What is the Marrakech to Fes route like, and what should I see along the way?

I always tell people that the worst way to do Marrakech to Fes is to do it in one go. Yes, the direct road via Beni Mellal and the new A2 highway gets you there in about eight hours, and if time is short it is perfectly comfortable in a private car. But you spend a whole day staring at the windscreen and arrive too tired to enjoy Fes that evening. When I drive guests this way, I break it.

My favourite version takes two days through the Middle Atlas. We leave Marrakech and climb gently towards Beni Mellal, where the Ain Asserdoun springs and the old kasbah make a good leg-stretch and lunch stop. Then on towards Khenifra and the high country — the air cools, the palm and olive give way to pine, and you genuinely feel the landscape change beneath you. We usually overnight around Azrou or Ifrane.

Azrou is where the magic happens for me. The cedar forest just outside town is home to troops of wild Barbary macaques, and pulling over to watch them is a highlight even for people who came to Morocco only for the desert. Nearby Ifrane is the surprise everyone photographs — a tidy alpine-style town built in the 1930s, all pitched roofs and flower beds, so unexpected that guests keep asking if we have left the country.

From Ifrane it is an easy ninety minutes down into Fes, descending out of the cedars into the warm bowl where the old city sits. Arriving mid-afternoon means you settle into your riad, take a first wander to the Bab Bou Jeloud blue gate as the light goes gold, and start Fes properly rested. If you have a third day, add Meknes and the Roman ruins of Volubilis as a loop — both sit conveniently on the western approach to Fes.