LEAVING his chainsaw behind for a week or so, freelance forester Gary Gartland will be driving down to Heathrow airport next month to catch a plane to Marrakesh.

There he will board a bus and head off into the Moroccan interior, not to follow the hippy trail with the backpackers, gap year students and others in search of adventure, but to climb a mountain, which at more than 13,600ft, will be adventure enough.

Gary, who lives in a house in the grounds of the National Trust's Hanbury Hall, near Droitwich, will be forsaking the green fields and shady woodlands of Worcestershire for the arid landscape and vertiginous rock of Mount Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa.

Within the space of 24 hours he will face the twin perils of sunburn and frostbite, as temperature plummet from 30C at base camp to way below zero at the summit. On the way, altitude sickness will be just another problem to contend with, as will dehydration.

There is a point to it all, because Gary hopes his efforts will raise nearly £2,000 for the Countryside Alliance, the rural campaigning group.

"I've lived and worked in Worcestershire all my life," said the 45-year-old, "and I'm a keen supporter of what the Alliance is doing.

"I saw this as a way of helping to safeguard and develop our rural way of life for future generations."

Even so, it is a fairly extreme thing to contemplate for someone who has never climbed a mountain before.

"I'm used to hill and fell walking," added Gary, "because I do quite a bit in Wales and Scotland, but nothing like this.

"I've never had mules to carry my packs before, but I gather they use them over there to get the stuff up to base camp. Although after that we're on our own."

The day set for the climb is Sunday, September 28.

"We're going to start at 5am to be sure of getting to the summit and back in a day. We need to do that because of the wide variations in temperature. Although it is 30 degrees down on the plain, we will probably be climbing through snow to reach the top and we don't want to get stuck on the mountain."

Of course a fair degree of fitness is required for this jaunt and, in recent weeks, Gary has been a familiar sight cycling round the lanes of Hanbury and district in pursuit of expanded lung capacity and extra stamina.

Fortunately, his day job helps a lot.

Taking a chainsaw and axe to trees is a good muscle builder and coupled with his hobby of fell walking, gives Gary a head start over many who attempt to climb Mount Toubkal, which dominates the High Atlas range of mountains in Morocco's central region.

The peak lies 40 miles south of Marrakesh and is the central attraction of Toubkal National Park and a popular venue for people who like a challenge.

Slightly ominously, travel guides claim the best month to climb is June and by September winds on the higher levels can become a problem.

"I've no real idea what it will be like," said Gary, "because I've never been to Morocco before or even North Africa."

Unlike something he is very familiar with on a day-to-day basis.

Back in the 1980s, he bought an ex-British Army AEC Matador gun tractor to help with his forestry work.

The massively powerful vehicle is capable of hauling and lifting four tonnes of timber and being built in 1939, saw service in many theatres of war.

Among them was the Second World War campaign in North Africa.

So the story goes full circle from the woods of Worcestershire to the heat of the desert and back again.

Meantime, Gary Gartland will be going the way of the Marrakesh Express.

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of his mind, getting away to see what he could find. As Crosby, Stills and Nash put it.