Le Jardin des Douars

Morocco – land of the long-lashed camel, the piping tagine, the crackled tile, the rackety market, the haunting early-morning call-to-prayer across a scorched medina. Decidedly not the land of the cocktail. Our arrival at Jardin des Douars comes at the tailend of a Moroccan odyssey rich in insight but low on lubrication, and it probably reflects poorly on me and the parched Mr Smith that an encouraging specials board chalking out the tipples of the day is the first thing we notice – not the little terracotta buildings the shade of perfectly sun-toasted toes, nor the twinkling emerald swimming pool, as long as a lido, facing the sunset. It is the magic hour at last.

Once we’ve been furnished with an ice-cold, ever-so-stiff Americano (when in Essaouira, do as the Milanese), we settle by the water and watch the sun melt behind palm trees, bougainvillea and hot pink rhodanthemums, to a gentle soundtrack of frogs and donkeys honking with laughter at our good fortune. The day before, we were in Marrakech picking our way through Yves Saint Laurent’s famous Marjorelle. Monsieur, your gardens have nothing on the Jardin des Douars, and its secret nooks dotted with ponds and pools, linked by little paths of tiles made just around the corner. Our first evening by the pool is spent shaded by complimentary sun-hats and furnished with clinking glasses by immaculately attired, disarmingly handsome young men. There is only one thing missing – children! They are welcome at the resort, but not at this pool – there is a shallower one on the very far side of the hotel for smaller, noisier residents. We don’t see any nippers during our trip, and I can’t say this Mr and Mrs Smith are particularly regretful.

We do share the pool area with the kind of quiet, attractive couples with tans but no apparent tan-lines that must surely come from France. It’s easy to see why they like it – the hotel is managed by a French couple, and owned by a Belgian, and it shows in the cuisine and presentation – waiters pad around in crisp polo shirts and plimsolls, diners nibble neat slithers of fish scented with tagine spices, and sip from crisp rosé wines. Curiously, for a nation of non-drinkers, Moroccans produce and consume more than 40 million bottles of wine a year – much of it a dreamy ‘vin gris’ – a reassuringly un-grey blush rosé. We make our own solid contribution to that figure, and tiptoe back to the room – a cool, rustically furnished corner with an oil painting where a TV set might normally be. Mr Smith’s death-grip on his phone gradually loosens as it dawns on us that we’ve got more chance of buying an iPad in the Souk than getting WiFi in the room – there’s only one thing you’re meant to do in this room, and it’s not play Candy Crush.

Morning, and it’s difficult to tempt ourselves away from the hotel – the tryingly active Mr Smith, for the first time ever, admits he’d be happy to idle the whole trip away by the pool. But the windy city beckons – after a breakfast of Moroccan pancakes, dollops of jam and yoghurt, we make the 15-minute drive to Essaouira harbour, and watch boats bob about with our hair whipped into vertical fronds by the gusts that give the place its nickname. This pocket-sized port takes little time to navigate, its pungent souk at the heart of the medina, and sandal, spice and ceramics traders radiating outwards. It’s a gentle, slow sort of place – in the Seventies, the city that always sleeps attracted the likes of Jimi Hendrix to its exotic but lazy medina. It is now home to Game of Thrones pilgrims rather than Hendrix ones, and the old name for the city, Mogador, certainly has a Seven Kingdoms ring about it – but you won’t find any naff merchandise alluding to its location status.
After keeping up the European tourist tradition of falling in love with tiles and ceramics we can’t possibly get home, we paddle off the dust in the choppy waters, and then make our way back home for another visitor’s rite – the hammam. Hamma-mia, this is a good one. Treatments take place in a magical little cave, with tiny beams of natural light piercing through the black so you can see your other half through the darkness, and squelch towards each other when you’ve been soaped, scrubbed and oiled.

A word of warning: when you’ve slowly roasted your shoulders in the Moroccan sunshine, don’t get a hammam. The grainy scrubs, made in-house out of a knobbly bundle of stones and oils, leave you pearly skinned and smooth but they are unforgiving on a tender epidermis. After we’ve been massaged, scrubbed, rubbed, drenched in hot and cool waters, (a treatment session that is 95 per cent pure luxury, and five per cent ‘I’VE TOLD YOU EVERYTHING I KNOW’), we position ourselves back in the sun. We can see what the donkeys are so happy about.