We are desperately trying to get in as many camping trips as possible before the temperature rises too much.

This weekend saw us exploring new ground and having a new experience – driving through wadis full of water.

Rain during the week had brought a great deal of water to the mountains – and a fair bit of damage. The road into this area is actually the bed of the wadi so our route in meant driving up the river. All good fun. Sue’s strategy for river driving is to accelerate whenever the water gets deeper. This seems to work well for us but not so well for oncoming traffic. I can still see the look of horror on the face of the kind Omani gentleman in the oncoming vehicle who had stopped to allow us to pass and foolishly wound down his window to wave us through. The bow wave that Sue created as she powered through would have rivalled all but the largest tsunami and the guy in the pure white kandura never stood a chance.

We had left Al Ain late on Friday morning so only had little time to explore and were really focused on finding a suitable camping spot.

This was the scene on Saturday morning as the north face of Jebal Shams catches the early morning sun.

As usual the early risers are rewarded with the best views.

All the directions in our guide book were completely hopeless as a new road is being built and all the road signs have disappeared. Eventually we found the road to the mountain village of Wijmah. Sue thought it was more of a goat track and had the most terrifying drive of her life, steadfastly refusing to let me drive. I thought it was stunning. The road either clung to the cliff face or straddled a ridge. In places it was too steep to see the road over the front of the car. A low ratio crawl for half an hour to reach “the splendid cliffhanger village of Wijmah”.

Look carefully in the panorama above and you can see the road to the right of the village, above the terraces and below the cliffs. In the village the recent rains meant that the steps between the houses were miniature waterfalls.

The water had dropped as we left through the wadi later in the day. We stopped for a peaceful lunch under the date palm but were soon joined by the grader obviously making a new road even though it was still submerged.