‘I came to run a race and fell in love with a country and it is a love affair that is showing no signs of cooling’
TV presenter, writer and adventurer Alice Morrison introduces an extract from her latest book – on how signing up to run the Marathon des Sables led her to move to Morocco – and stay
Adventuring is in the blood of every Scot, I think. You can be in the most remote region of the world, swatting away bloodfilled mosquitoes as the sweat rolls down your forehead and stings your eyes, and if it is 25 January, I can guarantee you that somewhere within a 50 mile radius, a small group of diehards will be resolutely toasting the haggis.
My parents certainly had that spirit. They had both just graduated from Edinburgh University and, as was the custom at the time, were perusing the lists of jobs available which were pinned to the noticeboard. They saw an advertisement asking for teachers to go to Uganda and so off they set by ship to Kenya with a 1,000 mile drive at the other end, undeterred by the fact that Mum had given birth to me just six weeks earlier.
A wild, free childhood followed for me. Our home was in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon overlooking a game park where herds of elephant, zebra and buffalo wandered the plains and lions sometimes used our car for cover to attack an unwary gazelle. Coming back to Edinburgh to go to school was a shock but life goes on and the next 40 years or so were
spent mainly living in the UK with a couple of years in Egypt and some time in Syria.
Then, in a moment of middleaged madness, I signed up to run the Marathon des Sables, the so-called toughest footrace on earth. It comprises six marathons in six days across the Sahara desert and you have to carry all your own food and equipment for the week. What makes it so difficult is the extreme heat – it reaches 50 degrees – and the sand. Running up a sand dune is a lung-busting affair, running up many, many sand dunes is just sheer idiocy. Oh yes, and the middle marathon is a double – 52 miles at one push.
In order to give myself the best chance to succeed, I decided to move to Marrakech to train in the right conditions for four months, and to take some time to revive my rusty Arabic, which I’d studied at Edinburgh University. Five years later and I am still living in Morocco.
That first, extraordinary experience of running across the desert is indelibly printed on my mind:
Just keep running
In the desert, everything is vivid and clear. There are no greys or ambiguous shading. The sun is hot, the sky is blue, the sand is gold. Everything is simple. In a race, too, everything is simple. All you have to do, is get to the end as fast as you can and in as good shape as you can. There is something intensely, and bizarrely, relaxing in that. We live lives that are full of variety, choices, decisions, responsibilities and it can be exhausting. All that falls away when it is just you, the sand and the sky. That first day, midway through the morning, I came to a high point. All I could see in front of me was an infinite Erg, an infinite expanse of sand with the dunes rolling ahead. Right along them were scattered the runners, tiny in the distance. They looked like ants scurrying along a sandy floor. The sun had bleached the colour out of the land and the sky to make them both silver and there was a heat haze shimmering towards the Algerian border. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating in my ears and my breathing. I felt perfectly alive. On top of the world
The Marathon des Sables brought me to Morocco but it is the Atlas Mountains that have kept me here for so long. I now live in a village at the base of North Africa’s highest peak, Mount Toubkal, at 4,167metres. Imlil has the feel Images from My 1001 Nights, clockwise from main: Marrakech medina; Alice Morrison at the summit of Toubkal, North Africa’s highest mountain at 4,167 metres; camel trekking near Merzouga; crossing the desert; enjoying hospitality; taking part in the Marathon des Sables in 2014; with her medal for completing the race of a frontier town in the Wild West. Mules trot down the one street where an eclectic mix of second hand hiking equipment, fresh goat meat and Moroccan souvenirs cram the shop fronts. When it rains, the road is blocked by landslides and you can’t get in or out till the Caterpillar earth mover comes along. In spring, the valley is a basin filled with the pink and white blossom of cherry, plum and peach trees. However beautiful the surroundings, though, it is the encounters that make the Atlas Mountains really special. The kindness of strangers Rachid and I were trudging along an unmade road following a valley up to the next village through the jagged peaks of the Atlas Mountains. It was hot and dusty, and we were tired, fed up and parched. A high stone wall, next to the road, guarded a terraced orchard dug out of the steep mountainside. Overhanging it was a huge fig tree, with the purple-black ripe fruit dangling temptation right in front of us. My mouth started watering and, in that moment, I knew just how Eve felt when
The runners, tiny in the distance, looked like ants scurrying along a sandy floor