13 Days in Morocco: The Slow Route from Casablanca to the Atlantic

Your driver-guide meets you at Casablanca airport. On the way out of the city you stop at the Hassan II mosque, whose minaret stands directly over the Atlantic surf, and then run north up the coast to Rabat. You arrive at the Kasbah of the Udayas as the light turns gold - a walled quarter of blue-and-white lanes above the mouth of the Bou Regreg, quieter and gentler than anywhere else you will sleep on this trip.

The morning is Rabat: the Chellah, a Roman ruin the Merinids turned into a necropolis and the storks have since turned into a rookery, then the Hassan Tower and the mausoleum of Mohammed V with its ceremonial guards. Then north through cork-oak forest and the hill town of Ouezzane into the Rif. Chefchaouen appears in the late afternoon, the blue medina softening into dusk, and you sleep in a guesthouse inside it.

Climb to the Spanish Mosque viewpoint for a last look down over the blue rooftops, then head south. Volubilis is a Roman city standing in open farmland, its mosaic floors and columns still tracing the shape of a forum. Four kilometres away, Moulay Idriss Zerhoun spills down two hillsides, a pilgrimage town with green-tiled roofs. Then Meknes and the vast Bab Mansour gate, and finally Fes in the early evening.

A full day on foot with a licensed local guide, which is the only sensible way into Fes el-Bali - the largest car-free urban area in the world. The Al-Qarawiyyin quarter, the carved cedar and stucco of the Bou Inania madrasa, the Chouara tanneries seen from a terrace above their bowls of dye, the Mellah and the gates of the royal palace. Then you go back to the same riad, which is the point of a second night.

South out of Fes and up onto the Middle Atlas plateau. Ifrane first, an incongruous pocket of alpine architecture with pitched roofs and cool air, then the cedar forest above Azrou where Barbary macaques move through the branches at the roadside. The road runs on to Midelt, a plateau town at the foot of the eastern High Atlas, arriving as the afternoon light settles.

Over the Tizi n Talghemt pass, the road unwinding through folded red hills, then down into the Ziz gorges, where cliff walls give way to a palm sea running to the horizon - one of the great oases of Morocco. Errachidia, then Erfoud, the last town before the sand. At Merzouga camels carry you into the Erg Chebbi dunes for sunset, and the night is spent in a camp with dinner and music beneath the stars.

A day in the desert instead of a day crossing it. In the morning you sit in a house in Khamlia while the families there play Gnaoua - drums, metal qraqeb, call and response - a tradition carried north along the trans-Saharan trade routes and kept alive here rather than staged for anyone. Then the old caravan market at Rissani, and back to camp with the afternoon free as the dunes turn from gold to deep amber.

The sunrise you stayed a second night for: the light spreads across the erg in about ten minutes and there is no sound at all. Then west across the desert plain through Tinejdad to the Todgha Gorge, where limestone walls rise three hundred metres above a river narrow enough to step across. Through the palm oasis of Tinghir and on to the Dades Valley, arriving as the light deepens over its wind-carved rock.

Morning viewpoints over the hairpins of the Dades Gorge and the rock formations locals call monkey fingers. Then Kelaa M Gouna in the Rose Valley, and Skoura, a palm oasis with old earthen kasbahs standing among the trees. In Ouarzazate you visit Kasbah Taourirt, once a seat of the Glaoui lords. And then Ait Ben Haddou, with a local guide, at golden hour - and you stay, which is the difference.

Watch the sunrise catch the ksar before anyone else arrives, then take the old road instead of the new one. The Ounila valley runs north through Tamdaght and Anmiter to Telouet, where the Glaoui kasbah stands half-ruined on the outside and, inside, still holds rooms of painted cedar ceilings and zellij in full colour. Rejoin the highway at the Tizi n Tichka pass at 2,260 metres and descend into Marrakech with the Koutoubia against the evening sky.

A guided day through the medina: the Koutoubia, the Bahia Palace with its painted ceilings and courtyards, the Saadian Tombs that were sealed for two centuries, and the Jardin Majorelle. Then the souks, which are best entered with someone who knows where the streets come out. The day ends at Jemaa el-Fna as the square fills with smoke, food stalls and drummers at nightfall.

West across the Chichaoua plain and the silver argan groves to the Atlantic. Essaouira is a fortified port with ramparts open to the wind, a harbour full of blue boats and gulls, and a medina of white walls and blue shutters small enough to walk in an afternoon. After eleven days inland the sea air is the point. The night is in a riad inside the walls.

A last morning on the coast road south. Sidi Kaouki, a wide windswept beach where kitesurfers work the Atlantic swell. Imsouane, a crescent bay of fishing boats and one of the longest waves in the country. Taghazout, a surf village of boards and cafes. Then Agadir, where the journey ends with a private drop-off - or, if you are flying from elsewhere, we keep driving and take you to your airport.