Day six started out very early as I was under strictest instructions to have the bike out of the Salon du The by 7am. I set the alarm and sprang out of bed and set off down the hall. The "director" of the hotel slept at the end of the corridor with his door open and bed positioned so he could see down the corridor Presumably as some sort of guard when he was awake and ever so slightly creepy when he was not.

There didn't appear to be anyone around to unlock the Salon and after a few minutes the director came down to ask me why I was up at 5am. 5am? ****! I'd changed the clocks back two hours on everything except my alarm...

Still, it was a beautiful day to be venturing into the Cedar Forest just south of Azrou:

Further south still is the Sources de l'Oum-er-Rbia. (This photo isn't of the sources themselves which were off the beaten track a little.)

I carried on intending to follow the tarmac up to the main road to Midelt but made a wrong turn and ended up following some piste:

No harm so far -- after all I've come here to follow some pistes. It did start getting a bit trickier and not long after I found myself above the snow line which was a touch disconcerting. OK, that bit of piste doesn't look very hard but I only stopped at the bits where I felt it was safe to stop... I think I surprised a few locals by appearing, sliding through mud and disappearing off into the forest on more than one occasion.

Still, I made it out eventually, stopped for lunch (the only lunch I had in Morocco -- they stuff you with too much bread at breakfast and dinner) and planned a little more piste before Midelt, taking a route which would join with the Cirque du Jaffar (a famous Moroccan piste) and into Midelt that way.

Partway down, overlooking a valley I had two groups pass me, three bikes and a couple in a 4x4 who both said they were following the Cirque du Jaffar and that I was lost, heading for a dead end (which doesn't explain where they came from). They were certain they were going to end up in Midelt directly and sort of ignored my point about having just come that way and it was not taking them directly there. Slightly disconcerting as this was my first day of following piste on GPS/map but, hey ho!

Not long after I found myself facing this

Even less time after I found myself picking the bike up after a rather cheesy fall (like some kind of beginner I had the brakes slightly on, on a loose surface when the bike went over a small ledge, brakes locked, bike falls). You can see the seemingly slow motion fall towards the end of this clip

At the bottom there were three exits: a very steep gravelly hill

some sort of gorge

and the way I'd just fallen in (the piste is centre left of the picture)

Some middle-aged Frenchies in a 4x4 suggested that the gorge was superb for motos and sure enough three small luggage-less motos promptly sprang out of the gorge. Fantastic! I headed up (I must admit, I can't watch videos like that as I get motion sickness. So, er, what happens in the Blair Witch Project?)

Sadly, where the video ends, the route gets a little tougher. In fact too tough for me and the following happened three times:

It seems that one time I'd lifted the bike had done me in and here, at 1900m, I simply didn't had the oomph to lift the bike and luggage so I was reduced to stripping the bike, shifting it and then reloading it. I noticed, btw, having taken this photo that fuel was dripping out of the fuel cap (and soaking my tank bag and harness). Very stinky for the next few days and something of a concern. Not for the environment but just how much fuel had leaked out and therefore how much did I have left?

A big thumbs up for the XT, here, as whatever luggage-laden problem it had gotten into, luggage-less it sprang out of without a problem.

Sadly, though, this was taking a toll on me, huffing and puffing and starting to make some dumb mistakes. I was also worried about the number of times I was restarting the engine. There have been suggestions that the battery isn't designed to turn the engine over a dozen times in a hundred yards (as may have been the case). So I turned around (impressing myself as there wasn't much room) and headed back down the gorge realising that one of the problems of going upstream is that it's very hard to read the path ahead, going downstream is much easier.

I tried going up the steep slope but discovered that it wasn't gravel but rather large fist and foot sized rocks which the bike just slipped in between and I was on the floor again. ****!

By the time I'd gotten the bike back into the valley it was nearing 7pm. The sun was getting low in the sky and I knew it was at least an hour back to the main road and would be an hour after that to get into town so, sod it, I'd wanted a night under the stars although not quite under these circumstances. The very stuff weighing me down came to my rescue:

I guess the adrenaline was running out as it was all I could do to put the tent up and find a torch and then spent the next two hours lying down gasping for breath.

And after all that it was a misty night.