Souss-Massa

Taroudant sits in the middle of the Souss valley behind a complete circuit of red earthen ramparts, several kilometres of them, and it is frequently described as a smaller and older version of Marrakech — a comparison that is useful up to a point and misleading after it. The walls are the real thing and you can walk or ride a horse cart the whole way round, with the High Atlas rising behind them to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south. Inside, two souks sell to the town rather than to visitors: one for produce and household goods, one for craft and jewellery, and the selling is markedly gentler than in the tourist cities because most of the customers live there. It is a working agricultural market town that happens to be walled, and it is the single best place in the region to spend a day doing nothing in particular.

Inland and up, the Anti-Atlas is geologically ancient and looks it: enormous rounded boulders of pink and orange granite piled across hillsides, smooth domes, and narrow gorges where palm groves run along the floor between rock walls. The centre of it is a village in a bowl surrounded by that landscape, reached by a mountain road that is itself part of the attraction. Around it are Amazigh villages of stone and mud houses, argan and almond terraces, and rock art and painted boulders on the slopes. In late winter the almond trees flower across the whole valley and the region holds a festival for it — the timing moves with the season rather than the calendar, so check locally rather than booking around a fixed date. It is walking country of a gentle kind, more scrambling among boulders and strolling between villages than serious trekking, and the light on the rock at either end of the day is the reason photographers keep coming back.

Nearer the coast, a compact walled town is the country's centre for silver jewellery — heavy Amazigh work in silver with enamel and stones, made and sold in a dedicated souk, and quite distinct from the lighter styles found in the northern cities. It is quiet, easy to walk, and the buying is unhurried. Further down the coast, a small town sits on a cliff above the Atlantic with a body of 1930s architecture unlike anything else in the country: white curved facades, ironwork balconies, a rounded plaza and a lighthouse, all in a Spanish art-deco idiom, in various states of repair and often shrouded in sea mist. It has become a low-key destination for people who like the combination of that architecture, the empty beaches either side and the almost total absence of a tourist economy.

The argan is a low, thorny, deep-rooted tree that grows natively in this region and almost nowhere else in the world, and the woodland covering the Souss valley and the slopes around it is protected as a biosphere reserve. It matters ecologically before it matters commercially: the root system holds soil in a semi-arid landscape and slows the desert's advance, which is why the woodland is managed rather than simply harvested. It is also the origin of the country's most-photographed animal behaviour — goats standing in the branches, several to a tree, to reach the fruit, which is entirely real though the roadside ones on the main tourist routes are frequently placed there for the photograph and a fee. The genuine version happens away from the main roads and nobody is charging for it.

South of the resort city, a coastal national park protects dunes, cliffs, river mouth wetlands and steppe, and it holds one of the last significant wild populations of a critically endangered bald ibis — a bird that once ranged across Europe and North Africa and now breeds in only a handful of places, most of them here. For birdwatchers the region is a serious destination on that basis alone, and the park also takes migrating species along the Atlantic flyway. For everyone else it is a straightforward half-day of empty coast and estuary within easy reach of the resort strip, and a useful reminder that the coastline continues well beyond where the hotels stop.

The region's airport is the main gateway to southern Morocco and there is no railway anywhere in the region, so everything is road. Coaches connect the coast with the valley towns frequently; shared long-distance taxis handle the shorter hops; and the mountain roads into the Anti-Atlas genuinely reward having your own vehicle, because the interest is in stopping. As for timing, the coast is mild year-round and is a viable winter beach destination, which is unusual. The swell and wind that govern the surf villages north of the city run on their own calendar, which the guide to Morocco's two coasts explains. The interior is the opposite: the valley is severe in high summer, and the Anti-Atlas is at its best from late autumn through spring, with the almond blossom towards the end of winter and comfortable walking either side of it.