Tuesday 23rd May - From Imilchil through the mountains & down to Meknes - 202km (trip total 4710 km)

A lovely ride through the highlands before descending down into the heat & rain.

I had a rather restess night on account of the seemingly constant baying of a local donkey which seemed to be in some sort of distress. I asked H at breakfast if he had been sleepwalking again, but apparently not!

After a rudimentary but pleasant local breakfast (flat bread, honey, pankakes and a hard boiled egg) I was in high spirits setting off on the mountain roads as we were still at 2500m and the air was cool & fresh.

Lake Tislit was nearby so we stopped off for a look see.

And then it was off continuing the journey north across the mountain range. The road surface quickly deteriorated, but was still fun to ride......

..... weaving its way around the peaks.

...... in places needing considerable care.

Every so often we would pass locals going about their daily routine, sometimes near a settlement, sometimes apparenetly in the midfle of nowhere.

We passed thorugh the small mountain town of Aghbala, which was quite busy that day ....

.... with vendors selling their wares ....

Note the gentlemenwearing the blue robe with apointed hat - this is the traditional djellaba, though normally we had seen these in dark brown as we rode through the mountains.

We also caught the tail end of a small market, whic expliaine the various trucks carrying goats we had seen on the road.

The local women were washing berber rugs in the small stram that ran by the road.

Then it was back on the open road into a beautiful section with grasses and other crops - this was a high plateau at about 2000m and very windy.

A young girl riding a horse - mostly we saw donkey's.

... and goats ...

on closer inspection the fields also contained some pretty flowers.

They were in the process of resurfacing the road in this section, with loose gravel which made for some squirmy riding and was causing H some concern on the Honda with sport touring tyres - no mishaps though.

I loved the freshness of this plateau after the heat if the desert and bleakness of the barren heights.

The next village were having a school dports day.

We started to descend towards Meknes, the temperature increasing all the time.

The roads were still pleasant but the heat was getting to us again even though there was the threat of rain in the sky.

It did rain shortly after, very heavily in fact, so no more pictures until arriving at tonights lodging, a pleasant B&B in the residential subhurbs north if Meknes city.