Today is my big piste day. I'm going to ride up through the Gorge du Todra to Ait-Hani, follow the R703 piste to Agoudal (pronounced Ag-dal it transpires which explains why many locals looked at me rather blankly), hang a left and back down the R704 through to the Gorge du Dades (pronounced Da-des, <sigh>) and back to Tinerhir. A nice round trip.

My camcorder batteries have either died at this point or the charger has died so I'm clean out of funky(!) videos. I'll have to review my technology for the next trip.

Up to Ait-Hani is a doddle and I crash through the first village where the piste is rock-hard dried mud. This seems to be the worse kind of piste as there's nothing that will mould it -- whatever ruts or potholes or water runs shaped it when wet are still there now. Nothing reshapes it and it's uncomfortable to ride over.

Still, things brighten up with the appearance of men and shiny new machines. A lot of them. And they are making good progress in creating and grading the R703 into an easy going road. This of course puts me in two minds: if it's easy it's not hard-core pisting but on the other hand if it allows the locals to get their wares to market then who am I to complain?

I have to stop as the are two caterpillared JCBs just squeezed side by side blocking the piste while their drivers have a chat. Looking back down the valley you can see the pale coloured piste winding around.

Looking up you can see firstly that the piste is nice and smooth having been graded and that it still follows the mountainside without any armco. There's still an element of danger!

A nice view over the mountain tops

Hard at work at 2600m

There was a cafe shortly before that last picture at the summit of the road at 2700m. It was, for want of a better description, a cave cum hovel. A popular cave cum hovel, mind.

Up here the piste was good and three bikers whizzed past with a cheery wave. All sat down, I noticed.

Then into Agoudal which took a few minutes to negotiate as there isn't a main street and I ended up skirting around the back much to the surprise of a few people.

And onto the R704

Ah. The R704 hasn't seen quite the same number of men and machines as the R703. And it doesn't look as if it's about to.

I headed off and the piste followed the contours of the land quite closely. Sections ran through stream beds (which make it very hard to follow the route -- thank you GPS!) or over soft ground where the water flow caused deep gulley erosion and having missed the piste I had the odd nervy moment "jumping" these 1m crevasses to get back on track. After a while though you get into your zone. It wasn't technically very difficult but it did require concentration.

At one point I was waved down by some girls dressed in, I assume, tradition costume, who wanted me to turn off the engine because it would frighten the heavily overladen donkeys coming down the track. We then has the perfunctory "Donnez moi un stylo!" (Give me a pen) Followed by a selectionn of "Donnez moi bon bon" (sweets), "Donnez moi Dirhams" (the local currency). That's one thing that really grated about Moroccan kids, they simply couldn't say anything to you without the first being "Donnez moi un stylo!"

Anyway, once they'd been denied pens/sweets/money they were happy to chat (I say chat, my schoolboy French is pretty ropey, heaven knows what we were talking about) and finally the donkeys came past and I was off up a now mud-based track round an uphill tight hairpin bend and along a track where the two wheel ruts were at different heights. I looked up and...there's a bloody 4x4 coming the other way! I shudder to a halt with no idea what to do. I can't reverse, he's slithering down the slope and it's a fall to certain doom to my left. I stare hopelessly forward. The driver of the 4x4 is a little more clued up and when he stops slithering manages to edge the car off the track a little until he's on the edge of the slope. Now it's up to me (on my third day of piste) so ride over the central rubbish, up the slope a little and edge past the car. I'm quite pleased with myself that I do that though rather less pleased with the bedrock and pothole combination up a steep slope that follows but I crash through turn the corner and find a cafe at 2650m!

We chatted for a while about all sorts from his plans for expansion (one room with cushions for the cafe (omelette was on offer); one room with four mattresses on the floor and the expansion consisting of about thirty bricks so far) to the weather (a large black cloud had been forming behind me which given the rain on the way into Azrou I wasn't particularly keen on seeing). At the end of which he didn't even want money for the coffee! One thing he did say, though, and where I realised my preparation hadn't been quite good enough as that it was another 40km of this piste before it reached tarmac!

I headed off and the piste was fairly rough and worryingly kept heading upwards finally peaking at 2900m. The piste was now just about as wide as the two wheel ruts with a hill on one side and a steep slope on the other

This one one of the few places that I felt safe enough to stop. Any mistakes here and it's going to be a heck of a job recovering the bike (assuming I could walk and talk).

At least you can see the slope on the left even if it would still be a pretty bad day if you fell!

This sort of view ran for a good 5km at 2800m. I didn't stop very often and kept the engine running when I did.

Finally, I started going downhill

You can see the piste laid out before me with huge switchbacks. The piste doesn't look too shabby here (which is why I stopped) but I'd end up going dead slow and stop (often almost walking the bike) around the hairpins where the piste was covered in loose rock.

Finally, civilisation!

I'd had a moment when the land around the piste had flattened out and I had to stop to inspect a water crossing where I almost had a Pope-moment and kissed the ground!

I did suffer a short rain shower not long after in Msemrir but that was just as the tarmac appeared. Phew!

Back to tourist-ville

The tourists get some easy hairpins

That night I tried a Kasbah with some spectacular views over the river

although the frog chorus was rather noisy from here

I'd made it to Boumalne-Dades after 7.5 hours on the piste. The GPS suggests an average of 30kph from the cafe to the Kasbah which means it can't have been very high on the piste!