10-Day Family Morocco Tour from Marrakech: Desert, Atlas & Coast

The family is met at Marrakech Menara Airport by your driver-guide, with a name sign and help with the luggage, for the twenty-minute drive into the city.

With a morning arrival, a professional local guide shows you Marrakech at a pace suited to children: the Koutoubia gardens, the Bahia Palace, the souks and the acrobats and musicians of Jemaa el-Fna, with a stop for fresh orange juice. Afterwards you are taken to your hotel or riad.

If you land later in the day, you go straight to your accommodation to rest. No plans tonight: the evening is yours.

Today the family crosses the High Atlas at a relaxed pace, stopping often on the climb to the Tizi n'Tichka pass for views and mint tea.

After the pass you visit Telouet's old palace and follow the red canyon of the Ounila Valley down to Ait Ben Haddou.

In the late afternoon the ksar is quieter, perfect for children to explore its lanes and climb to the top. You spend the night nearby or in Ouarzazate.

Today is a short driving day for the family. In Skoura you walk through a palm oasis to Kasbah Amridil, where children can climb to the rooftop terraces of a real fortress.

In the Valley of Roses everyone can smell fresh rosewater at a cooperative in Kalaat M'Gouna.

In the afternoon the Dades Gorge reveals rocks shaped like giant fingers and a river to walk beside, before dinner at your guesthouse.

The family begins with a short drive up the Dades Gorge to spot the Monkey Fingers, then heads east to Tinghir.

Todra Gorge is a children's favourite: cool, shady and with a stream to paddle in, beneath cliffs that tower overhead. You have lunch close by.

In the afternoon the first dunes appear after Erfoud. In Merzouga everyone rides a camel into Erg Chebbi to watch the sunset, followed by dinner, drums around the fire and a night in a desert tent.

This is a day without long drives, which children appreciate. It begins with sunrise on the dunes, a little sand-sliding and breakfast in camp, then a ride back to Merzouga.

Later the family explores by 4x4: drumming with the Gnawa musicians of Khamlia, visiting a nomad family whose children often come out to say hello, and searching for fossils on the black stony plain. In wet years, flamingos wade in the lake near the village.

The afternoon is free for the pool or sandboarding, and the night is spent in a family-friendly hotel at the foot of the dunes.

After a last sunrise on the dunes, the family heads south to Zagora. In Rissani children enjoy the busy market and its donkey park on souk days.

In Alnif they can hunt for trilobite fossils in the black rock, and lunch is in Nkob, a village of earthen kasbahs that look like castles.

In the afternoon you follow the Draa Valley, a long green ribbon of palm trees, to Zagora, where you spend the night in a family-friendly riad in the palm grove.

After an early breakfast you drive a few kilometres south of Zagora to Tamegroute. Its old religious school keeps a library of manuscripts, some written on gazelle skin, and in the village workshops potters shape and fire the famous green-glazed bowls and tiles in underground kilns. Children love watching the clay take shape on the wheel.

The road then turns north along the Draa Valley, nearly a hundred kilometres of palm groves, kasbahs and earthen villages beside the river, with the flat-topped Jbel Kissane above Agdz. You can stop to walk in a palm grove or stretch your legs at the kasbah of Tamnougalt.

From Agdz the road climbs the Tizi n'Tinififft pass to Ouarzazate, a good place for lunch, then crosses the High Atlas over the Tizi n'Tichka. It is the longest drive of the tour, so we take it at an easy pace with plenty of breaks, and you reach Marrakech in the early evening for a night at your riad or hotel.

The road west crosses a plain that gradually fills with argan trees, a species that grows almost nowhere else. You will probably see goats that have climbed into the branches to eat the fruit, and you can visit a cooperative where women crack the nuts by hand and press the oil.

Essaouira arrives with a change of air: cooler, salty and windy. The town was laid out in the eighteenth century by a French engineer for Sultan Mohammed III, which explains its straight streets inside thick sea walls. You walk the Skala, the rampart lined with bronze cannons facing the ocean, and through the woodworkers' workshops built into its arches.

The harbour is at its busiest when the blue boats come in and the catch is sold on the quay; you can choose your fish and have it grilled on the spot. The evening is free in the medina.

A free day by the sea. Essaouira is small enough to explore without a map and relaxed enough that nobody hurries you. The medina's main streets are lined with galleries, spice stalls and shops selling boxes and tables inlaid in thuya wood, a local speciality.

The long beach south of the town is popular with windsurfers and kitesurfers thanks to the constant trade winds, and you can walk, ride a horse or a camel along it towards the ruined fort half-buried in the sand.

Music lovers will know the town for its Gnawa festival each June; at other times you may still hear musicians in the squares at night. If you would like an activity, we can arrange a cooking class, a surf lesson or a visit to a nearby winery.

There is no rush this morning. You can take a last walk on the ramparts or along the beach, and look for anything you had your eye on in the medina, before leaving around midday.

The drive back to Marrakech crosses the argan country again, with a stop for coffee on the way and a visit to a cooperative if you missed it on the way out.

You arrive in Marrakech in the afternoon. If this is your last evening, Jemaa el-Fna is the natural place to spend it: the square is at its liveliest after dark, when the food stalls set up and the smoke of the grills drifts across the crowd. On a final day, your driver can take you to the airport instead.

Here in Marrakech the itinerary ends, with a drop-off at your hotel. If you need it, we can book a further night or the transfer to your flight.