There are many ways to measure time. For me, this lock down is now three haircuts long. Diane is my hair stylist. Number four all over. Very straightforward, cost effective, practical and more than smart enough given my natural absence of sartorial elegance. I hope that by the next haircut we will be back in Germany. We have booked on a ferry to Genova. This is not the obvious place to head during the pandemic especially since our route from there is due north, straight through Lombardy. The worst affected part of Italy. We will keep the windows closed and not slow down. With luck, we can pass straight through Switzerland and arrive at the Unicat workshop near Karlsruhe within a couple of days. Once there we can camp on the big field. Might have to do a couple of weeks isolation but then we can start working on Baloo for the next trip. In addition, we can enjoy the trapping of European live such as Amazon and shopping in proper supermarkets.
The ferry to Genova takes 50 hours. That is the easy bit. We have booked a pet friendly cabin so Cent can stay with us. Not sure if the ship will be open for eating and drinking so we may need to take two days’ worth of picnic with us. To board the ship we need to drive to Tanger Med. This might be the tricky part. For us it will be a three-day drive. The difficulty is that Morocco is still in lock down. The lock down just got extended to June 10th but our ferry leaves on June 1st. We already have an ‘exceptional travel permit’. This is needed to travel to the nearest supermarket. To drive north we will need a more specialised type of transit permit. At the moment, I am not too sure how to get hold of one of these but, with the help of Mark, I am working on it. We have tried engaging with the British Embassy using assorted social media but the messages coming from there are irregular and mostly confusing.
Meanwhile the quest to find useful and interesting things to do continues. Quite high on the list is cooking. I have always enjoyed cooking and just now, it seems like an excellent way of investing a few hours. Managed to fix the oven a couple of days ago. It stopped working a month back because it was stuck in a cleaning cycle. Fortunately, the manufacturer eventually came up with the magic key code to access a service menu where I could reset the cleaning process. There was great celebrating when the oven burst back into life and we promptly made pizza and several types of bread. I was relieved to discover that my sourdough culture had survived four weeks of suspended animation in the fridge.
Fried beetroot & cashew nut salad with feta 
Chips, peas and battered sausages 
Soft bread rolls cooked in a pan 
Sourdough 
Baked Camembert with bread sticks 
Chickpea and sweetcorn burger 
Sag paneer
We try to have a walk each day although this is becoming more difficult. Days are getting even warmer and we have long since run out of new places to walk. Occasionally a new bird or animal will add interest. The other day I saw a hare. Thoroughly surprised me. I never even knew they were in Morocco. Cent is usually game for chasing hares but this one he just looked at. Far too hot for running up hills. The waves are sometimes a bit stronger and it can be fun watching water spraying over the rocks.
Between the campsite and the village is a sort of rubbish dump area. As I have mentioned before, pretty much anywhere around a village tends to be a rubbish dump area. This particular area is commonly used for waste food and peelings so it is a major source of flys. In the evening, the local shepherd brings his goats and sheep down. They clear up just about everything. A herd of woolly hoovers.
Today’s big event was to move Baloo. Temperatures continue to sneak up so we are more actively seeking out shade. To this end, we have moved next to a wall with a few small trees. We have also angled Baloo round to shade the table better in the morning. Having decided on the new position, I then spent a good hour getting the truck absolutely and perfectly level. Normally, we are happy enough if the truck is roughly level. Since we are going to be here for at least a couple more weeks, it seemed worth the extra effort. And it is not as if we had anything much better to do.
Vacuum sheep 
Fisherman’s hut 
Washing the shopping 
Off couse the sourdough culture had survived -it’s a Viking one, we are tough
It is very durable. Out of respect for the strong Viking culture we sometimes slice the bread using an axe 😉
Can you do it otherwice??
We can probably get the special permission needed to travel to the port. But at minimum this will involve a special trip to the government office in Agadir and some help from the British Embassy. We would rather avoid running around to visit various officials. During a lock down this seems particularly self-defeating to us. The Embassy are too busy doing important things to respond to any of our requests.