I've changed my plan again as I can't quite figure out how to spend two more days in the north so I'm only going to do one. Just a little run up through the Rif valley to see if it's quite as notorious as people claim.

It's a nice run over to Taza with storks on poles!

It seems to be paler rock

But still plenty of dry riverbeds

At Kassita there's a T-junction at the top of a hill with a STOP sign and a couple of policemen. I decide to do the proper thing and actually stop where I see a car coming towards me so thinking European speeds I wait for it but it's actually going at two miles an hour and the policemen pounce.

The one is all paperwork and hassle and the other guy just wants to chat (the only other policeman to stop me in Morocco just wanted a go on the bike). There's a good ten minutes of chat whilst vital details are scribbled into ledgers and I get to hear that the road onwards is "difficile" but I gather it is OK for motos. Fortunately, I get my papers back just as cop #2 is starting to show me his moto scars.

A mile up the road there is a "Route Barre" sign for 25km hence. Why didn't they tell me the road is closed? Another sign a little later but there's a small number of cars coming in the other direction. Unless they've all got as far as the blockage and turned back.

Eventually I find they're replacing a bridge but you can for the moment traverse the old one subject to negotiating a couple of piles of rubble.

This road has many road works on it. You can just see the alternative route across the river bed (a white streak across the far bit of river instead of a bridge) in that photo. Later on there's a diversion which takes me around the back of some houses and halfway down the hillside before I see a vehicle coming the other way and can stop panicking that I've gone wrong before it descends into the river and meanders along the river bed for a couple of miles before coming back up. Diversions are different over here!

I nearly miss the turn for the N2 back to Chefchauoen which would have been disastrous in many ways not least of which is because it's a superb road, pretty well maintained flowing round the mountainside through some lovely country

Perhaps not best identified by that photo.

The trouble was I was running late. Really quite late in fact. So late that this lovely twisty road was proving to be something of a hinderance. It's getting on for 4pm when the road disintegrates as I arrive in Ketama the centre of the marijuana growing region. And then the road starts to climb back into an alpine forest. Most of the side roads or open spaces have a car parked in them (unlike anywhere else in Morocco) I presume for the sale of illegal substances.

I get hollered at much more than before. In towns you get hollered at partly because I think people think you can hear what they're saying not realising that noisier bikes and faster speed/more wind noise make that unlikely and partly because you're a dumb westerner easy with your cash. You've got to take the opportunity! Here, they just want you to buy drugs.

Times getting on and the road varies enormously, sections of piste, slow twisties, stuck behind trucks, up into the cold, down behind the mountain into gloom as the sun sinks. This is all not good.

At one point I realise my right hand has gone completely numb. I can only think that the loading of the bike is such that when going up the front has almost no weight on it and I'm absorbing all the vibrations. Not good for that finesse of control. Going downhill involves a twist of the throttle and then some vigorous shaking of the arm to get some sense back into it.

Finally though, I can follow a local through the early night time and into Chefchauoen. What a huge relief. The final tally for that day was a mere 558km but 10:25 hours on the road. I got off the bike three times in that, twice for fuel and once for a piss.

Chefchauoen turns out to be a really lovely little place. I wandered through the middle of town at 9pm and had not one stall holder called out to me even if you stopped for a nose through their wares. I wondered if it was a real souk. Nice twisty turney little centre and some top nosh in the recommended restaurant for (in Moroccan terms) peanuts. A place to visit next time.

I'm strangely fascinated by the not-often seen

The bike survived in the street, clearly no-one wanted some half-used TKC80s!

Up here on the terrace of the guest house was a lovely little breakfast room although the saloon door in the far corner hides a squat toilet. Share a little with your fellow breakfasters!