Morocco Atlantic Coast Road

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Agadir

   Agadir is a very new city in a very old country, and the reason is the earthquake. At a few minutes before midnight on 29 February 1960, a quake destroyed most of the old town and killed thousands of people, and the city was rebuilt from scratch in a modern style, with wide avenues, low buildings and a long promenade along the bay. The one piece that survived is the hilltop kasbah, Agadir Oufella, whose ruined walls overlook the town from about two hundred metres up, bearing an inscription in Arabic that reads God, Country, King. The view from it, across the bay and the port, is the best in town.

   Read the complete Agadir write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Agadir is where the day begins. Next is Taghazout.

2. 2. Taghazout

   Taghazout started as a fishing village and still smells like one around the harbour at dawn, but since the late sixties it has had a second life as Morocco's surf town. Travellers on the hippie trail drifted up the coast from Agadir looking for empty point breaks, and the names they gave the waves, Anchor Point and Killer Point among them, stuck. Today the village climbs a hillside above the Atlantic in tiers of whitewashed and sand-coloured houses, with surf schools and rooftop cafes in between the older family homes, and a large resort development now sits in the bay to the north.

   Read the complete Taghazout write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Taghazout comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Essaouira.

3. 3. Essaouira

   The wind is the first thing you meet in Essaouira, and it never really leaves. The trade winds blow in from the Atlantic for most of the year, which is why the old Portuguese-named town of Mogador is a centre for windsurfing and kitesurfing, and why the beach is a long, flat plain of pale sand with surfers working the surf at the far end.

   Read the complete Essaouira write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 176 km into the recorded legs you reach Essaouira. Next is Oualidia.

4. 4. Oualidia

   Oualidia is where the Atlantic stops being an ocean and becomes a lagoon. A natural sandbar and a line of rock shelter a calm, shallow bay, a few kilometres long, from the swells of the open sea, and the village, with about five and a half thousand people, sits along its shore, with small fishing boats pulled up on the sand and blue-painted houses facing the water. The tide moves in and out through narrow channels, and at low water the flats are covered with wading birds. The lagoon is protected as a wetland of international importance and is a winter home for flamingos, spoonbills and many others.

   Read the complete Oualidia write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Oualidia, late in the day. Next is El Jadida.

5. 5. El Jadida

   El Jadida has one of the more surprising old quarters in Morocco: a Portuguese fortress town, built in the early sixteenth century and called Mazagan, which became a walled enclave on the Atlantic coast. When the Portuguese left in 1769, the town was renamed El Jadida, the new one. The fortified old town, with its bastions, ramparts and cistern, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cistern, a vaulted underground chamber with a shallow pool reflecting light from a single opening, was used as a set in Orson Welles's film Othello. El Jadida is a city of about 150,000, and Azemmour, another old Portuguese town, lies a few kilometres up the coast.

   Read the complete El Jadida write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at El Jadida. That is the ride.