On The Road to Morocco

Today I thought I would go back in time a bit to last summer when I whisked Betty off to Marrakech on a week’s holiday. It was a spur of the moment thing and so my usual careful planning went out of the window. Thus, I did not realise that Morocco would be 40 degrees in the shade in June. The flight was painless enough, and we were met by a driver who took us on a long dusty and exotic drive out into the desert to the Jnane Tamsna hotel. On arrival, the sight of a large and dazzlingly blue swimming pool was too good to ignore. One could I deduced, easily observe that it had been carefully constructed at a level depth of 4 feet throughout for convenience and thus, happily confident, I plunged straight in. Well dear readers when I tell you that all good sailors cannot swim (including Lord Nelson), and I also tell you that I spent a large part of my early life as a ships captain; you will begin perhaps to arrive at my first challenge of the trip. I sank to the bottom of what turned out to be a pool constructed using the stunningly clever technique of optical illusion viz. dear readers, 4 feet actually turned out to be 12 feet. Betty’s next short story would have been entitled “Death in Marrakech” had it not been for a bit of panicky grabbing of the poolside edge.

Jnane Tamsna despite its pool designer who must be a close relative of Eisenstein the famous illusionist, was an absolutely stunning place. A fantastic organic garden set in the middle of a desert oasis. Betty was delighted by the beautiful gardens and exotic desert flowers. A large part of the grounds are planted with vegetables used to supply the kitchen and the ground is divided up into small square plots each irrigated on a rotational basis by miles of shallow water ditches. The meals were simple and organic and served out on a terrace by the swimming pool. We breakfasted early before the sun became too strong and dined at sundown as the wails of the prayer caller at the great mosque miles away in the old city wafted across the parched sand. I was already thinking about the logistics of curling a towel around my head, changing my name to Lawrence, and booking the next day’s camel ride into the Atlas mountains.
The hotel, although having all the appearance of being built in the 1940’s is I am assured a modern replica built over the years from 1985 onwards. It was very hard to believe this as the atmosphere is definitely from a previous colonial era.

Anyway, I digress. To get the crux of this story, it was in this wonderful place that Betty decided that not only should we start our own vegetable plot at home, but that we should sell a very special range of gardening accessories; wonderful baskets, watering cans, herb pots, apple stores, etc.etc. all in wonderful retro designs and colours. This idea was put into practice on her return home and now you can see many of the initial stock items on the website at http://www.twyford-cookers.com/cookware

So just to close, if you feel like a restful trip to a desert oasis, and fell in love with Lawrence of Arabia try the amazing Jnane Tamsna whose stunning website is at http://www.jnanetamsna.com/ I don’t think you will be disappointed. But, just a small caution……. beware of mirages, especially in the vicinity of water !