Jerash and Ajloun in One Day

Pick-up in Amman at 07:30, back by about 16:30. Three hours in Jerash first, the full circuit, while the light is still low and the limestone is still cool enough to sit on. Then 30 kilometres west through olive terraces to Qal'at ar-Rabad — the castle Izz al-Din Usama built in 1184 for Salah ad-Din, at around 1,100 metres, watching the Jordan Valley and the roads the Crusaders used from Belvoir. It is a Muslim castle built against Crusaders, which is the reverse of what most visitors assume, and we spend proper time on why the arrow slits face where they do. Lunch is at a family kitchen in Ajloun town: galayet bandora, taboon bread, olive oil pressed from trees you can see from the table. What you should know. It is a nine-hour day with roughly two and a half hours in the car, and by three in the afternoon most people have stopped absorbing anything, so we plan for that and stop talking. The castle is stairs — narrow spiral flights, low doorways, unlit passages, no step-free route above the entrance bridge.