Went for a drive at the weekend... the intention was to map the gap in the Barada valley road and to try and find (and map) a track that is marked on most of the maps that I've seen from Sirghaya across to Rankus.

Driving the valley road took a little longer than I expected, which meant by the time we reached Sirghaya we wouldn't have had time to drive up and over the mountain.

The good news is that I now know how to get to the track, although looking on Google Earth can be a bit misleading... it doesn't look half as mountainous in Google Earth as it actually is!

I'll plan on driving up on my own next weekend early one morning and see how I get on!

On the plus side, I did map the missing section of Barada road and I did add a few more meters to the road through Sirghaya (before stopping at an army check-point, since it's getting close to the Lebanese boarder).

It looks like there's lots of roads and tracks off to the west of these road, towards the Lebanese boarder. I might try mapping these, but it gets a bit frustrating since there's so many check-points and you freqeuntly get truned back and told to return to Damascus.