The Lonely Planet guide says that the trip through the Dades and Todra gorges is best done as part of a Land Rover safari, but they say that about a lot of trips, to stop backpackers wandering off, getting into trouble and suing the Lonely Planet guide. The road looked a bit small on the Michelin map, but looking at it carefully I guessed that it would be "a better road than the desert piste I did a couple of days ago" and "it should be ok".

So I went up the Dades late in the afternoon and camped up at 7000ft, after meeting a postman at about 6000ft on a 20 year old Yamaha FS1E - the dream bike of every 16 year old when I was at school; "so some of them ended up being exported to Morocco, along with all the old Mercedes taxis from Holland". He thought I was mad, but changed his mind when I showed him my heated handlebars - a little bit of a capitalist pig in me somewhere! The gorge was impressive, with sheer walls that go up hundreds of metres, and the setting sun picked out the contours and exposed geology of the rolling hills above the gorge, "a bit like the Pennines with all the vegetation removed".

The wind calmed down after the sun went down and I cooked up a really horrible soya stew as I watched Orion's Belt emerge above the horizon. I made a plan for the next day: to see some nice ethnic villages, photograph some pretty scenery and get half way to Fes. And so to bed..

The first challenge of the following day happened within a few kilometres. I headed up and over the wrong track ("a short-cut over the tops rather than going right up this valley and down the other") and only realised I might be going wrong when the road turned to scree, then sloped sideways at 30 degrees. Hmm not good. Luckily the Moroccan countryside yielded its secret weapon - an incredibly strong local man appeared out of nowhere, and helped to turn the bike around, before returning to dig up some mineral or other out of the side of the road. I still suspect that he had actually destroyed my short-cut with his digging.

"Ok, so I'll have to go right up the Dades valley and right down the Todra" and that started the first major stress - "do I have enough petrol?" "no petrol stations up here, where everything runs on either diesel, hay or kebabs". A few days before I'd been amazed that the bike does about 70mpg if you just potter along at 20 or 30mph, so I had a vague, but unconfirmed hope that my range could be over 250 miles rather than the usual 170 miles I get thrashing up and down motorways. I'd already done about 70 miles since the last fill-up, so I had between 100 and 180 mile left. This sort of tour turns you into an obsessive "mental calculator", especially converting from miles into kilometres and back.

"Oh well, I'll press on".

At this point my journal starts using the phrase 'up and up'. The journal has these words a lot for the next few pages. Lots and lots of 'up and ups'.

In most of low-land Morocco there are useful reminders of the French colonial era in the form of good roads with those cute little white and yellow kilometre markings you get in France and name plates for each village. Out in the wilds there are none of these luxuries, I suppose on the basis of "if you're here you could only be a local, and if you're a local……" So it was easy to waste 20 kilometres of time, effort and petrol following the bigger of the valley's tracks up along a riverbed full of water, ice and snow to the village at the top of the most obvious valley. The village ended in a 45 degree slope and a crowd of about 40 kids. A quick chat to the only adult about told me that I had missed a right turn 3 kilometres back.

Back along the valley, onto the elusive track, and then the up and up really started. About 40 kilometres of up and up following the sides of endless steep hills. By the time I had done 5 kilometres I had decided to turn around "surely this can't be the road". But up popped a local again and assured me that the village I was after was only 20 kilometres away. Later I concluded that the missing 15 kilometres were down to the inaccurate odometer on his donkey.

On and on, with only a few women gathering scrubby 'wild-west tumble-weed' to witness the idiot westerner. Each new horizon, higher than the previous, added a little twist to the knife of doubt. At the top of one pass I could see that the snow in the rutted road had no tyre prints, "not even the Land Rover safaris are running at this time of year".

Then without warning, a tumble from the bike. Usually my greatest fear is falling off the bike. The pain, the cost, the inconvenience, the ignominy, the damage to 'my baby'. But after a few tumbles at low speed on dirt roads, you realise that its not so bad and get into a routine of sorting things out. Turn off the engine, turn off the petrol, stop for breath. Take off the tank-bag (full of tools, spares and water - too heavy to lift with the bike), heave the bike up, stop for breath. Put everything back together (including a bit more tape for the broken windshield), fire up and ride on. Apologise to the bike and sing a rude song or two. Throw in a photo or two during the process to show to your mum when you get home and you can convince yourself that you're some sort of hero.

Eventually the village at the head of the pass appeared, looking bleak, arid and windswept, but sooooo welcome.

"60 miles to run down the Todra valley and possibly only enough fuel for 60 miles; oh poo, better be careful".

Lots of freewheeling down valley ensued: which is pleasantly quiet, but not very quick. "Lots of pot-holes, seen enough sandstone, not fun anymore, can we stop now?"

I was getting very tired, but surviving with a lot of optimism, some oily-calm thoughts thrown onto the troubled waters of my deteriorating mind and reassurance from my compass.

