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Meandering East
  • Sumi Hollingworth
  • Sumi Hollingworth

Meandering East

Our family of three travelled in our off-grid camper, slowly making our way East, literally and metaphorically. Currently static in Al Andalus. For now. Taking in the history and learning a bit about natural farming. Read more
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  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler
    Camping la relaisKotoubia mosque

    Marrakech

    May 28, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Marrakech was difficult with a toddler, as we presumed but we braved the souk and main square and arrived in time to hear Call to prayer at Koutoubia mosque, where thousands gathered to pray at Ramadan. The Cyber gardens killed a good couple of hours as the little one was able to run off some steam in amongst the tropical plants. We headed to a campsite on the edge of the city the Relais de Marrakech which turned out to be a lovely oasis of tropical calm where H learnt to swim with two young Dutch ladies on holiday. We set off from here North to catch our ferry to Italy.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Essaouira

    May 21, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    Driving up the coast we arrived at Essaouira which is a relaxed coastal port with camels and horses on the beach, fish market and a Spanish feel to the old medina. Shame the campsite was filthy.

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler
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    Imsouane plage

    Sidi Kaouki

    May 18, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    On Vandogtraveller’s recommendation we made our way to Sidi Kaouki, a sleepy surfers’ beach with a few surf shacks and a couple of hotels and uninspiring campsites. Loads of winkles and mussels to be found in the rock pools. Saw a man who had been fishing in a rubber ring he had made himself. Tagan learnt to surf. He’s a natural.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Taroudant

    May 10, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Named the mini Marrakech, we met my dad and his partner here and stayed in the lovely Riad Dar Dzahara for a few nights. The Riad was a calm oasis right in the centre of the bussling medina. We ate tagine, wandered the souks and explored the city in horse and cart, interspersed with screaming toddler tantrums.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Taghazout

    May 8, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    A fellow traveller suggested Taghazout would be a nice quiet place to stop for Ramadan, and bonus would be a beach which is somebody’s favourite. Winding our way through Aourir and Tamraght, we went to take a look. With a hippy surfer feel and some lovely beach coves, it made a nice change but it also came with a price tag. Plus they were digging up the entire stretch of coast to build a resort. We stayed a few days playing on the beach and enjoyed watching the fishing boats bring their catch in, then headed on to meet the parents.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Tafraoute

    April 29, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    We spent a week in Tafraoute having some ‘petit reparations de campingcar’! We had been recommended a garage here: Chez Mohammed Farih who has spent years working on old Mercedes vehicles. We made a friend who was having his 508d restored, we got sick, spent the night at the blue rocks. Amazing journey into and out of the town, stunning landscape.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Sheikh Mirleft

    April 28, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    We trekked to the coastal towns of Sidi Ifni and Mirleft, only to find it was foggy and raining. We drove along the amazing relatively unspoilt coastline and liked this fishing village, Sheikh Mirleft, with mosque on the beach, tiny boutique hotel, cafe and mountain-cave on the beach.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Tata to Amtdi

    April 27, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We washed and rested at camping Hayat on the river at Tata. Like most rivers we have come across on our travels the river was dammed further up stream and only a trickle ebbed through, channeled in troughs through the dry river bed, where hayyan played stone skimming. We took a detour to the remote village of Amtdi where the only restaurant was closed but the kind owner gave us probably his own dinner. The photo is a huge fort on top of the mountain. you could take a trek from here to waterfalls and gorges.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Tissint to Tata

    April 26, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    From Zagora we drove the N12 towards Tata, hitting a newly tarmaced stretch of road sandwiched between the Sahara dessert and the Atlas Mountains, following Morocco’s border with Algeria and Mauritania. There was no passing traffic here, and very few villages, and the landscape was like Mars in a science fiction film. We parked up and got out of the van and what was the most notable thing was the silence was deafening. Morocco is full of the sounds of birds and insects, but here, absolutely nothing. It was stunning. One of the best places yet.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Zagora

    April 23, 2018 in Morocco

    After a long sun stroked journey across barren landscapes we arrived in Zagora, a cosmopolitan feeling city in an oasis of palm groves. We set up camp for four or five days at la palmeraie d’Amazrou over the river from Zagora, camped under the shade of the huge date palm trees, we recouped while Hayyan played with a French family who were spending a year travelling.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Es Sfalat

    April 22, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 22 °C

    From the desert we traversed miles of rocky landscapes that looked lunar. Seeing all the fossil and crystal sellers along the roadside Tagan was determined to find his own fossils and crystals and we stopped regularly for him to jump out of the campervan with an axe and wander off up a mountain. Hayyan loves to throw stones and collect stones in his bucket so he enjoyed this activity immensely. At one point in the middle of nowhere a guy appeared on a bicycle, who in exchange for a cigarette and a few dates escorted us to this amazing fossil graveyard: where entire rocks were peppered with ammonites. Amazing to think that at some point this landscape, on the edge of the sahara desert was once a sea.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Merzouga and Sahara

    April 21, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    We spent a night in Merzouga, a town on the edge of the Sahara desert. It was windy and quite hostile/ the climate and the people. Stepping out of the campervan and walking past the swimming pool on the empty campsite, there was a mound of sand, which if you climbed to the top of the mound, this was all you could see, as far as you looked in both directions. Nothing but sand. It was erie. Obviously there was a guy with a camel, who appeared from nowhere.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler
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    Todgha gorge

    April 18, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 22 °C

    We drove all the way through Todgha gorge, an absolutely vast, mostly barren, dry rocky gorge that went on for miles. At one end which had a hotel and restaurants along a stream, tourists gathered and merchants sold carpets and hats and at the other end was a village of mud huts, kids playing table football and camping Baddiou were we stayed for the night. The following day we drove back through the gorge and camped at Atlas camping in the valley of palm groves, where we met a Dutch couple travelling with their two year old in a Mercedes 508.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Dades valley

    April 15, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    We were totally stunned by the magical, fantasy landscapes of the Dades valley. Walking along the river, through fields of crops and fruit trees it felt like paradise. We stayed at the family run camping les pattes de singes, who fed us and took us on a three hour hike into the bottom of the canyon and climbing to the top. Yes, with toddler. Amazing.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Ouarzazate

    April 14, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 14 °C

    Stunning rocky landscapes as we journey beyond the Atlas Mountains- this is film country-watch an epic biblical or fantasy film and chances are it was filmed here.

