All posts tagged: Travel blog

Fertile Roots – dust, wind and permaculture

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On reaching Essaouira and finding the calming campsite mentioned in this post, we finally took some time to unwind. Up until that point we’d barely stayed more than two nights at any one place and dearly needed to stop for a while. Our time at Esprit Nature restored some of our equilibrium and we hoped that moving on afterwards to a permaculture project down the road would continue the settling down process. Fertile Roots, as the foundation is known, is homed on a little piece of land close to the sea some 10km up the coast from Essaouira. Although the hills behind are thick with argan and thuya trees, this little strip of earth is wind-stripped and arid. Its owner, Mark Anstice, bought the land without ever clapping eyes on it and although it could be tempting to call the move foolish, having more sympathy for blind leaps of faith these days, I call it bold. I’d been planning to visit Mark since we first conceived of travelling to Morocco but the track to take …

Marrakech, expressed

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Morocco has defied our expectations at every turn, but not necessarily in ways that we have expected. We turn up at campsites that bear no resemblance to their descriptions and the ever changing landscape continues to surprise and confuse us; but nowhere has confounded us more than Marrakech. As our campsite is a good few kilometres out of town, we initially take a taxi to the Jardin Majorelle, the artist’s garden famously patronised by Yves Saint Laurent. I’m hoping that entering the city this way, surrounded by the calm coolness of the carefully tended gardens, will enable us to acclimatise slowly, to dip a timid toe into the life of this most overwhelming of cities. It’s a gentle and stress-free environment, protected from the heat and chaos outside the gates; the blue pools and perfectly swept paths soothe us all and afterwards we walk with confidence towards the medina, with its souks and famous Jemaa el-Fnaa square.We think we are ready. Ready for all that our imaginations had promised; a sensory overload, a cacophany of hagglers, hustlers …

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 …

Donanas National Park

Campsites and Caterpillars

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Between Salamanca and El Rocio we discovered that staying in campsites in Spain is easier than trying to find aires to park at. In France we’d navigated by finding an aire somewhere in the general direction we were travelling and then heading for it. In Spain, they’re just not as common and seem to only be available at fairly sizeable towns or cities. So we joined a European camping club and downloaded their app. What joy there was to be had reading about the various sites’ provisions of running water, hot showers and electricity; like children in a sweet shop we gleefully pored over our options. So it was that after Salamanca we drove to a campsite on the edge of a natural park. There were horses running about in the field next to us, azure winged magpies hooted and fluttered about the many trees surrounding us; the sunset was golden and the future bright. Overnight we’d become campsite junkies. The next campsite was less romantic but conveniently placed for visiting the Donanas National Park. …