As the air turns fragrant with the smell of wild thyme, and we waft through little scent pockets of rosemary in the scrubland, we spy the perfect “baddie” hideout.

The ruins of a Berber mud house, a scramble up the red hillside of the High Atlas mountains, make the perfect lookout for a game in which we shoot the goodies who are trying to catch us.

No goodies come, no baddies either . . . we are totally alone in the hills, and totally happy: my son, Christian, because this walk is full of hidden streams for throwing stones and boulders to clamber on; me because it’s such a long way from our other holidays.

Not in distance, Morocco being just a three-and-a-half-hour sparrow’s hop south from England (and a child-friendly hour’s time difference), but in spirit.

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It’s hot, it’s tough... and it’s family heaven. William Gray and children trek through the High Atlas

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BACKGROUND

• Will Morocco be a bargain in 2009?

• How to haggle in Marrakesh

• Can we get currency before we get to Morocco?

• Can we take a toddler to Morocco?

• Is Morocco no fun during Ramadan?

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Until now we have done little more than the flop-and-drop break but, if I’m honest, the beach and pool thing bores me silly. This is our first taste of soft adventure together and it’s heaven.

It is our second stop in the Atlas Mountains, in Ouirgane, our first being at Kasbah du Toubkal, a 1,800m-high eyrie and a 90-minute curling drive around the mountainsides from Marrakesh.

Beyond Sir Richard Branson’s Kasbah Tamadot, it offers a far superior view, surrounded by a horseshoe of rugged mountains where houses that look like they’re straight out of the Bible cling to stony slopes, a gush of water escaping from the snow-capped peaks down to the huge open valley below.

Run in partnership with the local Berber community, the kasbah is also more authentic, its rustic bedrooms full of woven rugs and blankets, the courtyard complete with a Berber woman making bread in a clay oven.

Here, Christian, who is allergic to walking at home, sprouts goat’s legs in the hills and, with a little help from me, the guide, and a bottle of Coca-Cola, manages a two-hour mountain hike. Up, up we go, not as high as Jbel Toubkal, at 4,167m (13,600ft) the highest peak in North Africa, whose snowy cap towers over us, but high enough for Christian to exclaim: “Look, Mummy, we’re nearly touching the sky”.

There’s an ingenious irrigation system going on with the snow-fuelled streams. We also spot numerous satellite dishes, stark white circles standing out from the brown houses, and electricity pylons climbing the slopes at impossible angles — electricity came here as recently as 1997, while the road was surfaced six years later.

Perhaps unfairly I wish that modern life hadn’t arrived here and that the kasbah’s slogan — 40 miles from Marrakesh, 1,000 miles from anywhere — was really that.

But from the number of locals who ask if I remember them or if I can visit their shop in the village of Imlil, 15 minutes and many more metres down the slope, past a home-made sign proclaiming “Asda prices”, it’s obvious that the tourist trail is well trodden.

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