Friday 17 February 2017

Gorges du Dades to Guelmima - 123 miles

Cold when we first got up, once the sun came over the hill it warmed up quickly and we got all the chores done in record time. We'd run out of our usual crunchy muesli for breakfast and had bought cornflakes yesterday – haven't had cornflakes for years, very nice with dried strawberries topping.

Our plan was to continue up the gorge as far as we deemed reasonable/sensible as we have to come back this way – the map does show a through road but states it is closed November to April. Morer later. The road was the usual Moroccan standard, generally quite good 2-way with the occasional bad bit, some very tight bends and a section of piste through a narrow bit with rock overhanging – see pix below together with some more we took along the way. Going to save todays dashcam footage and turn it into a video.

The scenery was spectacular and, as always the photos don't do it any justice, but at least the road was quiet. We passed the French tour group and reached over 6000 ft amsl before suddenly running out of road!

So we turned round and headed down again, but noticed there was quite a lot of traffic, mainly taxis and taxi-buses, heading up so it must be passable. However we decided not to put any more strain on Bertie and stick with our plan. The scenery was just as good going down.

Dades UFC, complete with changing rooms, training pitch etc

Just as tight the other way!

What can YOU see?

We eventually returned to the main road at Boulmane du Dades where we parked in the main street to do some shopping for stuff we didn't get yesterday. Mission soon accomplished and we moved a little way out of town to a viewpoint carpark and had lunch.

By now it was too late to make Merzouga today so instead we chose a likely looking place at Goulmima and set off on an excellent fast and quite busy road, passing through towns whose names we had no idea of as they weren't on any of our maps! What we did notice, however, was that they were all quite modern, neat and tidy, and close to Boulmane it looked like two enormous residential areas were under construction, who for we've no idea.

Having decided to give the Gorges du Todra a miss, we arrived at Camping les Tamaris to find perhaps the best site we've been on this trip, including in Europe! An ex-municipal site, there appeared to be a French lady owning/running it with an excellent receptionist who spoke perfect English. More tomorrow but we settled in and had a cuppa before having a quick walk around checking it out.

We've decided to stay at least 3 nights and get some chores done.