I also received welcome support in the shape of an afternoon’s crash-course in dirtbike skills from Jens, the tour’s lead-rider, who convinced me to forget most of the on-road biking instincts I’d developed over 28 years, and taught me instead the Zen of offroad racing. His training paid off handsomely, especially when I faced the tour’s biggest challenge – and its literal high-spot – trying to surmount a 350ft “cathedral” sand dune in one blazing glory-rush.

The trick to riding big dunes is to keep the throttle hard open, which keeps the front wheel skimming the surface. That approach works great until you crest the dune: if you fly over it at top speed, well, 350ft is a long way down without a parachute. I made it safely first time. Thanks Jens.

It’s not all rough’n’tumble, though: each of the hotels we collapsed into at night was of good standard. The best, the four-star Kasbah Xaluca in Erfoud, resembles a traditional Moroccan Fort, but has a luxurious hammam that gives great massages and 48 air-conditioned bedrooms with en suite facilities made of fossilised local marble. It didn’t quite beat the night we spent sleeping under the stars outside a cluster of Berber tents in the Sahara, though.

One might assume that the Ewan McGregor-inspired upsurge in off-roading abroad is a boon for adventure-travel operators.

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BACKGROUND

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• Motorbiking Morocco

But it ain’t necessarily so, says Dave Grist, who runs the Hampshire-based motorcycling specialist, H-C Travel, and who organised my trip. “Increased interest has brought a proliferation of new tours, but the competition can drive standards down.

In Spain, a lot of new guys have set up and are cutting their prices by cutting corners on safety, back-up and tour-guide quality. It’s difficult to tell the quality of a tour just by looking at the website. We’ve pulled out of the Spanish market, because we fear that off-road tours are just getting a bad name there.”

The increased interest does bring other new types of choice, though. I frankly found the Morocco Desert Tour a bit too hard-core for my leisure biking tastes, so was interested to hear that H-C Travel and MotoAventures are now developing rather softer, coastally based tours: riders can go playing off-road in the mornings, while their spouses and children stay at resort hotels. Half-day biking, half-day beach? Mmm, that sounds more like me.

NEED TO KNOW

H-C Travel operates a seven-day desert tour - £1,845. A nine-day desert tour costs £2,095. MotoAventures is the ground handler in Morocco. Prices are all-inclusive, bar specialist travel insurance, £30.48, and flights.

The deesrt tours operate from February to the end of May, and again from September to November.

Prices of the softer beach-resort tours are yet to be decided, but will be dependent on level of accommodation chosen. They will operate in the gaps between desert tours.

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