We spent a wonderful early morning wondering around Ar Rusafah and what a walled city.  The size is incredibly impressive and the construction even more so - it was built in 3AD and by 5AD was an important centre for Christian worship. 

We left Ar Rusafah and as we knew that we couldn't get to Palmyra, we decided that as our maps at this point were useless, the only thing we knew that would be nearest to the truth were the road signs, so we followed these to Homs and Crac de Chevaliers.   Had we not had our experience at Lake Jabool, we'd have caste around for a road to take us to Palymra but we were nervous about doing it.  We had spent some time yesterday casting for roads to no avail.

Several hours of driving through the desert brought us closer to Homs and just as we approached a military installation, we were pulled over by some cops.  Not again!  But they just wanted to see were we were headed and waved us on with a friendly "Welcome to Syria". 

We arrived at Crac later in the afternoon and had a wonder around.  The castle is well worth a visit.  There are no pics as my camera was playing up, so we went back up to Sully to fix it.  I managed to loosen the ring on the lense as it had stuck (sand??) and we had a shower (dancing between the hairs and cockroaches - yeugh) and went for an early supper as we wanted to get an early start the next day and cross into Jordan as quickly as possible.