Moroccan Roll

It might not be the first place you’d expect to find a sportive, but take your bike to Marrakech and you’ll discover that the city plays host to one of the finest.

- James Spender

If Mont Ventoux is the moon, the Atlas Mountains are like Mars. The air is thin, flitting between cold, heavy chunks and stifling blankets of heat, and the ground is the ruddyred hue of Moroccan clay. It looks like a prehistoric desert that’s part oasis, part monolithic quarry, at once alluring and inhospitable. For anyone driving a 4x4, these mountains are inviting, but a 70km climb on a skinny-wheeled road bike is an altogether different prospect.

Health and safety 

Whenever I’ve travelled anywhere by bike, no matter what the country, there’s always one familiar sound that greets me: the buzz of a zip opening followed by a sharp intake of breath.

Usually that breath is mine alone, but today it’s got company. Saif, his brother Farouq and stepfather Timothy are gathered around my oversized luggage to see what bicycle the large bag conceals, and if it has made it in one piece.

As the canvas side flaps onto the tiled floor of Timothy’s riad – a multi-mezzanine house with semi-open roof – a collective sigh temporarily drowns the cheeping of the birds in the rafters.

It’s followed by agreeable murmurs, which it turns out aren’t just because the bike is intact. Farouq runs a local bike tour company – Argan Xtreme Sports, based just outside the Medina – and although he’s proudly Marrakech’s sole Giant bikes importer and hirer, he’s impressed by my Canyon. Tomorrow is going to be one steep day out, he tells me, so thank goodness I’ve brought a light bike. I’ll need all the help I can get.