The guide book said it was a ten hour trek. The local man at the resort said six hours each way. We thought both were obviously talking about the speed of the aged German tourists that we had seen at last night’s bbq and guessed at 8 hours max.

We were so wrong.

We started at 8.30 and Sue and I just got back to the car before it was completely dark at 6.30. Claire and Jonathan were faster coming down than us so had gone on ahead. They were a welcome sight as they walked back to meet us with extra water and torches from the car.

It was absolutely worthwhile but boy were we completely knackered!

There was no path as such but the trail across unforgiving rock was well marked with painted rocks. We climbed from the plateau at 2000m to just below the summit of Jebel Shams at 3000m. We simply did not have time to get to the actual summit but we very content to have made it to the top of the ridge which yielded the same views that we would have got from the top.

All the way up the views were stunning. At times we were standing at the edge of Wadi Nakhur – Oman’s answer to the Grand Canyon – with sheer drops that must have been a 1000 feet.