Snow and Rock

We planned last night to set off early and have bit of an adventure. The original idea was to get to Midelt via a windy secondary route with a bit of piste ...and a 2400m pass in the way. It started badly when we forgot to set the alarm clock, Richard mislaid his bike key and then we struggled to find a petrol station with unleaded. Still, an hour and a half later than originally intended, we set off and made excellent progress. The road was better than the map said it would be. No problems....just a bit of snow on the peaks in the distance.


Then we got near the snow and there was a lot of it. From a distance it makde a very interesting pattern on the mountain, sort of like a Zebra pelt. And then the nice asphalt disappeared and the banks of snow piled up on each side of the road and we felt the adventure was beginning.


I met a man on the side of the road who advised us not to go over the pass saying it was blocked....but it didnt look like it to us so we went up towards it. What did worry us a lot was the melting snow and the creeping feeling that the bikes might trigger an avalanche. The wall of snow on my left about 100m further up near the top of the pass gave us both the creeps so we turned around and decided to play it safe and go down a different route. The funny thing about the directions you get here is that they are often spectacularly vague or wrong. I think we could have got over the pass but it felt wrong so will have co come back and try it later when there is less snow about.

And then I threw the bike on the ground. One of those slow motion drops you cant stop cos the bike is so heavy. Luckily, my manservant Richard was on hand to do the heavy work and right the beast. No new dents or scratches, just improvements to the ones I put there last time. We set off down the mountain with the idea of getting to a shower, a bar and a hot meal in that order. After a fab ride through

On the outskirts of Azrou, I overtook these two chaps. One was towing the other on inline skates down the road. Bonkers. Checked into the best hotel in town with Wifi access.

Distance: 270km

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