Midelt Apple Orchard Food Experience - Morocco's Apple Capital

Midelt sits on a high plateau between the Middle and High Atlas, a cool mountain town famous across Morocco as its apple capital - the surrounding orchards produce much of the country's apple crop, celebrated each autumn at a local apple festival. It is a crossroads on the road between Fes and the Sahara, and this experience uses its orchards and highland food to break the journey with something memorable.

You visit the apple orchards - best of all at harvest in late summer and autumn, when the trees are heavy with fruit - and learn how the cool climate and mountain water make this high plateau ideal for apples and other orchard fruit. You taste apples and orchard produce, and, depending on the season, see how the harvest is worked and stored in a region that lives by it. The nearby Kasbah Myriem workshops, where local women make crafts and preserves, are part of the area's food story.

The experience is rounded off with a highland mountain lunch - a hearty tagine, fresh bread, mountain honey and, of course, apples - eaten in the cool clear air with the Atlas peaks around. It is a scenic, grounding stop on the desert road, a taste of high-mountain Moroccan farming life far from the coast or the medinas. Bring a warm layer, as Midelt is cool year-round and cold in winter.