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The Cathedral

Caves, goat droppings, one log ladder across a drawbridge gap, another up to a big bay – and then no sign onwards, yet we had to be nearly up. Glancing overhead we looked at the undersides of a log structure attached to the cliff by faith as much as friction. Our path. This led back and soon onto easier ground, with box and oak on a rocky shambles. I built mini-cairns (to knock over on return) to make sure we found the magic doorway in the featureless scrub on the edge. There wasn’t much grazing on the tilted plateau, and we met no goats. We peered over the rim in places (why didn’t we have hang gliders?) and lounged on the top but, having told the other two we’d be gone for an hour, we set off down. The trouble with that sort of descent is that it doesn’t leave much room for imagination – it’s all too visible.

Camping at the bridge over the Bin el Ouidane reservoir’s east end

We split again, two going south, hoping to use the piste, and two of us (and the camp-friendly dog) along the connecting ridge until we found a good path down. Nearing the foot the dog raced over some screes to dive into a seguia. We had a swim beside the marooned bridge; temperatures of 38ºC deserved a splash. And so did another kind of splash to celebrate a very different Atlas experience.