Les Deux Tours

Picture the scene: it’s the late Eighties, Charles Bocarra, king of Mod Maroc Tadalakt’d Architecture leaps out his leather chair, throws his glass of Perrier at the wall and screams ‘I’m going to build a hotel with four-poster beds in the garden – to hell with the consequences.’ Cut to 20 years later and you’ll find me lying in one of those beds, grinning like a Moroccan mountain goat, surveying the three-acre gardens of Les Deux Tours. You’ll also notice I’m dripping with sweat like only a man in a four-poster bed in 45-degree heat can. But to hell with it – Charles had a vision, and who am I to stand in the way?

I’d never been to Marrakech. Tell somebody that these days and normally they’ll gasp as if you’ve just told them you’re married to a swan. Everybody’s been to Morocco. In fact, they haven’t just been, they’ve brought half of it back to England with them. You can’t move in London without banging your head on a Moroccan lamp. Les Deux Tours looks exactly how I imagined a Marrakchi retreat to look like. It’s a bit like a film set, with spiralling, swirling architecture caressing the jasmine and orange trees. And this is an especially welcoming sight after an escape that began in Gatwick. If the tattooed nans and piercing screams of kids with piercings didn’t break us, the hidden costs on our low-cost flight almost did. I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduce a scheme where you’re charged 50p for every vowel used onboard. Tssrs. Enough ranting about airlines (that’s got me into enough trouble in the past), I’m sure there was a point to all this – ah yes! The journey was so awful we needed Les Deux Tours to get us over it.

We were met at the airport with a car – no hidden costs. The spluttering, horn-honking outskirts of Marrakech soon dissolved into a dusty, goat-bleating blur of dirt-tracks and grinning villagers. Just when we began to think we’d got in the wrong taxi at the airport and the friendly driver was in fact going to bury us alive in the desert, we reached the impressive gates of Les Deux Tours. I’m trying not to use the word oasis as it’s a bit of a cliché, but it is tropical paradise in the middle of nothing but sand, so I’d be mad not to.

As we walked through the flower-filled gardens to our accommodation, all we could hear was the creaking and shuffling of animals, and the occasional slap of amphibious skin against water as a toad belly flopped off a lily. We had our own little riad with stone walls, a bathtub in the room and an open fireplace. I banged my head on a Moroccan lamp on the way through the door, which made me a little homesick. There were rose petals sprinkled on our bed, which was the size of a regulation badminton court. Yes, it’s romantic, but I can assure you any mood was killed when after a burst of over-enthusiasm Mrs Smith had to watch me standing naked in front of a mirror peeling off hundreds of pale pink petals like a posh lizard shedding its skin.

Built 20 years ago by the Tunisian architect, and still owned by his family, Les Deux Tours is a blend of Andalucian-style villas and traditional Moroccan design. As we’d arrived in darkness, we were excited about getting a proper look at this breathtaking hotel on our way to breakfast. A traditional Moroccan spread of pineapple, figs, plums, bread and milk was a fitting temptation. And not just for us. Mrs Smith is one of those people that is able to sit there like an I’m A Celebrity contestant while insects crawl all over her. Opening her second pot of strong-smelling jam, she didn’t hesitate to inform me that it was my incessant flapping that was attracting the swarm of bees, and nothing else.

Fast forward through a day of glorious poolside lazing and find us again pondering our next meal. While I’m sure dinner in situ is amazing thanks to Michelin-starred chef David Frémondière’s wondrous creations, the pull of the medina proved irresistible. We were led through the souk by a chain of people until enough tips had us sat on Le Foundouk’s rooftop. It was brilliant – excellent contemporary Moroccan food and also having the Arabic call to prayer echoing off our tagine pot. Only snag to our evening: I wore shorts. Trying to enter a Moroccan bar in something knee-length was like trying to visit Buckingham Palace wearing a waistcoat made out of explosives and alarm clocks. We tried several places but after more cries of ‘pantalons!’ by men laughing at my shins, we finally gave up. We barely had energy to get back to our regulation badminton court bed, let alone get the shuttlecock out.

To be honest, there’s no real need to leave Les Deux Tours. Why spend a day being hassled in the souk when you can slither out of bed into your own pool, lounge around in an outdoor four-poster bed, eat lunch in the pagoda and drink gin at the bar? You don’t even really have to talk to anybody else. The only other people you’ll see are couples where it’s courteous to give the international gesture of ‘how nice is this place, eh?’ (For the uninitiated, it’s a thumbs-up while gesturing at your surrounds, showing your teeth; thinking about it, maybe that’s why nobody spoke to us. If you think you might have seen us, we were the couple half covered in bees.)

So if you’re looking for a quiet, secluded getaway, head to Les Deux Tours immediately. Away from the hurly burly of the medina’s shops and bars, its intention is to unwind every muscle in your body. It’s pure serenity. As well as its huge pool, tropical gardens and delicious food, what prevents this luxury hotel from being a generic romantic hideaway is the stunning architecture constantly reminding you that you’re in North Africa. There’s also an air of ‘what happens in Les Deux Tours, stays in Les Deux Tours’, which I loved. I could imagine checking in with a horse dressed in Lycra and the staff politely shaking its hoof, leading us both to our room and them discretely popping the do not disturb sign on the door. But if you think you did see that couple, no, that wasn’t us.