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler
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    Ait benhaddou

    April 13, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 9 °C

    This was an old fortified town on a cliff top made famous by the Gladiator film, and Star Wars. Great place to go with a toddler, who enjoyed playing pooh sticks from the river bridge, jumping the stepping stones in the river with the local kids, and climbing the hundred steps to the top of the town.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Tichka pass and high Atlas

    April 12, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌬 12 °C

    We took the N9 which was the main route over the very top of the high Atlas Mountains: the Tichka pass. We could not believe how the weather and scenery changed as we climbed and climbed the switchback roads. There seemed to be endless roadworks as they were widening the road, which on a mountainside is not that easy to do. At the bottom it was hot and sunny, by the time we got to the top it was grey and cold. We ate a tagine in a roadside cafe and slept in a truck stop at the very top of the pass where we paid a man ten dirhams to look after our bus, and made his day by giving him a pair of trainers. When we woke it was snowing and we were slightly concerned about the road conditions as we still had the peak to climb, but the man told us no problem. As trucks thundered by we presumed it was ok and set off, only to find an oil tanker dangerously sliding towards the crash barrier and queues of traffic stuck behind, as the snow settled on the icy road. Eventually snow patrol came and dug a clear path and we managed to pass and begin to descend the other side with relief! Really pleased with our trusty 609 at this point, and glad we weren’t in a Winabago.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Ouzoud Falls

    April 10, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    Gondola Rides, monkeys, street sellers, rip off merchants, beautiful campsite called camp Zebra. We had a lovely pit stop and met Gemma and Chris and Mia and Louis who were on holiday from Scotland.

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    the journey from Fez

    April 9, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 8 °C

    We drove from Fez to meet Gemma and Chris and Mia and Louis at Ouzoud waterfalls. We loved the journey where we drove through the busy pass through town of Beni Mellal and through a great functional working village called Bni Ayat in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains as we climbed the tiny mountain switchback roads past ruined forts and kasbahs.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Moulay Idriss and Volubilis

    April 7, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 9 °C

    Volubilis was a huge site of Roman Ruins quite spectacular, we could have spent the day studying here but the lil one had a tantrum when told he couldn’t climb the monuments and we aborted the mission in a huff. Moulay Idriss was a much better day out: a big but manageable hilltop town, home and resting place of the eponymous, who apparently brought Islam to Morocco. It was market day and we brought some veg, and meandered to the top of the town where H played football in the park with some bigger boys.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler
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    Akchour falls

    April 4, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    We read about these falls as one of the hidden gems of Morocco. We set off in the campervan into the Riff mountains, which we were told were full of bandits who would kidnap us and force us to buy marijuana but we found no such trouble, only some children who drew on our van with a marker pen. We camped on a cliff top outside the village of Akchour and set off hiking to the falls in the morning. We didn’t make it to the falls with a toddler but found a bloke who took us to a river beach where we swam in the amazing crystal clear and cold waters.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Chechaouen

    April 4, 2018 in Morocco ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    After faffing around in Mdiq and Tetouan trying to sort insurance one of our first tourist stops in Morocco was this amazing mountain town in the Riff, all painted blue and white, the blue apparently indicating the origin of the Jewish houses. We camped in the only grotty campsite at the top, which involved a walk into town where H got his first haircut.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Dunas de Bolonia

    March 29, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    We stumbled on this dune the size of a mountain by accident. We went to Bolonia beach and turned right and drove up a narrow road into the pine trees and found ourselves a top of the biggest dune I’ve ever seen. It was populated by local day trippers tobogganing. You could see Morocco across the water.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Los Canos de Meca

    February 15, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    We read about the fresh water springs here (‘los canos’) that flow onto the beach, and the healing mud, so we made a visit. We stayed on Camping Pinar San Jose, in Zahora, camping among the pine trees and it was so tranquil we relaxed here. We made several different friends here, and we were drawn to stay here and put our feet up for a bit. We rented a flat, Sea Dream Spain, for a month, walking distance to the beach. And then the rains came. It rained solidly for the whole month. After this, we thought: let’s go to Morocco. I liked this area though. We felt quite at ease in this out of season sleepy hippy seaside place. Nearby Conil had all the shops we needed and a swimming pool. El Palmar was cool too, to pretend we were surfers. Vejer de la Frontera was an awesome visit: a moorish hilltop town. Complete with kids play park.Read more

  • Sumi HollingworthMeandering EastTraveler

    Minas de Sao Domingos

    February 7, 2018 in Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 9 °C

    Heading north along the Guardiana river from Castro Marim we really enjoyed this part of Portugal: Mértola, the border outpost of Pomarão and Sao Domingos the ruins of an old open caste mine, where the vast flooded quarry glistens red with poison and the skeletons of the old industrial buildings scatter across the landscape, and people still lived in the old miners cottages while the officers mansions had been renovated as a hotel.Read more

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