Algeria · DZ

Edough Massif

The Edough Massif (Djebel Edough, or Adrar n Dduɣ in Tamazight) rises as a green wall of crystalline rock just behind Annaba in north-eastern Algeria, its cork-oak forests catching enough rain and sea fog to stay vividly verdant long after the coastal plain below has baked to ochre. The highest point, Bou Zizi at 1,008 m, caps a ridge that stretches between the Cap de Garde and the Cap de Fer, splitting the Gulf of Annaba from the open Mediterranean on a series of small rocky headlands. For a traveller, the massif is the cool escape valve of the Algerian north-east. A winding mountain road leaves Annaba for the hill village of Seraïdi at around 860 m, a settlement that has functioned as a summer retreat since the colonial period and still offers terraces looking down over the rooftops of ancient Hippo Regius toward the sea. Above the village, unmarked forest tracks thread through cork oaks, zeen oaks, and pre-colonial chestnut groves past old springs and the broken arches of the aqueduct that once watered Roman Annaba.