Tuesday 14th October 2008

The hotel had organised an overnight parking guardian for my bike and two cars parked at the front door – all for a suggested tip of 15 dirham. He was a nice guy with a lively sense of humour and made the slow business of loading up the bike much easier for me. For probably the first time, I actually made an early start and was quite cold on the bike for a couple of hours. Somebody quite famous (sorry, can’t remember) described Morocco as a cold country with a hot sun and I started to understand what he meant as I waited for the sun to break through. I took the N15 south following the valley of the Ouad Moulouya with the Rekkam Plateau to my left and gradually seeing the Middle Atlas appear on my right. I find it hard to describe the scale of the landscape I was riding through. It made home seem like a layout from my 00 train set.
I topped up the tank at the snappily named town of Outat-Oulad-El-Haj and allowed myself the luxury of a mint tea at the fuel station café because I had covered so much distance so early. I knew the rest of the day’s ride would be easy.
Which it was, right up until the policeman at Missour told me that the bridge was impassable on the main road to Midelt because of flood damage. That meant a 70 kilometre detour over a 2000 metre pass in the Middle Atlas Mountains to get to another road to Midelt. The road was pretty good and the scenery impressive as I climbed into the mountains but, once the gradient flattened out, there was a strong sidewind which is always tiring on a bike. About halfway along the road the sky quite suddenly turned black and I was in a torrential rainstorm, complete with appropriate thunder and lightning special effects. Two locals stopped their van so that I could get in the back to put my wet gear on. They checked that I really was travelling alone, muttered ‘courage’ and shook my hand. This was becoming a regular reaction from the locals and, while it immediately makes you start to act like Dirty Harry, it tends to counterproductive longer term. Once through the storm, I came out of the mountains and onto a poor quality road that had suffered a fair bit of flood damage. Just as well I’d started early.I was tired and very hungry by this time so the sight of three overland bikes outside a café in Midelt seemed like a good sign. I joined the bikes’ owners for a meal and went hunting for accommodation with them. There were no rooms or decent campsites available but there always seems to be another option in Morocco. We were allowed to ride our bikes into a canvas roofed function room at a hotel and to sleep on the floor beside them for 20 dirhams each – luxury!