During our visit to the Cotswolds last weekend, Fig restaurant, focused on fine dining and British cuisine, invited me to try their three-course dinner menu. I was joined by Ms B, my wife. The restaurant is part of the lovely boutique hotel Cotswold House and Spa, owned by Bespoke Hotels group, and located in the main building, a splendid Regency mansion that used to be home to the local Guild of Handicraft. Read our review of the hotel here. The dining room has large windows towards the magnificent park-like gardens of the hotel and exudes an atmosphere of grandeur and elegance. The maître d’ led us to our table and after brief deliberation, Ms B opted for hand-picked crab, yuzu, cucumber, and avocado as a starter, roast fillet of turbot, fregola, peas, broad beans, clams and Marsala as her main, and caramelised spelt, milk jelly, coffee ice cream, and honeycomb […]
Zagora, Sahara desert experience with Camel Safaries
On our recent trip to Marrakech, Ali, the owner of Camel Safaries, offered that we could check out his brilliant Sahara desert camp and camel ride experience, which is part of his two-day Sahara tour (most of his tours are 3 or more days, we just did not have the time). For more about the whole tour, see our blog post here. The camel ride and overnight bivouac in the Sahara desert were the absolute highlight of our trip. We wouldn’t want to have missed it for the world, it was so much fun! We arrived just outside the desert town of Zagora at 6:30pm (we heard that, especially in winter with its shorter days, it’s imperative for travellers to listen to their guides and be swift at some of the stop-overs along the journey from Marrakesh to Zagora as they will miss the camel ride altogether if they […]
Two-day tour to the Sahara with Camel Safaries
During our visit to Marrakech we received an invite from Ali, the owner of Camel Safaries, to check out their two-day camel safari tour. Ali’s business ranks #12 of 758 tours in Marrakech on Tripadvisor, and the Zagora, Sahara desert experience was just what we were hoping for! Tizi n’Tichka Pass Abdoul, our driver and guide, picked us up from our riad in Marrakech at 8:30am in a spacious and comfortable 4WD SUV. We took the Tizi n’Tichka route. This road is Morocco’s highest mountain pass and reaches 2,260m at its peak, with snow-covered mountains topping 4,000m within view. On the other side, the road descends to the town of Ouarzazate (the name means ‘it’s ok’/’you’re welcome’), which is the gateway to the Sahara from Marrakech. The 350km journey took about 7 hours (pure driving time, not counting breaks). The roads on our journey were much better […]