Saturday 12th January

We survived the night at the services. During the night, Nigel was up and down a lot as he had slept for much of the day. He said the car park completely filled with HGVs overnight and they all started moving off about 6am. 


A smooth ride at last, no pot holes!

The good thing about staying in a motorway service area overnight is that they sell croissants!

As Nigel was feeling better we both had them for breakfast and then got going toward Agadir. The other good thing was that we wouldn’t now have to stop there but could carry on to a site further down the coast recommended by Pete and Sandra who had been on the tour with us.

Remote hillside habitations photographed
 from the motorway

The journey over the end of the Atlas was again very interesting scenically, we drove through argan plantations where the soil was very rich and fertile. As we approached and went past Agadir we both noticed that the roadside verges were much less litter strewn than other areas of Morocco we have been through. I suppose this is because it is a busy and profitable tourist area so it is kept cleaner to make a better impression. There were many garden centres on the outskirts of Agadir too, I noticed.

Thyme being harvested, we could smell it as we passed
Before too long we arrived at Sidi-Ouassai Campsite which is on the beach and on the edge of a nature reserve. There is a lagoon close by where we shall hopefully see some interesting birds, but for today we were content to give the dogs a couple of leisurely runs on the beach which they loved and in between sit and enjoy the sunshine. 

Sunday 13th January

Another day by the coast with the sounds of huge waves crashing onto the beach. Not a cloud in the sky today and it was warm, warm, warm as we heard about the predicted snowfall in the UK. Stay safe everyone x


Mooching about on the beach


Having a break from chasing each other

Dog walking, reading and relaxing again were the order of the day. Dogs had a long run on the beach this morning and were very tired for the rest of the day as was Nigel who is feeling much better now. I stayed to do some ‘domestics’ this morning and was glad I did as I was alerted as I was changing the bedding by  a bird call I didn’t recognise and had good views from the window of a Moussier’s redstart.

Moussier’s redstart, endemic to this area
Isn’t he pretty?
(picture from google, I’m afraid!)


Thankfully, one came back this afternoon so Nigel got to see it too, not sure he believed me when I told him what I’d seen.
Tomorrow we will try to get to the lagoon and hope to see some bald ibises which are certainly not pretty but are now critically endangered, there being only about 500 of them left in Morocco.

Oh, that’s if we (and they) haven’t blown away in the night, it’s blowing a hoolie here as they say in Stow and we are rocking all over the show!