"Oh look there's a Land Cruiser……and that's my old girlfriend in it!!" "Mo, is that you?"

"Que?" Came the reply, breaking the spell as I realised the woman was Spanish (as was Mo's mother!).

"Oh I feel all light-headed. What ever next??"

The answer was a modern equivalent of the child gangs from the book 'Lord of the Flies'. Coming from the head of the valley, it's difficult to find your way through the village of Tamtattouchte as there's a huge oued (wadi) running through it. The local kids have worked out that if they block off all of the roads with rocks and generally swarm around, they can charge tourist for guidance. However, they twist the knife by sending the hapless tourist over the high road, which is actually the other end of the 'short-cut over the tops' that I had tried to find that morning, which of course takes you back to the Dades gorge.

So a torrid half hour followed as I was mobbed by the kids, raced off in all sorts of wrong directions and ended up dropping the bike down a slope. Only then did I agree to be guided for the price of 4 cigarettes and some coconut cakes left from breakfast. So the chosen kid sat on the back of the bike and took me in the wrong direction, accepted the fee from me (whilst complaining that he couldn't eat the cakes because of Ramadan) and then threatened me with rocks, so as to get hard cash from me (he even gripped my hand over the clutch so I couldn't blast away). I bluffed that I was getting some money out, but pulled my knife on him instead, which gave me enough space to get away before a hail of rocks showered down.

"Better check his route anyway" so I rode on for a kilometre to see if the track took a turn to the south. The compass said it was wrong, my guts said it was wrong, and the distant sight of the white Land Cruiser I saw earlier confirmed that it was the wrong direction.

"That little bastard wasted valuable petrol. Better go back to the village and try again".

Time for a bold approach! There was a football match in progress on the village square, so I rode into the middle of the pitch and turned the engine off and waited for something to happen. The oldest player, obviously fed up with tourists, the kids' antics and now the disruption of his game of footie, obliged with some terse directions, a handshake and I was off "hurrah, what can go wrong now?".

Water in the sparkplug caps was what, but feeling very much like the dreaded 'out of petrol' I had been expecting for hours. Trying to keep up momentum (to save fuel) I was hitting lots of deep puddles, sending waves of water over the cylinders. The first time it happened I started to look for a place to camp, too tired to consider walking to the next town (for petrol) or stripping the bike to fix the problem. But luckily the bike dried out a bit, fired up again and we were off. In all I had to stop 3 times to let the bike dry out, as I hit water-splash after water-splash, in the dark. I wish I had fitted NGK plug-caps like on my old BSA!

I finally hit town (Tinerhir) and could only focus on one thought - petrol. It turned out that I still had a couple of litres left in the tank, so my thoughts on 'pottering along' were true; another set of numbers to be obsessed about next time. Utter relief and then….um….well….my mind was completely empty of any idea of 'what comes after petrol?'.

So I found a street light to park under, to read the Lonely Planet guide again and decide "should I ride on a bit more or find a hotel room with all of these tourists around?".

If in doubt, cheer yourself up with a song… so I started singing a song called 'Creep' by Radiohead, all about unrequited love and alienation. An urchin wandered up and stood starring at me so I sung to him, and just I had sung the words "what the hell am I doing here, I don't belong here", a huge Berber man in a dark coat and black turban walked purposefully over to me. "Shit, this is it, he knows I pulled a knife on the kid earlier today!". The man was massive, with an overwhelming look of Samuel L Jackson in the film 'Pulp Fiction'. Then, in perfect English….

"so nice to hear you singing….I'm an English teacher….not really thinking of riding on are you?….let me have a word with my friend at this hotel….there is a café over there….you can have a room in the hotel for $4 - is that ok?….he says you can bring your bike into the hotel and park it outside your room….see you later - we'll drink tea together…."

Such extremes; one minute my life is being threatened and I'm cursing every wretched metre and person of this land, and the next I'm overwhelmed by how beautiful, kind and genuine everything is.

So for once in my life I allowed somebody else to tell me what to do. I rode my bike (still covered in sand and mud) into the hotel, "sod the Hilton, I couldn't do this there", had omelette and chips in the café and wandered back to take mint tea with Abdullah and his mates. We swapped stories and life experiences as he bought single cigarettes from a vendor wandering from bar to bar. He'd been born in a tent in the desert, was actually only half Berber, had been married to an English girl for 5 years and had never been to the UK. He saw a copy of the Koran in my pocket (I was trying to be culturally sensitive after the recent bombing of Iraq) and insisted on kissing the book; a nice touch, which I tried to return by later sending him a copy of that English translation.

Somehow I had managed to pack in about a week of stress, breakdowns, crashes, human interaction, 'up and ups', emotions and sandstone into one day, and I'd survived. Being so alive can make you feel damned tired, so I slept well that night, with the bike just outside my bedroom door. I even managed to sleep through the 4.15am call to prayers - bliss!