All posts filed under: Life on the Road

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 …

Ait Ben Haddou

Photo blog – Taliouine to Todra

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In between what you see in these pictures, imagine us undertaking more crazy six hour drives up barely surfaced mountain roads in second gear. Imagine children running alongside our van sometimes waving, sometimes throwing stones and sometimes making *ahem* lewd gestures. Imagine us waiting for herds of goats just lying in the road. Imagine us taking detours more suited to a tank than a classic Hymer, where flooded rivers have blown the roads out. Imagine us stopping for lunch and shopping at a market where there are sheep’s heads piled on the floor outside the butcher’s stall. Imagine us wandering a town that’s featured in movies, where only a few people live but there’s a rug salesman around every corner. Imagine an American film crew running up and down steps in the heat of the afternoon, their sound guy looking as if he could do with some medical help. Imagine us walking through lush palmeries, heavy with the scent of almond blossom, where quietly intent people toil at their perfect little patches of fertile earth. …

Painted Rocks and Punctures

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As it turned out, we entirely missed the almond blossom festival; not from arriving too late, as we’d feared, but in fact because we were two weeks early. We enjoyed Tafraoute so much, however, that it didn’t seem to matter that we were going to be leaving before the festvities began. Staying for nearly a week meant that we could adventure out beyond our immediate surroundings, and make a couple of guide-book suggested visits. Getting out to the painted rocks on our bikes was an opportunity for us to get out properly into the landscape. Having only biked between the van and the town, I think we were all eager to go on an expedition into the curious lumpy outcrops that characterise Tafroute’s surroundings. Rob and I canvassed opinion from fellow motorhomers and consulted various websites and guides on the exact distance to the rocks and the time it would take. As all parents know, cycling or walking with children is all fabulous fun until everyone gets tired and whiny and then something enjoyable becomes …

Tafraoute – Finding my Travelling Feet

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After Essaouira we headed off down the coast with vague ideas of spending some time near the sea before heading to Tafraoute in the south of Morocco. Tafraoute had long been an eagerly anticipated destination for us. It was always to be the most southerly place on our itinerary, the town where we would finally adopt a slower pace of travel. Whilst Morocco dreaming and Google-searching from my kitchen table in Hebden Bridge I’d stumbled across heart-stirring pictures of blossoming almond trees set against arid red landscapes and discovered that every year the town of Tafraoute held a festival to celebrate this transient spectacle. The dates of the festival were hard to determine so we pledged to try and get there for early February in order not to miss it and it was this aim that had kept us moving so quickly. Through the empty, icy nights of central France, the grim downpours of Northern Spain and and the various trials of our first weeks in Morocco, Tafraoute pulled us on. I think it’s fair …

Pockets full of Rubbish (or How to Entertain Children Whilst Travelling!)

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Despite some of my fears about how the boys would cope with Morocco and travelling in general, on the whole I’d say they’ve managed well. The first week or two were definitely challenging for all of us and particularly our littlest drifter, but since then I’ve been impressed with how the boys have adapted to a life on the move. In some ways, the circumstances of their previous lives have helped with their transition to a transitory way of being; neither of them were in school or kindergarten and, although our days at home were unstructured, we’ve never watched much TV or spent a huge amount of time in front of a screen, so they were both well primed for chunks of boredom. It’s also a huge help that Eli loves to read and will spend entire days immersed in a book, giving only the occasional grunt to signal that he knows we are there at all. Monty has found it harder to occupy himself, especially on some of our longer drives but mostly between …

Stopovers 2

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Time has run away with me and I have not been keeping up with our stopovers! So here are the next ten as far as I can remember… 1. Camping Monfrague This was the first campsite mentioned in this post, that converted us to a more luxurious way of travel. It was positioned in a natural park and although in high season I imagine it might get a bit crowded, it was almost deserted while we were there. Great facilities and beautiful surroundings. Also horses, trees, azure winged magpies… If we hadn’t been trying to get South so quickly, we’d have stayed longer. The boys obviously found it such a relief to not just be parked in some bleak urban car park, that they danced and ran around singing ‘oh what a beautiful day! Everything’s going my way!’ 2. Camping Merida Not our favourite, but perfectly fine. We’d stopped in Merida as there were lots of Roman remains but unfortunately many of them seemed to be closed or not terribly easy to see. The bit of …

Crossings

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Something shifts when we step on a ferry to cross to somewhere else. We’re aware of the obvious physical process of waving tickets, showing passports, the actual transportation of the body across water from one shore to another. We might feel excitement, anticipation – perhaps even apprehension – but something else is happening too; there’s a reason that the mythological journey to the underworld involves a ferryman and a river. There is something symbolic about ‘crossing over’, leaving the known world behind and entering another realm. As the hills of northern Morocco drew closer, the butterflies in my gut beat their wings more furiously. Squatting there on the horizon was Africa, a whole new and alien continent. I silently asked myself how we would manage here. During the time we were planning this trip, it was Morocco we spoke of most. There are places that are held in the imagination as glowing jewels of exoticism and adventure and it was my own wild dreams of Morocco that kept me awake at night. It’s hard to …

Salamanca

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Salamanca. Even the name of this city makes me smile. Somewhere between salamander and Scaramanga, it sounds exotic and dangerous, a place where James Bond might surreptitiously follow some femme fatale through the echoing streets. It’s word that simply feels lovely in the mouth. So it’s with some embarrassment then that I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of the place before I looked at a map and realised it was well positioned for an en route visit. After we left Vitoria Gasteiz in floods of rain on the morning of Rob’s fortieth birthday we worked out that if we put in a good enough drive we could make it in a day. Most of the time the boys just aren’t up for driving anything longer than a couple of hours but after a few days of storms, they were willing to deal with the tedium of a long stint on the road to try and get past the bad weather. The landscape was barren and windswept for most of the journey but the …

Stopovers

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I’m in danger of forgetting all the stops we’ve made over the course of our journey so far so I thought I’d make a quick list here in the hope that some of this information may help some hapless motorhomer who, like us, set off with no real idea of what they’re doing or where they’re going. To those of you not intending to go off motorhoming around Europe in January the following may be of limited interest. First stop – Dover. Motorhomes are allowed to park along the front. This road is known, I believe, as Marine Esplanade. It goes without saying there are no facilities, it is just a road. Free. Second stop – Disneyland Paris This is just an enormous car park that you pay 20 euros a night to stay in, although after our first night no one came to ask us for more money. I think they pitied us. There are absolutely no (official) facilities in winter but if you’re sneaky you might get away with having a shower in …