't it for vegans, so my dietary choices were rather limited throughout the duration of this trip.

Day 0: Le Mans to Irun

We originally intended to start the day by heading to the Le Mans 24H museum, and taking a picture with the twingo in front of the circuit's big overhead sign, but unfortunately it was just our luck the museum was shut for renovations with lorries in the front area so there was no good photo opportunity. At least we could drive down the mulsanne straight and give it some beans around some of the corners. The speed sensor was getting progressively more flaky, so we found one on spanish Amazon and had it delivered to an Amazon locker close to the rest stop on the first day, as well as a few new bolts for the back plate if we needed to fight the riv nuts off to do the job. For some strange reason the car felt meaningfully quicker today, it was absolutely flying along. We were happily cruising at 120-130Kph no issues, and saw on the facebook group for the event other teams reporting maxing out at 100. We think this is a combination of us having one of the two variants of higher power engine, and not weighing ourselves down with roof racks full of crap. Towards the late afternoon as we really homed in on Irun we saw some other raiders, in alpine and espace F1 themed twingos which looked really great. We stuck around with them for a while but ended up leaving them in the dust because they were just too slow. We finished the evening in another nice Airbnb, a little guest house run by some retired hoteliers. We grabbed some food in town, repacked the car to prepare for the next day and set alarms for a 7AM start. Each team is given a specific time to turn up for the mandatory checks, because we booked early we were able to go on the morning of departure, half the teams needed to be there the evening before.

Day 1: Irun to Salamanca

We had quite the early start today to get to the FICOBA convention center for our inspection and registration time slot. The first step was a mechanical and equipment check. Participants get a list of things you need to bring and a list of work to do on your car. Make sure the box of things you need to bring is easily accessible before this step for a smooth experience. We had to rummage quite far into the car to get the bits out which was a bit of a pain. We also got a ticking off because our reinforcement for the tow hook was not visible, make sure to make the spot weld for the tow hook onto the chassis member look beefed up as they dont look so deeply into it and our reinforcement onto the end of the chassis cap (which definitely did strengthen it enough when we got stuck) was not easily visible so didn't count. At least one of the members of staff at every step of the process spoke enough english to get by, but some basic french skills would definitely come in handy.

After the car checks we got directed to park up with all the other twingos, and we had medical and paperwork checks. You're required to fill out a medical history form (it's helpful to know your blood type but the guy reviewing our form didn't care). You alsop need an amicable accident report form but we couldn't find one to bring with us so we didn't bother and it didn't end up being an issue. After that it was a lot of socialising with other teams and waiting for the start speech. Met q few other international teams, lots of people were excited to see a british team on british plates. All in all the vibes were lovely. A recurring theme through the whole event was a DJ banging out the tunes, including some... artful... AI generated twingo themed french songs. After the start speech it was time to go. There was no real marshalling or anything so it was quite chaotic leaving, but it was all good once we got onto the road. You do have to feel a bit for the residents of Irun, who must have been wondering what the hell was going on with swarms of twingos going through the city.

On the road we were absolutely flying past all other Twingos, we'd packed noticeably lighter than most other teams and you could really tell on the road. We were also benefiting from the d7f engine. If you plan on doing the raid you really ought to avoid the c3g engine, it has no benefits at all and is significantly down on power. As we flew through the beautiful spanish scenery we went by quite a lot of service stations with twingos in there, some with their bonnets up too but we had no real gremlins and made fantastic time. After a while we discovered turning the fan down from max gave a noticeable boost in power, the fan blower blows really quite hard in the twingo. During registration the organisation put an Iridium tracking beacon on your car so they can track you. Ours was very broken, a fact my mum made sure to remind me of several times a day as she failed to keep tabs on us on the web tracker they provided. We were able to grab the new speed sensor and a tank of fuel on the way in to Salamanca, and when we stopped at the (very swish) hotel we were able to get it swapped out pretty easily. We had a dinner organised for us in the hotel, although as with everything else there weren't even vegan options for the food. I had to trade the meat on my dish with my teammate.

