Author: Selina Gough

Shiny, Happy People

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One of the difficult things about travelling is that it can get lonely. Whilst out on the road there have been long stretches when we’ve barely met a soul. We have woefully little French, Spanish or Italian and meeting people who have enough English to converse with us useless linguists is a rare thing indeed. We’re a pretty sociable bunch and it’s been a strain at times for us all not to have other folk to hang out with, which makes us all the more grateful when we do meet people who can tolerate our company for longer than a cursory five minutes. And we have met some fantastic people along the way. Most of the people we’ve spent time with and got to know a little have been those that have chosen to live a slightly different sort of life, a life in which there is more time for relationships, more time for reflection or simply more time for following dreams. As a tribute to some of those lovely souls and their inspiring stories …

Stopovers 4 Merzouga to El Morreon

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#31 Kasbah Hotel Jurassic, Ziz Gorge We stopped here on our way north from Merzouga as I was insistent that we needed somewhere to break up the hours and hours of driving. I’ll be honest, it felt a little odd as we pulled in. There were no other motorhomes and the young man who moved the barrier seemed a bit bewildered by us being there at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hardly ever saw a motorhome, so eerily unaccustomed they seemed to having people stay at their campsite. Having said all that, the showers were amazing and the landscape too. It took me a while to realise just how stunning our surroundings were which made me worry we were starting to take it all for granted. We only stayed one night and when I went to pay the next morning they weren’t able to give me any change. It was a small amount so I said it didn’t matter. Then as we were driving out, the bewildered looking young man came out with …

The Alpujarras, Orgiva and a birthday

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After bidding one set of grandparents a tearful goodbye in Granada, we drove off to Orgiva in the Alpujarras, an almost legendary place of beauty and alternative living. We’d heard about its little hippy camps that had sprung up there since the 1970s and how that community had grown with more and more dreamers turning up every year, their heads filled with visions of freedom and sunshine. We wondered what we, always with one eye out for a different kind of life, would find there. Would we feel a pull to this sunny mountain idyll as so many before us had? Even as we drove into the lovely little campsite just before Orgiva, surrounded by the hills of the Alpujarras, we felt a wave of positivity. We had another grandparental visit due in just over a week at Velez Malaga, not too far from where we already were, so we decided to spend the intervening time in and around Orgiva. It was the longest we’d stopped anywhere in all our travels up to that point. …

Return to Europe!

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On the day we left Morocco and came back into Spain I think we were all fairly glad. This slight feeling of relief was helped by having had the most expensive and disgusting omelette ever served to us the night before we left, at a ‘campsite’ where crazed dogs seemed to be allowed to just run free. It was also raining and cold. All of which helped us leave Morocco without too much sorrow. Additionally, we hadn’t had an alcoholic drink for around three weeks, which is a bit too long by anyone’s standards…isn’t it? For all of us too, the excitement of meeting up with my mum and stepdad that very day spurred us on. We’d arranged to stay with them at a campsite near the beach in southern Spain and were looking forward to more of a week-long holiday experience than our somewhat rather more gritty general travelling life. A week of relaxing in Costa del Sol-style ease. Foolishly mum had entrusted Rob and I with suggesting a suitable campsite. We didn’t have a …

10 Things to be Aware of When Visiting Morocco

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#1 The roads The roads, other than the big toll motorways, are pretty bad. Admittedly probably not so bad if you’re in a car rather than a 22ft motorhome, but even then they’re a long way off what I’m used to. One of my main gripes was width, with even major roads only just wide enough for two cars to pass each other and certainly not a whole lot of breathing space. Potholes, of which there are many, are another major nuisance with some roads seeming to consist mostly of pothole and not much else. The edges of many of the roads are strangely broken away so that if you did want to give that enormous coach hurtling towards you at 100 mph a little more room, you’d fall off the mini-cliff at the edge of the road and crash anyway. It all makes for some pretty hairy driving at times but as I say a car would not be quite as problematic as a motorhome. #2 Coaches If I went to Morocco again I …

10 Reasons to love Morocco

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Righto then, as I’m a travel blogger of sorts (in that I travel and I blog), I thought it was about time I did one of those listy blog posts that travel bloggers like to do. And as I’m now at the end of the Moroccan episode of the adventure, it seems fitting that I should wrap it up with a couple of vaguely advisory posts about the whole affair. So, without further ado, these are ten of the reasons why you should visit Morocco: #1 Every Journey is Epic I think I’ve probably said this many times to quite a lot of people, it’s become my Morocco related catchphrase, but it’s absolutely true. If you drive anywhere apart from the major motorways along the coast, you will be blown away by the scale and variety of landscapes. What’s more, lots of it feels familiar in a ‘seen it in the movies’ kind of way and because of all those romantic movie associations, every journey is moving. As I’ve said (a million times!) the mountain …

Photoblog – Azrou, Volubilis & Chefchaouen

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Given that the blog is now approximately eight weeks behind our actual lives, I’m attempting to cover some ground with this photoblog. The chronology is a little out but apart from Fez these three places were our last stops in Morocco and we drove like people possessed to get round them before we had to zoom off to Spain to see waiting grandparents. I’m going to wrap up the Morocco adventures with the next two posts and then it’ll be all about Espana! But for now enjoy these last few piccies (and Rob’s little debut) – especially the ones of Chefchaouen, which was a total treat for a lass that likes to take photographs. Azrou Volubilis – Rob I used to be an archaeologist, and while I got tired of scraping around in the earth looking for tiny fragments of pottery, I retain a high level of geekery about ancient sites. I was very excited about visiting Morocco; the place is littered with remarkable remnants of the Roman Empire which I had been taught about …

Fez

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Fez was to be our last big stop before we left Morocco to meet my parents in Southern Spain and we drove almost the entire length of the country to get there. Leaving the baking desert at Merzouga, we stopped only briefly at Azrou for a spot of monkey-bothering and once for an overnight rest at the Ziz Gorge, passed by the still snowy Atlas mountains and arrived in Fez only three days later. We were determined that our Fez experience wouldn’t be a repeat of our Marrakech misery and, to that end, we booked into a guesthouse within the medina itself, hoping to be able to give ourselves up to the sensory onslaught of the souks, then slip back into the calm of the dar (like a riad)* and recover. Our customary frugality was also abandoned for the weekend as we knew it would all be much more enjoyable if we could enter into some friendly haggling. To help us start our aquaintance with Fez without getting immediately lost, the guesthouse owner Brian met …

Stopovers 3 – Essaouira to the Sahara

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#21 Fertile Roots After camping at the very peaceful Esprit Nature our next stop was at Fertile Roots. Quite apart from the terrifying drive down the track to find the place (I doubt any other motorhomers would have been daft enough to try it!) the land we were offered to camp on was itself a bit of a trial. The ground was uneven – so we constantly felt like we were on the wonk – and the wind blew dust into the van whenever we opened the door. Then the sand and cement dust that had gathered on us throughout the day got transferred into our beds making it all feel a bit gritty and grimy. On the upside, we were with some totally ace people helping them to achieve their permaculture vision which definitely outweighed the discomfort. My recommendation? If you fancy going to help Mark and Ajelen, unless your van is very nimble and agile, perhaps leave it somewhere else and walk down… #22 Cathedral Point, Imsouane This campsite is pretty laid back …