"Where in Morocco you go on bike?" asks Jackel & Hyde, the man of the guest house. I don't exactly know yet, but having the Michelin map of Morocco laid out on the table, I reply the Atlas mountains and run my forefinger along a road running south from Fes showing my way there.

"Atlas mountains!" he exclaims, planting his elbow on the table and elevates his forearm at a forty-five degree angle to demonstrate a steep incline, adding "The road is like this. You visit Atlas mountains. You take taxi"

Yeah how much would that cost and how much commission would he be making. Another day an associate of his was insistent that I take a jeep excursion to the Sahara. I mean to have cycled all the way from Ireland and then ride in a taxi or a jeep here and there would mean I couldn't say later, I cycled to Morocco, cycled round and cycled back.

Like a lot of people in Morocco I would discover, he cannot grasp the concept that there may be something extremely desirable in getting up each morning and pedalling a hundred and ten kilometres and over weeks and months see landscape, climate and people change. To have pedalled all the way from cool temperate Ireland to arid and dry Spain and now Morocco fills the heart and soul with a sense of great pride. To move forward with an alternative to the bike at this stage would sully this pride.

As my friendly sometimes not so friendly patron was always insistent on me paying up front for the room, there is no bill to pay when checking out. I find a week-old round of bread in my pannier while packing. I leave the stale bread on a side table as a tip and wheel the loaded bike out through the passage, out the door and cycle away shortly before eight, long before his time of appearing on the scene. So avoiding a final bon voyage greeting from him.

I breakfast one last time on crepes, orange juice and coffee at the café to the left in through the blue arch gateway and watch all the characters in the street. The shoe shin man wants to polish my cycling shoes. I politely decline his offer but he goes on insisting until I sit where he cannot get at my shoes. A big group of clean well fed pink skinned immaculately turned out in shorts, tee-shirts and sunhats tourists stroll down through the gateway and pause while their guide explains something as they point cameras and take pictures. An emaciated pony struggles up the street under a heavy cargo of gas cylinders, goaded on by an equally emaciated man. A beggar is given a drink by a sympathetic café keeper across the street. Another man with a whimpering five year old boy in his arms comes round the tables asking for change.

Back on the road at last riding in heavy traffic on the long avenue up through Fes' modern city. What a contrast with what I left behind. Could be Europe with western dressed people, clean sidewalk and office buildings. I wish I had looked for a cheap hotel here.

At roundabouts I follow signs for Ifrane and continue along a smooth thoroughfare with nice residencial properties either side. Gardens with lustrous palm trees drape over boundary walls. Soon I pull in at a Carrefour. Haven't seen one of these since arriving in Morocco and it makes a nice reprieve from the hot sun to walk around air-con aisles. I fail to find surgical spirits to fire my stove. There are cans of alcohol free beer for seventeen Derham. Expensive at one euro fifty. I take it alcohol that I can use for my stove isn't available in Morocco because the devious would mix it with soft drinks for consumption. In anycase I end up buying only fruit, three boxes of cereal bars and a bottle of cola as I can't cook nothing.

The avenue continues as far as the turnoff for the airport, then reverts to rough single carriageway and the remainder of the way out of town has rough tenement blocks and rubbish strewn wasteland either side.

The road ahead crosses a plain of fenced in olive groves and fruit orchards with a barely visible gradual incline making the going tough toward a range of hills. Then reaching the hills a serious seven per cent gradient up a valley with pine clad hillside either side. The pine trees are round in shape and I push the bike off the road in under one for shelter and sit down to a mid afternoon break, eating fruit and drinking the cola which has warmed up inside the hot soft plastic panniers.

After a long climb I reach Ifrane. A surprise with irrigated gardens with flowering shrubs and fountains. A ski resort with a university with yew tree lined avenues of steep roofed alpine village houses.

The price for a room is 650 DH at the first hotel I try. Then riding into the main pedestrianized centre, I'm met by a man who says he is a mountain guide.

"Hotels are expensive" he says "You look for room. Cost hundred and fifty"

He leads me along a residential street to a house where the owner agrees to let me a room for 150 DH and I don't mind paying twenty to him for leading the way, as I wouldn't have found the house myself.

I eat at a café in the centre. Hungry as I only had that one break in the afternoon. Dinner is beef viande and salad and I use the wi fi until dark then return.

The room is over priced. Small being big enough to get the bike into the narrow space and lean against the sofa bed along the opposite wall to the sofa bed I lay on. There are blankets but no sheets. A swat toilet in the yard but no shower or other facilities. Though today wasn't too sweaty. The temperature only thirty-two degree. Not excessively hot.