Day 2: Salamanca to Algeciras

We got up at 7 and had a quick breakfast then left. We were probably one of the first hundred cars out but the spanish sections were like the wild west, some teams went full send all the way to Algeciras on the first day, one team went home for the night then started going from there. The new speed sensor was working an absolute treat on this day, but the tracker was still fucked. I also hadn't quite got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road and nearly turned onto the left side of the road when we were coming off one of the autovias for a quick pit stop. Our screenwash was completely empty and we'd been massacring bugs left right and center as we'd travelled through europe, so a top up on that was very much needed. The weather was a little cooler than the day before, but still absolutely delightful. We stopped at a restaurant and petrol station and whilst filling up discovered that google reviews had the attached restaurant penned as the worst food in spain, so we sensibly decided to press on and find a generic Burger King. Spanish Burger Kings did have vegan options which was a welcome change, and they sell beer, dont get that in the UK! Despite all the stops we were still around 100th which really begged the question of what the hell other teams were getting up to to take so long. Despite many opportunities we also forgot to get a pool noodle for the oh shit handle on the passenger side, if you're tall it's in prime head clonking position, which is not fun at all. We made it to the stop in Los Barrios with plenty of time, and got our hotel directions and made our way there after another obligatory period of deafening EDM and a speech in French saying basically "Dont do dumb things and piss off the Moroccan border force". The twingo raid caused absolute traffic carnage in Los Barrios. We're glad we turned up early because there were people being massively disrespectful, clogging up the roads and all sorts. We just parked up, deployed the camping chairs and had a cup of tea and chatted to people.

Day 3: Algeciras to Ait Ayach

On this day we woke up at 4:30 AM and immediately left to catch the ferry, if we missed it we were, to put it bluntly, screwed. It was quite chilly and the windscreen misted up, so we cranked the heater on max to get it demisted and cracked on, despite being one of the first to leave the hotel, we were about halfway in the queue of cars at the ferry terminal, those who elected to camp were staying a little closer. about 3 minutes from the ferry terminal the temperature warning light came on, and wouldn't go off. Fortunately we were able to stop in the queue for the ferry and inspect it, whilst we were trying to figure out what was going on the heat properly soaked in and the lower radiator hose blew off. This was a less than ideal situation and panic stations set in and we cracked on. We grabbed tools out the back and started wrangling it back in, access and visibility were limited but we got it back on, topped up the tank (we began to suspect before we set off in England we'd overfilled the coolant) and got in line to actually board the ferry, made it a whole 2 minutes before the light came on again. Kacper was turning the car off every time we moved forward to try and let it cool whilst i was panicking quite a lot. We hoped the system just needed bleeding, but it was nonetheless nervewracking.

Once parked up, as with most other car ferries, you can't stay with your car so we headed to the desk. The night before we had to complete a long and tedious customs form for each of us that was a little tricky to understand, but we got all the important bits filled out and then joined the very long queue to see the Moroccan customs officials on the boat. This bit is very important and wasn't well expained. Once you're on the boat you need to see a Moroccan customs official for you, who will stamp your passports, then you need to go to another official on the other part of the boat who will sign your car into the country. We nearly missed out on the second official, which would have been a bureaucratic ballache. After that was done we found a cash converter bloke on the ferry and traded some Euros for Dirhams (it's approximately a 10 dir to 1 eur ratio), then waited for the car decks to open. I was also having a nightmare with my eSIM. Thank you Ubigi for making the APN information required to establish a connection impossible to discover unless you have a working cell conection... it really should be offline accessible in the app. When the car decks opened we rushed down there and began bleeding the cooling system. First we just let it gravity bleed, then I put my mouth on the expansion tank and blew in to force more air out. Got an unpleasant taste of coolant in the mouth but that got it 90% bled, then once we could we started the engine to finish it off, disembarked the ferry and we were in Morocco!

We had quite a lot of distance to cover in Morocco to get to the first end point so we cracked on, once in Morocco you're given a strict route to follow using the OSMand app, and you were penalised using their points system for straying from it. This tripped up a lot of people who were following Waze and took a different route. The first section took us down one of the main arterial motorways in the country, then through some slightly more rural roads followed by an exccursion deep into the middle of nowhere for the final journey to the camp. A persistent theme was the roads are the wild west, there were burnt out lorries on the side of the motoway, people wandering up and down the road, a couple children went for the suicidal motorway crossing on foot. The rural roads had all these fun adventures alongside a whole cavalcade of vehicles too unroadworthy for the main roads. A fairly common rural Moroccan innovation is piling vast quantities of stuff onto the outside of your vehicle. The pinnacle of this development, the true einsteins of suspension overloading, are the hay vans. These guys will build the great pyramids of Giza inverted out of hay on their ancient battered Japenese lorries kicking our so much smog following them gives you a rapid onset case of miners lung. You can't help but admire the efficiency of managing to pile stuff beyond literally every edge of the vehicle, sometimes even hanging down out the back too, however this admiration is quickly replaced by frustration once you realise the sheer mass of hay severely compromises the average hay vans performance on hilly rural roads, and then abject terror as you try to overtake one in a car with 60hp when it was made round sharp corners and over blind hills.

