After feeding his five furry ‘frens’ the rest of yesterday’s bread, Guy drove us along the very beautiful N16 coastal road, which beats the route through the Rif hands down.
We drove down to El Jebha and found some big empty parking at the far end of the promenade. Behind the facade of the of the sea front, it looked like another scene from Black Hawk Down ..probably not a good place to walk around.
After lunch, we decided instead to drive up onto the headland where there was good flat daytime parking and several walks to various coves.
Big mistake!
The single track road looked very steep even at the beginning and Guy asked a local man if the road was good. “Yes, good, yes – many photo, very beautiful”. I didn’t really trust him, but with it being on the ‘Park4Night’ app thought it must be ok. Steeper than we thought! Guys toe is to the floor and we’re just doing it. Very steep drop to my left, no barrier and I’m starting to panic. Then, a hairpin bend and the road turns to gravel getting even steeper.
No!No!No! and nowhere to turn around.
Guy puts it in reverse and we very slowly start to back all the way down. I think I might be sick.
There may be a chance to reverse up a tiny track to turn around, but then we grounded again as it was too steep. Nothing for it but to carry on all the way back down – me running in front to check for sticky out bits of concrete. As we neared the bottom, I’m suddenly surrounded by kids asking for money – for Gods sake!
“Why?” says the man, “No good?”
Not for our vehicle mate 🙄
My legs were still like jelly an hour later – Guy was just relieved to get back down and set off driving again!
We followed the coast for the rest of the afternoon, mostly really good road and beautiful views. Tried to stop in little coves a couple of times but they either turned out to be full of rubbish or feral kids.
So, in the end we’ve ended up at Martyl – right back where we began eight weeks ago. It’s kind of like Tetouan-on-Sea! Absolutely heaving with people now compared to March but the car park has a guardian and at least no one has asked us for money other than him!
