Trailblazer Guide Books

Worth watching out for.
 — John Cleare

These suggestions assume you're UK-based. If you're in Portugal or Spain you can do a bit more; if you live 70km east of Murmansk your options are much more limited. Even then, many recognise once they get back that they planned over-ambitiously and tried to do too much in too short a time.

For ideas of what can be done in a two-day rental see p85. For suggestions on combining many of these routes into 25 day trips by returning to the same place in the evening – particularly aimed at motorbikers looking to enjoy a ride without carting full baggage – see pp92-96.

A week or less
Quite a lot actually, but you'll need to fly in and rent a vehicle out of Agadir, Marrakech or Ouarzazate (see p83) to make the most of your time. All three cities are well placed to make the most of their adjacent regions, giving you up to five great days on the piste. Doing it this way will be a bit hectic of course, but the costs may well be the same as trying to cram a fortnight in with your own vehicle. A more relaxed alternative is having a normal week's holiday and renting for a couple of days to do some routes. It's a great way to dip your toe in the sand and see if you even like the idea of overlanding in Morocco.

Two weeks
This is the practical limit for a visit in your own vehicle from the UK or northern Europe. Falling within a typical holiday allocation, it's what many people try, usually just once. You'll need to get cracking and have a good plan; from London to Algeciras is 2350km or nearly 1500 miles. To squeeze every last hour from what are technically 16 days off, if the ferries line up and by leaving work on a Friday night, you could be in Morocco by Monday lunchtime and in the desert a day or two later. This could give you, at the very best, nine days in the Atlas and the Sahara, or more reasonably a week on the piste with a rest day or two or a visit to a big city or a resort. Although this is an intense schedule, a week on the piste is actually a pretty satisfying immersion as long as the weather remains good and you have no vehicle problems.

Renting a decent 4WD like a Toyota 105 for two weeks gets pretty pricey unless you have a car full of people to share the cost or if you choose to hire a well-used and inexpensive 4WD with all the risks that entails off the highway. The cheapest motorbike rentals out of Marrakech add up to around €1000 or so for a fortnight, still pretty good compared to a ride in mid-winter but sometimes frustrating when it comes to gear.

A month
With up to four weeks at your disposal you need not dash from the office to the ferry port like a lunatic and so can enjoy a relaxing tour, ticking off your pick of the routes in this book as well as taking the chance to visit some other places in Morocco, Spain and France. Between Figuig and the Atlantic you could easily explore a dozen routes as well as a few of your own, highlighting the full potential or the region and without needing a holiday afterwards to get over it. Or of course you could make a mad dash to Mauritania and Timbuktu.

More than a month
By choosing the right season and using your typical three-month Moroccan visa to the limit, you can slowly explore the Atlas ranges and the Saharan plains, park up in remote spots or villages that take your fancy, get to know some locals, go trekking with them or go mountain biking and generally immerse yourself in the Moroccan experience. Or head off to West Africa for the winter. All you need is the time, the money and the inclination.

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