Morocco is an absolutely stunningly beautiful country, it manages to pack every single biome imaginable into an area short enough you could cover it in a day. The motorway tracked through gorgeous green fields, then as we went more rural we went through rocky mountain passes with snowy lakes, then light brown desert sand. All throughout the weather was stunning, the views were gorgeous round every corner and over every hill and the absolute comedy of being in a convoy of 50 twingos made it a truly unforgettable experience. at times we were stopping every 15 minutes just for some lovely pictures. On the way to the camp we stopped at Monkey Park, which as the name implies had some rather curious monkeys investigating our car and us. Turns out monkeys can be bribed with carbohydrates to sit on top of a Twingo. After monkey park we blasted the last little bit to the camp, by which point it had got rather chilly. On the first night we didn't really know how things worked, finding the toilets and showers was harder than it needed to be, and the less said about the state of the toilets the better, but a shower was a nice luxury. The general vibes were nice. Some local traders had set up a little sales post and we bought turbans, which would come in more useful than we initially thought. Dinner was mystery meat tagine (we think maybe camel), so for me it was rice and uhhh rice. Then we had a briefing from the organisers, all in french, and went to bed for the next day. Because of the numbers they staggered the departures in the morning, there were other useful tidbits in the briefind so it was worth running google translate every night to figure out what was the deal.

Day 4: Ait Ayach to Erg Chebbi

As we were in one of the first groups leaving in the morning we had a pretty early start, no time for breakfast we just packed the tent up, admired the view and got ready to go. Today was the day the off road trails started in earnest. We set off down the route with more beautiful scenery and sketchy roads and drivers. We got a little concerned we didn't have enough cash, so wanted to stop at the first ATM we could find, and it'll come at no surprice that they're hard to find in the middle of nowhere. After a couple hours on the road we stopped in a beautiful scenic spot to grab one of the dehydrated camping breakfasts we brought with us. There was also someone with a functional coffee shop in the back of their van there. They were doing a roaring trade with all the twingos.

In no time at all we made it to the first off road track, at the entrance to, exit of and at strategic points along the track members of the organisation were there in real off roaders to give advice, help you if you get stuck and just generally help run the show. Every time you entered the trail you ahd to have your headlights on and your tow rope set up and slammed in the door or going in the window so you could be rescued quickly. They also advised we air our tyres down, at which point we discovered we'd done 2500 miles with the things at 40 PSI which might have explained some of the harshness over bumps. We let a lot of air out then set off over the sandy track. I felt quite a bit of mechanical sympathy, the poor car was getting battered around a fair bit. We were properly zooming along though, we were even able to pull off some overtakes on other cars who couldn't keep up. The Mario Ziarelli tyres we'd found on ebay were the golden ticket to some serious performance. Other cars were having real issues going through some of the ouds (essentially rivers of very soft sand). We did get stuck once, on the approach to a massive oud there was a hueg queue of cars and we were forced to stop in a very soft sandy bit and couldn't get going again, so we had to air the tyres down even more, and i got out and pushed whilst Kacper gave it the beans. The clutch did not appreciate this manouver but we got going again, we also noticed our air filter box got knocked loose. When it was our turn we absolutely blasted past the oud and kept going on. Free bird was played very loudly at several points. On our way out the track we spotted one of the other english speaking teams changing a wheel. They'd sent it a bit too hard and gone through all their spares so they were going to limp to a Moroccan garage for more tyres.

