12 Days in Morocco: The North, the Sahara, and Five Nights in Marrakech

You are met at the airport and driven into the city, with the rest of the day free to sleep off the flight. In the evening there is time for a first walk along the Atlantic corniche and a look at the Hassan II mosque from the outside, its minaret standing over the water - a useful reminder on day one that Morocco is a country on the ocean before it is a country of desert.

North along the coast to Rabat, the capital, where the Kasbah of the Udayas sits above the mouth of the Bou Regreg with its own blue-and-white lanes, and the unfinished Hassan Tower stands beside the royal mausoleum with its ceremonial guards. Then inland and up into the green Rif until Chefchaouen appears in the late afternoon, a town washed indigo from the doorsteps to the rooftops. The night is in a riad inside it.

A slow morning in the blue alleys before they fill, then south. Volubilis comes first: a Roman city standing in open wheat fields, its mosaic floors and columns tracing the outline of a forum under the sky. Then Meknes and the vast Bab Mansour gate, its green and gold tilework catching the late sun. Fes arrives in the late afternoon, the call to prayer moving across the rooftops as the city settles into evening.

The morning belongs to a licensed local guide, and it should. The Fes medina has thousands of lanes and no logic a visitor can read alone: the Al-Qarawiyyin quarter, the tanneries seen from a terrace above their bowls of coloured dye, the carved stucco and cedar of the old medersas. In the afternoon the road climbs into the Middle Atlas through Ifrane, cedar-shaded and cool, and then the forest above Azrou where Barbary macaques move through the branches. The night is in Midelt.

South across the high plateau, then down through the Ziz gorges, where the cliff road runs high above a river and palm groves cling to the valley floor far below. Errachidia sits in one of the largest oases in the region, then Erfoud, a fossil-trading town at the edge of the Tafilalet. By late afternoon the ground turns to sand. At Merzouga camels carry you into the Erg Chebbi dunes for sunset, and the night is spent at a camp with dinner under the stars and music around the fire.

An optional walk on the dunes at sunrise, then west. Rissani, the old caravan town, then Tinejdad and its palm-lined kasbahs, and then the Todgha Gorge - a corridor where limestone walls rise three hundred metres on either side of a river narrow enough to step across. Through Tinghir at the mouth of the gorge, and on to the Dades Valley, which glows ochre in the late light among wind-carved rock formations.

The long day, and the last of the moving. Morning viewpoints over the folded cliffs and hairpins of the Dades Gorge, then Kelaa M Gouna in the Rose Valley, and Ouarzazate, where film crews have worked for decades because of the light. A guided visit to Ait Ben Haddou follows - the UNESCO ksar of earthen towers above the riverbed - and then the climb over the Tizi n Tichka at 2,260 metres and down into Marrakech as evening settles on the red walls.

A full day on foot with a licensed local guide, which is the only sensible way to see this medina. The Koutoubia minaret first, then the Bahia Palace with its painted ceilings and courtyards, the Saadian Tombs that were sealed for two centuries and only reopened in 1917, and the carved cedar of the Medersa Ben Youssef. The day ends at Jemaa el-Fna as the square fills at dusk with smoke, food stalls and drummers.

North-east out of the city and up into the Middle Atlas, about three hours through olive terraces and river villages, to the Ouzoud waterfalls - the tallest in North Africa, dropping roughly 110 metres in stages into a green gorge. There are paths down through the olive groves to the pool at the base, wild macaques along the way, and small boats that take you close enough to feel the spray. Back in Marrakech by late afternoon, and back into the same room.

West across the argan plains, where goats really do stand in the trees, to Essaouira on the Atlantic - about two hours and forty-five minutes each way. The town is worth it: ramparts open to the wind, a working harbour full of blue boats and gulls, and a medina of white walls and blue shutters that is small enough to walk in an afternoon. The road back crosses the plains as the light goes.

The day that makes the other eleven work. A traditional steam bath and a Moroccan argan-oil massage, and then nothing at all on the schedule. Some people spend it in the souks, some by the pool, some walking back to the one thing they wish they had spent longer on. The car and the driver are still yours if you want them.

A last morning in Marrakech, then a private transfer to Menara airport for your flight. If you are flying out of Casablanca, Fes, Tangier or Agadir instead, we drive you there and the transfer is included.