Hi, I am intending to head South through Spain to Morocco starting 10th September (Portsmouth to Santander then Algeciras to Tanger Med). I am riding a KTM 1090R and this will be my first major trip on the bike, first visit to Morocco and first time off road on an adventure style bike. I have done some off road stuff on lighter trail bikes and quite a bit of road touring on an adventure style bike historically but not anything like I am expecting to find in Morocco.
I would really appreciate suggestions on what I should look to do in around 10 days in Morocco and ideally including relatively easy off road stuff.
I am mindful that temperatures are still likely to be high in mid September so maybe some higher routes would be good and nothing too severe given my lack of experience and that I am riding solo.
I have a Garmin satnav with Moroccan maps loaded but, so far, have been unable to find a source of gpx routes for any trails.
I have Chris Scott's excellent book Morocco Overland and several paper maps of Morocco.
If necessary I think I can work from a combination of maps and the guidebook and I have looked at Tim Cullis's excellent Morocco forum and have downloaded route waypoints for the Morocco Overland routes (not sure where from now but there are around four waypoints for each route including start and finish points and a couple of intermediate points). At a pinch I can work from these so if there are recommended routes from Chris's book that would be very helpful.
As a newby to this any help would very much be appreciated.

Both Spain and Morocco are likely to be hot. Thoroughly soak your riding gear with water it it gets too much for you, it's then like riding with a built-in refrigerator.

An easy one for you to try in the north of Morocco is just south of Azrou and I've done a quick map.

Firstly you could visit the wild monkeys and the 'ski resort inside a volcano' at Mischlfen, see at my write-up and map on TripAdvisor

(see note below **)

From there' carry on south on the N13 for a short distance and you will see Jebel Hebri (another volcano) on the east side of the road. Shortly afterwards take the track to the right heading south west. Initially this is stony but it improves. Look out for volcanic vents either side of the tracks. After a while you enter the cedar forest. Some photos: M22 Volcanic Vents and Cedars

There's a network of tracks in this area, just keep heading south west or south and you'll eventually reach tarmac again. Or head for Source Oum er Rbia, see LookLex

**Note from above


In this 'Olaf' map, yellow and orange are tarmac, uncoloured are pistes (tracks). So you could potentially go apes1 to apes3 then cross country to Mischlifen

You can see on the map that after visiting Mischlifen you could head north east for about 800m and take a track that loops round the back of the caldera, then heads off south west towards Jebel Hebri. You can see some pics of this area at M21 Monkeys, Volcanos and Yes

__________________
"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Cheers Tim, Jason at The KTM Centre in Hemel said you'd be the man to ask!

This will certainly be on my to-do list, getting the maps out as we speak....

Can I ask Tim, where you refer to routes M21 and M22, I assume these are the same as referred to in Morocco-knowledgebase? What I am struggling with is that the first thread in each regional sub-forum headed, for example, M00 Middle Atlas - Routes and Map doesn't have any maps (or indeed routes!). Therefore, although I am enjoying the pictures, I have no idea where they are or where the routes go.

Am I missing something obvious?

If you have the Garmin's map, that is like hundreds of gpx routes on a plate.
Study them on Base Camp before you leave to get ideas, make a rough plan, then enjoy watching it fall to pieces ;-)
Most of Morocco Overland's routes, and many many more (too many in places) are on that map or the similar free ones, but once on a piste you'll find a tracklog redundant.

With that map you can just wander at will and explore within your bike's range.

Another good spot to explore is the High Atlas between Demnate and Imilchil. Roads up to 9000'. South of the HA it will of course be baking.

I must say I've also never unravelled Tim's system. A huge resource with lots of pix and route descriptions - but no maps to locate them (that I can find).
I assumed one has to sign up or something to see or download a special map.
I'm sure we're both missing something obvious.

It helps to treat first trips as a recce.
You won't do half as much as you planned but you'll have a much better idea for next time.

Ha! Well, I'm glad it's not just me!
I have both the Olaf Topo map and Garmin's overpriced Morocco offering (decent city/town street mapping, to be fair - though that's not why I'm going....) and, as you say plenty of tracks marked. Most of these seem to transfer over to the actual Garmin Zumo gps map as well, though trying to route plan on a gps screen is pretty hopeless.
Obviously can't take the desktop computer with me and Basecamp doesn't have an iPad compatible version so I have bought a cheap Android tablet which I will try loading the maps on for route planning.
I might try printing out a few A4 local maps from Basecamp with the tracks highlighted and focussing on just a couple of areas in the middle and high Atlas rather than try the scatter gun approach. As you say, first time out best not to try to be too ambitious!

I did the shortcut with the red arrow.

Found the ascent a bit of a handful on my TT. The fact that my luggage was top-heavy and i didn't air my tires down nor remove my Airhawk probably didn't make it better