After leaving the track we headed to the next camp, we stopped in a random little town on the way as we'd spotted an ATM, the people there were lovely and we had a little chat, they were surprised to see Brits on this adventure. Realistically i think you should plan to withdraw 5000 dirhams to last you the whole time in Morocco. We made it to the camp pretty early, it was an absolutely beautiful site right next to some amaxing dunes, we got the tent setup, had a cup of tea and chilled. Our sleep was slightly ruined by some absolute arseholes rocking up next to us at 10pm at night in a carburetted twingo, leaving it running for 20 minutes whilst it was putting out enough fumes to give us both carbon monoxide poisoning. Rather rude of them.

Day 5: Erg Chebbi Dunes

This morning we left later because the starting order got reversed each day, There were two tracks in a figure of 8 around the camp, and one of them had something that google translate called "Sand Hell", which sounded like a lot of fun. We'd chosen a good spot to park up and camp, so we were able to get in the queue of leaving twingos pretty quickly and get out onto the road. The first path took us up through an abandoned village, which was a fascinating site, then the road opened up and we could give it the beans. There were some motorcyclists doing a similat tour to us and they must have been laughing at all the twingos they were passing on the road. We absolutely blasted through sand hell, tyres aired low, full beans and maximum send. Lots of cars got stuck so it was interesting dodging them all.

The second track of the day was also a stunner, slightly spoiled by another competitor almost crashing into us trying an overtake on a very narrow track, which was a bit antisocial of them. We also properly flew along this one, although we stopped to help push some people out of where they were stuck, then got back to the camp nice and early. We wandered into the dunes for some pictures. At the briefing after dinner we were warned there was going to be a sandstorm in the night and next day.

Day 6: Erg Chebbi Dunes pt.2

We were an early starting group today, so we had to get up a little earlier today and woke up to a tent full of sand. We were extremely grateful for the cabin air filter bracket as there was so much dust in the air. Dunes got blown across into the road and any time we opened the door or window dust got absolutely everywhere. We also encountered a bit of rain this day which was very fun.

The tracks today were very good fun, but we had a moment where the mapping app froze and we didn't notice, so we just kept going on our merry way getting quite lost. There were a few stretches of very deep sand we only just got through before we thought "hang on, something is wrong here", and restarted the app and got back on course, getting quite bogged down on the returned journey through the deep sand too. We absolutely slammed our belly pan on some good rocks, and also bent a rim on a really sharp one, but our tyres are holding up great. The evening was spent hammering our rim back straight then helping another team replace their water pump with some quality bush mechanic tier work. Much hondabond was used to stop it leaking. We were warned during the evening briefing to top up our jerrycan before heading out the next day which sounded very ominous...

Day 7: Erg Chebbi to Tachbalt

This day started with an 80km road course before some more tracks. The first track was absolutely awesome, there were soft sandy bits, then technical rocky bits, then a wide open plain where we could really get the hammer down, managed to hit 80kph on the plain. Not sure it did the twingo much good but it soaked up the ride very nicely. A lot better than a lot of the other competitors, we were passing loads of other cars stuck, or with mechanical failures or a few very unlucky people seemed to have both. We stopped on a very pretty dry lake bed to have lunch whilst waiting for some friends to catch up, but it turns out they broke down so we pressed on with the orienteering section.

The orienteering section gave us 5 points, with a distance and a compass heading, no landmarks or any other things like dakar pace notes. It was reliant on two things, your trip counter being accurate and you starting in the right spot, a spot they didn't clearly describe. We managed to get hideously lost and ended up behind a massive dune we were supposed to be in front of trying to surf the softest sand we'd encountered yet. We almost made it to the end... almost. we got beached up to the belly pan in ridiculously soft sand.

We spent 90 minutes frantically trying to dig ourselves out, as three other teams made the same mistake we did and also got beached much further back than we made it. They were not as well equipped as we were but we were trying to work together to get us out with not much success. We then tried calling in the organisation through the satellite beacon and it didn't work at all. Eventyally a local came along and offered tgo tow us out for a price, and i didn't hear his opening cambit and i was later informed that my return offer was double that, not my finest negotiating work! Nonetheless he got us out with a very aggressive yank, and the tow hook didnt snap off and kill someone too which is always a bonus.

After we made it out we found our way back onto the right trail and informed the orga staff of the other stuck competitors, they didn't seem to have any clue, we lster found out they were completely overwhelmed with breakdowns and people getting stuck and were just struggling to keep up with everything. When we got to the camp we checked over the car and found the air filter was well clogged, we brought several spares with us so we just popped one of them on.

