Day Thirteen.
An earlish start for those going on the run to the piste Bill and the others found yesterday. The remainder get a lie-in.
Bill leads those of us going to the piste off on the 25 km or so road ride to the start: Dean, Andy and Diane, Steve D and Tony.
This is the start of what becomes a very picturesque ride through dappled shade from many palms and tiny little groups of houses tucked away amongst the vegetation.
(This photo was taken on the way out).
I don't have many stills as I stopped here, slung my camcorder around my neck and rode a fair bit filming as I went. It worked much better than I hoped and I have some good footage but it needs a fair bit of editing as some places needed both hands on the bars. Consequently there is some nice close-up shots of a Kalahari yellow 1100GS tank!
These photo's give a nice impression of how pleasant a ride it was.
All too soon I met the riders coming back. It's no hardship to have to turn around and retrace your steps along this route.
Back to the hotel, get out of Bill's spare helmet and load the Land Rover with the bags. We all re-fuel before leaving Tafraoute and head for Taroudant via Irherm.
The original plan was for an overnight in Taroudant but word of a restored, walled former Pasha's palace in Oulad Berhil, now a hotel, was too good.
I had a pretty uneventful drive along some great roads (for bikes). The last stretch of the R109 to a short piste along a wadi was arrow straight for 11 km. The piste was along the Oued Sous and it avoided me actually entering Taroudant.
After the roads I had just travelled, the N10 seemed like a motorway in comparison.
The instructions in the Lonely Planet Guide, says to turn off halfway through Oulad Berhil and follow the piste for a kilometre to the Hotel Palais Riad Hida.
If it hadn't been for this instruction, I'd have been convinced that I'd taken a wrong turn as the first hundred metres or so is in a busy market. Pushing through the throngs of people, donkey carts and street vendors it seemed as though the instructions were mistaken. Then the route was through the "industrial" area where all sorts of repairs and street manufacture was conducted, finally a very down-at-heel residential area but suddenly there was the hotel and someone swung open the gates to the car park.
Five rooms were secured and a trolley to convey the baggage to the rooms appeared.
Maybe it was the route to the place but it seemed to be a true oasis of peace and perfection. In reality it was, the route to it just emphasised that fact.
It was the perfect place to spend the last night before returning to Marrakech.
One of the rooms.
The pool in the evening light.
The whole place was a system of little pathways between groves of tall palms or fragrant orange trees.
Much of it reminded me of the Generaliffe in the Alhambra, Granada.
Everywhere there was colour.
Banana palms as well as orange trees.
The ceiling of the portico outside the dining room.
The dining room itself.
It's ceiling was hand painted wooden panels.
Through the dining room there was a sitting room.
Beyond that a library.
All the books were in Norwegian (Steve D can tell the story of the provenance better than I can, my ability to understand what the staff told me is limited).
I was shown what was once the Norwegian families quarters, now a Drm 2000 per night suite.
Nice place for a honeymoon I thought (for anyone who has the need for one of course!
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(More follows).