On 10 June Morocco was divided into 2 zones with different rules regarding Covid19. I have now found a website in French giving precise details of the Moroccan lockdown rules, so I no longer depend on third hand interpretations of them.

About 90% of the country by area is designated Zone 1. Within Zone 1 there is more or less free movement. Face masks are compulsory and 1 metre distance must be observed. Outdoor individual sports are allowed and hairdressers etc are open. Public spaces are now open again.

Unfortunately Rabat is in Zone 2, along with 90% of the population. This zone runs from Tangiers on the Mediterranean coast, down the Atlantic coast to El Jadida (south of Casablanca), and also includes Marrakesh and Fes.  We are still not allowed to travel outside our locality without specific authorisation and public spaces are still closed.

In both zones, apart from hammams, cafés, restaurants, cinemas and theatres, all businesses are being encouraged to re-open with appropriate precautions. Public transport can operate at 50% of its capacity; it had never stopped entirely.

The situation in each province and region will be reviewed weekly, and further relaxations of the rules are envisaged.

In the days following the relaxation, the police stopped patrolling the Medina, though they continued to check authorisations for anyone entering and leaving it. About a week later the checkpoints started ignoring pedestrians and just checking cars and motor bikes. In many places checkpoints have now been removed entirely.

Since then I have been getting up early each day to walk for about 90 minutes, which takes me about 5 miles. That is about as long as I can manage as yet. When I first went for a walk my leg muscles complained after 5 minutes. Now I can manage over an hour before I feel them and they are improving slowly. Of course all my walking is on pavements, which are always hard on the legs and feet. I never run out of energy, so the exercises I have been doing throughout lockdown have been worthwhile.

For my first walk alone I remained in close proximity to the Medina. The next day Jamel came with me and we went much further. Since then I have gone far and wide alone. I now leave at 6.30 am as soon after 8.00 am I find the sun too hot for comfort, though the air temperature is only in the mid 20s C.

Even the trams are protected! Each tram has a mask at each end, made of the same material as the ones for humans sold in pharmacies.

In theory the corniche and beach are prohibited, but every day more and more people are enjoying themselves walking, jogging, swimming in the river and sea, fishing from the rocks, kicking a football about and cycling. It is never crowded and everyone wears face masks. I think the authorities are just gently relaxing the rules almost by word of mouth.

This was the view across to Salé at 7.00 am yesterday from halfway along the mole that protects the mouth of the river Bou Regreg from the Atlantic. The mole is about 700 m long and you just can see a large group of boys who had been swimming in the river, having scrambled down the rocks on the right hand side of the photo. There were about 35 boys with 6 or 8 men, who seemed to be in charge. That was the first day I had seen anyone on the mole. I walked to the end, and there were also other people walking and some cyclists.

There are limits to how far one can go though. One day after walking inland for about 40 minutes I arrived at a large road junction and saw a policeman on duty about 50 m away. He gently blew his whistle at me, so I waved at him and indicated that I was turning right to go back to the centre of the city. He then lost interest in me. I think if I had turned left, which leads to an area more like greenbelt, I would have been stopped.

At least I can now see the sea, walk along the river and ramble round the old French Quarter and to the upmarket area called Agdal – wide tree lined avenues and flowering shrubs hanging over the walls surrounding the houses.

In the afternoon I often go for a short amble in and just beyond the Medina. Virtually no more shops have re-opened in the Medina, but on the Avenue Mohammed V outside it, quite a lot of large stores are now open. I managed to buy a pair of sandals one day. It was a shop where social distancing was easy. In the Medina it will be far more difficult to organise.

Posters are everywhere. There are ones in French as well, so I know it says something like “Keep aware” and “We must continue to safeguard each other”. The website at the bottom is for the Moroccan contact tracing app for mobile phones which was introduced a few weeks ago.

I have been intending for weeks now to tell you about the Bee Museum that I visited before lockdown. It is in Salé across the river. There was no public transport that went anywhere close, so I had about a 30 minute walk on a road (with a pavement) out of town upriver. It passed through some woodland and eventually there was a small group of buildings. Tucked away in the El Oulja artisan pottery complex was a small building.

It proudly claims to be the first Bee Museum in Africa and the Arab world, and opened in 2019. It is a wooden building with 2 floors.

Downstairs, after a small reception area, there are 2 rooms with the walls covered with very detailed descriptions of bee anatomy etc, together with a large beehive with a transparent wall so you can see inside. This has a wooden tunnel in the air leading to the outside, so that the bees can be free to find pollen and return when they want to.

All the explanations are only in French, and are well beyond my biological knowledge.

This is a small part of one panel out of a couple of dozen downstairs. It was one that I could actually understand.

Upstairs was divided into about 4 rooms. One was for small children with hands on items and beekeeping clothes to dress up in.

Another room covered the history of beekeeping, with more panels, which were easier for me to appreciate.

The lighting made taking photographs quite difficult.

There was another room for talking to school groups (80% of the visitors to date), and finally a small ‘museum of curiosities’ which I did not have time to look at.

My shortage of time was due to the enthusiasm of Dr Driss Louaradi, the founder and Director of the museum. I think foreign visitors are very rare, and he was delighted when he heard I had a blog. I suspect he thought it was one with a large number of followers, so he will probably be disappointed that I have probably only got 150 at the moment and only get more by word of mouth. The Museum does not have a website yet, but I found it by Tripadvisor, and I think it has a presence on Facebook.

We had just realised that shaking hands was no longer a good idea as Covid19 was around, so elbow bumped instead (that idea didn’t last long!). I was about to be treated to a honey tasting.

For anyone interested in bees and with reasonable ability to read French, it is well worth a visit. I just hope it survives the obligatory closure due to Covid19. It is so small that even 1 m social distancing will be difficult to manage.

Maybe by my next post I will once again be able to visit new attractions – though I still have a couple of visits that I have not yet written about.