Thursday 18 February

Although the day started bright and the wind had dropped, a bank of cloud was slowly rolling in from the sea and soon the sun disappeared. So after breakfast we had an earlyish start for the long drive up to El Jadeda. Before we left Essaouira we refuelled Bertie; should be enough now to get up to the filling station just before the port where we'll top off with cheap fuel. Every little helps!

Our route took us along the N1, the main arterial road linking larger towns and cities along the coast, which of course was quite busy although we had few hold-ups, only slowing down to crawl through the occasional town, which is necessary because traffic laws seem to go out the window when you pass the town name signpost. Cyclists, pedestrians, donkey carts and grandes taxis all do their own thing, taking very little notice of any other traffic so a crawl is the safest way of proceeding.

But as we progressed north so the weather deteriorated, the cloud becoming heavier and lower and eventually spots appeared on the windscreen. A short break for lunch and the rain caught us up so that from there on, it was windscreen wiper weather.

El Jadeda is quite a large town but TomTom navigated us without problem round the outside and straight to Camping International just to the north of the centre. We did actually call here last year but found it very crowded and didn't stop. This time there was plenty of room; it was just a matter of finding a couple of pitches on the hard sand that were not likely to flood in the increasingly heavy rain. We could have parked on a hard-standing area but everybody else was there and were crowded quite close together. It was't until later that we realised why – satellite reception. There are a lot of trees and only one side of the site has clear sky for TV reception.

Derek's van developed a water-ingress problem when it started to rain so we spent a few minutes trying to reseal a joint that had been knocked several weeks ago in a glancing collision with a bus – as I write, with the rain now heavy and persistent, it seems to be okay.

A quiet evening then. The rain was well forecast so we're not too bothered, it just makes taking Jamie out a bit of a chore. It's supposed to be the same tomorrow; hope not as we would like to visit the old Portuguese City which for us is one of the attractions of El Jadeda.

Meanwhile, we've got the heating on.............!