Day 8: Tachbalt to Marrakech

Final proper day this, a road course from the camp in the middle of nowhere through to Marrakech through some mountain roads. The first part of the journey was pretty uneventful, the usual slightly dodgy roads and final destination contraptions on them, but we started gaining proper altitude pretty quickly. The scenery was gorgeous in every direction. Our twingo started making a slightly funny noise, we were pretty sure it was just a blowing exhaust and pressed on.

We found a roadside ceramics shop and stocked up on tagines, crockery and other bits for an absolute bargain, we got massive tagines for just £8 each, which is a lot cheaper than they'd be in Marrakech or anywhere else. We kept cracking along the tichka pass and stopped in a pretty touristy town for lunch at a restaurant with a spectacular view. The rest of the journey was very good fun along a nice twisty mountain path, but we did have to be careful, it was a two way road but very narrow and the punishment for making a mistake was plummetting off a cliff.

As we continued along the road we kept climbing and eventually went up over 2200m/7000ft elevation. We heard from some other teams that the carburetted twingos were really struggling here, but ours just kept trucking on, we even encountered snow which was pretty wild. The roads up here were even more.... interesting than they were in other spots. Some guy was absolutely off his face and made a habit of driving quite slowly down the middle of the road, but we didn't have the pace to pass him so we had to hang back. The car brakes also started squealing.

After all of that we made it to the finish line in the fancy hotel. It was a lovely scene there. We got there quite early compared to a lot of other teams so had the time to check out the place, have a really good meal with actual vegan options and relax for a bit before going back to the finish line to enjoy the festivities. Lots of people were cracking off sirens and flares which was quite entertaining.

Days 9, 10, 11, 12. Rest day in Marrakech, Marrakech to Algeciras, Malaga to Irun, Irun to Caen

We didn't do very much on the rest day, we went into town to see the souk and do a bit of souvenir shopping. Then the rain strted coming, classic as soon as some Brits turn up so we just rested for the rest of the day.

For the run back to Spain we'd hoped to get a ferry slightly earlier than the one on our ticket because we had an hours drive to the place we were staying. The car started to make some funny noises, and to our great pain we got to the ferry terminal about 20 minutes too late to get an earlier ferry and all the ferries were fucked. We didn't leave until past 10pm local time, so we didn't get off in spain until past 1am. We did not get much sleep that night.

On the way down we did Spain in two days, but for the way up we decided to fullsend it and do it in one 10-11 hour day. This was quite the task given we both got about 4 hours sleep, I was beginning to really falter after a while. We stopped off in Aldi and grabbed some nice wine, then continued up to Irun, where the weather turned absolutely torrentil, we had to stay really switched on.

We got the return ferry from Caen as it would drop us right close by home, and shortened the driving in France. The journey from Spain was good right up until we got close to the ferry terminal and absolutely shocking silent hill tier fog rolled in. Driving in that was really rather unpleasant but we stayed switched on and made it safely to the ferry terminal.

Final thoughts

It was a truly fantastic adventure and a genuinely unfortgettable experience, however there are a few things that would be nice to see changed in future years.

• Better bidirectional communication, an official WhatsApp number you can text and get an answer on or something. When we fired off the satellite beacon we couldn't tell what was going on, and we did have some signal, and being able to ask questions there rather than go hunting for a member of staff that spoke English at the camp in the evenings would be helpful
• Harsher sanctions for disrespectful behaviour towards both other participants and moroccans, a lot of drivers were being incredibly antisocial, doing really dangerous overtakes on the sand, nearly bumping into us or turning their twingos over and there's very little recourse for it. Several people and teams were also incredibly rude and disrespectful to the local people, who were all absolutely lovely. One team even abandoned their car in a Moroccan petrol station because they were too lazy to drive it back. I'm not sure how this could be punished effectively, maybe taking an additional deposit that gets deducted for dangerous and disrespectful actions?
• Better directions on the pace notes section, Dakar pace notes have diagrams and observations that probably would have stopped us and several other teams wandering into the restricted military sandpit
• Slightly more detail in the English briefing texts, in the evenings there'd be a full briefing talk in French then we'd get a text in English, and I'd always use Google translate during the full briefing talk and come away with useful information I didn't get in the text, it would have been nice if the text had a little more info