As I hired a car to take Linda back to Marrakech airport, I decided to keep it for a few more days and explore a little more widely. I have also walked in some of the area just outside Essaouira.

The immediate area east and north of the town is all sand dunes covered largely with trees and scrub. There is no vestige of any soil, so all plants must be very tough. The more northerly part seems to be used as a maternity unit for camels.

These 2 mothers with their calves were only about 100 yards from the sea, where the vegetation is very thorny.

This lady is very pregnant and is lying in a dried up pond.  There is water not far away, though it doesn’t seem to be a river at any time, just a series of dry or drying lakes and ponds.

This is the largest ‘lake’, not very far at all from the edge of town.

I also came across these two slowly marching along.

About 40 minutes walk from the southern edge of the town (which is where I am staying) is the village of Diabat. Linda and I walked there one day along the road. It was a major surprise to find the Jimi Hendrix café and nearby the Jimi Hendrix Hotel.

We had a mint tea to the background of Jimi Hendrix playing.

Apparently in the 60s Essaouira was a bit of a hippie hangout, and Jimi stayed at the poshest hotel there in 1969. One day he visited Diabat (a hippie colony) and stayed unexpectedly for 3 days. Diabat has been making the most of this ever since, and 2019 was the 50th anniversary, so they redid the murals.

In the early 1800s the local Sultan built a large palace at Diabat, with glass windows and expensive imported French furniture. After it was abandoned, the sand took over the ruins.

This is just a small corner of what is left.

It is not true that Jimi Hendrix wrote ‘Castle made of sand’ after his visit to Diabat though; it was published 2 years earlier.

In the car I drove south about 15 miles to Sidi Kaouki. There is a small village overlooking a bay, and a large on-shore wind farm, but the development by the sea is all for surfers. The beach slopes slightly less gradually than at Essaouira, and the surf was visibly more exciting.

Rather scruffy with several ‘campings’ for touring motor homes, apartments to let and a clutch of cafés. They are trying for non-surfers with about a dozen each of camels, horses and quad bikes. You can just make out the wind turbines on the centre of the horizon.

I was going to drive a lot further south in a big loop on the N1 road towards Agadir, then north again on minor roads. However once past Essaouira airport, the road was narrow and twisty, with no side bit for the motorbikes, carts etc, and it was very slow and tiring to drive, so I only went about 30 miles or so to Smimou and came back the same way. The route I had intended to do continued on a dirt track, which I would have enjoyed driving the 4×4 pickup I had in Aberdeenshire, but would have been dodgy in an underpowered, low wheelbase hired car. The countryside was quite interesting as it was quite hilly, but the couple of small towns didn’t appeal.

My overriding reason for keeping the car after dropping Linda at the airport was to visit the weekly Sunday market at the village of Had Dra about 50 minutes drive east of Essaouira. I had read that the interesting part happened very early in the morning, so got up very early and arrived at 6.05 am. I parked on the main street, and observed for a while until I realised that people were going through an archway. I followed and found the market area. Many acres, with some semi permanent ‘shacks’ and streets of tents and stalls. By following a man moving a sheep along by holding its back legs in the air and forcing it to walk on its front legs, I eventually found the animal areas. There were 3 enclosures, each at least an acre in size, with low walls around them. One was for sheep and goats, one for cattle, and one for horses and donkeys. There were some horizontal rails in the cattle area to which some animals were tied, but all the rest were either free, or hobbled in some way.

Sun rise is about 8.30 am at this time of year, and there was no lighting other than the stars and hand held torches. These photos were taken about 8.00 am, by which time about half the animals had already been sold and gone .

A very handsome ram. The sheep are similar size to British ones, but with longer legs.

This lot have their necks tied together, so they couldn’t go anywhere. Not sure whether this was better or worse for them than being hobbled.

There were a lot of bulls; the one on the right has an old sack for a blindfold. Quite a few cattle were blindfolded. All the cattle were very small by UK standards. No-one had made any attempt to clean them up to show them to advantage; they were all filthy.

Overall the animals were much more relaxed and quiet than those I have seen at an agricultural auction in Scotland. They nearly all looked very fit and healthy, which is more than can be said for prize winning dairy cattle in Britain, which generally are so extremely over bred for quantity of milk that some look as if it is all they can do to stagger round a show ring.

Of course all these animals are used to a life wandering gently round the countryside all day with someone herding them, so they are far more used to being around humans. The only noise I heard was from a donkey braying. However it was not in the sale area. It was just objecting to being left tied up and was very bored.

It was all as I suppose it must have been in rural Britain about 200 years ago, except that the Moroccans have electric torches rather than lanterns.

I have tried and failed to imagine Sonny Gibb from Aberdeenshire selecting his new bull by torchlight and then haggling for it, rather than bidding in the auction ring at Perth Bull Sales. But his ancestors must have done something similar, though think in Britain they  would have waited until daylight to start the action, whereas this was coming to a close as it got light.

There was about an acre of vegetable and fruit stalls, which were starting to get going as the daylight came. A real Farmers Market!

This was the best displayed of the stalls. The owner was happy for me to photograph the produce, but would not let me include him. The same happened with the sheep.

There were also stalls selling all the things a farmer might want, and even someone with a stone wheel sharpening tools. There were half a dozen lorries, overloaded with straw, parked at the edge of the site. From a similar lorry I saw at Tidzi, the straw would have been divided into small loads, suitable for a donkey or a motorbike wagon to carry. I suspect they were parked there all winter. Only 1 seemed to have had anything removed from its load.

A few vehicles were allowed in the market, but many animals arrived in the main street (some in taxis), and were then walked through the market, or wheeled through in hand carts.

All round the market there were stalls and tents selling ‘refreshments’. As I had left before breakfast, I decided to risk the cleanest looking, and had a bowl of harira (spicy vegetable etc soup). It was at least as good as in the restaurants in Essaouira and only cost 2 Dirham (about 16p). And yes, they do eat soup for breakfast. I bought it entirely by hand signals, as no-one seemed to speak any French.

I was certainly the only non Moroccan present, and I only spotted 1 other woman (serving in a stall). However it always felt very safe, even wandering around among the bulls and rams.

I  move to Rabat on Monday, which will be different again, though I am sure I will see some of these lights on the main roads. Every town of any size has exactly the same ones.

These are on the dual carriageway at the southern end of Essaouira. It makes it feel like Christmas everywhere, though I guess that they are lit all year round as there seems no particular reason for them to be lit just now in a Muslim country.