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.............!
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