Two co-operative workshops in Orjan village, both run by local women, both a ten-minute walk apart on a road with no pavement. At the soap house you cut and stamp your own bar from the olive-oil batch curing on the racks - pomegranate, lemon, or plain. It needs four to six weeks to cure properly, so yours goes home wrapped and unusable until roughly the end of next month. At the biscuit house you sit at the long table and shape ma'moul with dates and walnut, then eat the first tray hot with sage tea while the second bakes. The women speak Arabic; our host translates, and there is a lot of laughing at your rolling technique. Practical friction: this runs on the co-operatives' baking schedule, so it is mornings only, and the biscuit house closes for two weeks around Eid. The building is old and the toilet is a squat toilet. Wear something you do not mind getting flour on.
We are four families from Orjan and Rasoun, on the western slopes below Ajloun Castle. Between us we know which oak holds the best shade in August, which co-operative kitchen bakes on which morning, and roughly where the wild boar cross at dusk. We work with the reserve rangers, not around them, and we book the women's soap house and biscuit house directly so the money stays in the village. Our walks are unhurried and our groups are small. We are not a coach company and we do not do sunset-photo stops. If you want northern Jordan at walking pace, in oak and strawberry-tree woodland that most visitors drive straight past, come north.
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