Thursday 21 January

We'd been told that this “little village” had quite a bit to offer but in reality all we saw was a lot of unfinished development overlooking a very nice small beach. Matter of opinion we suppose.

Some of our group, having heard of the “we can fix anything cheap” side of Morocco, had decided to visit the famous Mustafa, the local fix-it man in Agadir so they departed first whilst we and Derek and June followed on, heading for Agadir and the Marjane hypermarket to stock up.

Our route down the coast took us through Taghazoute, where we had stayed for 10 days last year on an idyllic, if somewhat busy, guardian site. Anyone reading our last blog will recall we were suddenly evicted from the site late one evening to make way for the planned development, so we were interested to see what progress had been made.

Our first indication that all was changed was the distinct lack of motorhomes/campers parked up along the coast surrounding the town; we were later told about a proliferation of “No Motorhomes” signs. The town itself was unchanged and still as bustling as ever and the beach, and what we could see of the site from the town, looked fine. But once on the road out of town it became an absolute travesty, the road had been diverted, everywhere was surrounded by fences and barriers and a start had been made on a row of holiday chalets. We suppose it will be nice when and if they ever finish it but our observations elsewhere give us little hope. This was then more or less repeated on all the open land all the way to Agadir.

We'll just conserve our happy memories of a better time.

Marjane was it's usual self and we encountered yet another Funster in the carpark whilst we paused for lunch. Then, a little later than planned, we headed off further south to another campsite we'd used last year just south of the bustling town of Tiznit. Camping Tizerzate is a modern, well laid out and fully equipped site at a very reasonable price – think Caravan Club but at one third the price! However what we noticed straightaway different from last year was that it was only about one third full, all French. Not too concerned we found pitches that meant the rest of the group when they arrive tomorrow can park next to us.

And the receptionist even remembered us from last year! (But it might have been the moustache on the bonnet of the van).