Manchester to Morocco without flying

Solo and Flight-Free

I've taken quite a few flight-free trips in my time, until now, always sticking to the continent of Europe. But in August of this year I decided to embark on my biggest challenge yet - getting to Marrakech, and eventually, the Sahara Desert. This trip also differed slightly for me, as it was my first time travelling "solo".

Of course, for previous trips I've travelled down alone (not being able to convince anyone else to join me on the multi-day train epics I get up to), but this was the first trip where I wouldn't be meeting a bunch of my friends at the destination. That's not to say I didn't meet up with anyone there, as I'd decided to book myself on an 11-day tour that would take me and a bunch of other 20-somethings all around Morocco.

The Route

As for most of my flight-free trips, I endeavoured to follow the route suggested by the lovely man over at Seat 61. And indeed I did mostly, getting a train down from Manchester after work on a Wednesday to London, where I stayed in a tiny (but very cheap!) hotel room right by Kings Cross.

From here, it's recommended to get the Eurostar down to Paris, but I, unfortunately, couldn't do that.

I needed to be able to get to Marrakech on the Saturday, and the feasibility of this was reliant on me being able to get down to Algeciras on the Friday. However, frustratingly the Spanish train operator RENFE weren't publishing their timetables for the train from Barcelona to Algeciras that supposedly existed. I spent months checking each week to see if it had been made available yet, but to no avail, until just 3 weeks before departure I decided to give up and try another route. I'd found instead a direct train from Barcelona to Malaga, which combined with a 3-hour coach journey, would get me there in time. Not exactly the comfort of a train the entire way, nor the speed, but it at least meant the trip was on. However, in the time I'd spent waiting for that train to be published, the Eurostar tickets to Paris had also sold out. Again I was forced to go the long way round, and so it was off to Lille I went that Thursday morning.

Luckily, the connection in Lille was very easy, with Lille Europe station being right next to Lille Flandres, from where I caught a TGV down to Paris. Here I had some FREE TIME! I opted to take a nice walk and a picnic by the Seine, before the long train down to Barcelona. I'd actually taken this same train a couple of years ago, heading down to Majorca, so I felt a funny familiarity with it.

After spending the night in Barcelona, I then caught the train down to Malaga - reminded that I was now in Spain by the fact that I had to go through airport-style security just to catch the train. (Why?) After an hour wandering Malaga, seeing a LOT of parrots, and mostly trying to avoid getting sunburnt (the memories of the Majorca trip firmly fresh in my mind), it was to the bus station to board the coach to Algeciras, firmly following the Andalusian coastline.

In Algeciras, I took a short walk around town before having some dinner and a beer sitting on the beach, watching the sun set over the Rock of Gibraltar.

Up early the following morning, I headed to the ferry port to find out where to get the free bus to the port of Tarifa. After eventually finding the right place, I boarded the bus, then boat, to head over to Africa. A short 1-hour hop across the Mediterranean.

One neat quirk of the ferry crossing is that you get to do passport control on the ship itself. Annoyingly you're also meant to fill in a landing card for Morocco, but I hadn't been given one and so when I got to the counter I was promptly given the form and sent to the back of the line. By now the entirety of the ferry was on board and waiting to go through passport control as well, so I spent the entirety of the one-hour crossing stood waiting in the queue. Alas.

Once ashore in Tangier, I had a brief moment of madness. I had roughly 90 minutes until I needed to catch my train to Marrakech, and in classic Josh Bosman fashion, I decided I could probably walk to the train station. So I decided to skip taking any cash out (very much needed for Morocco), skipped the army of taxi cab drivers wanting to take me into town and set off walking. I soon discovered an issue however, I had set up my eSIM for my old phone, and so had no way to place myself in the town with no internet access. Only a vague recollection of where the station might roughly be. I also soon realised I had no way to actually get my tickets if I did somehow find the station, as I hadn't downloaded them.

After about 20 minutes of vaguely heading in the right direction, I finally gave into my panic and headed towards the most populated area I could find, in the hopes of finding a Wi-Fi connection. Perhaps unsurprisingly there are not a lot of free Wi-Fi places in Tangier, so I soon quickly changed tack and began going into any stores I could find in the hopes they could point me to an ATM. This strategy proved a lot more successful, and I soon found a hole in the wall, got some cash and had some guy guide me to a taxi, paying him a euro for the favour.

Once at the station, I was also quite thankfully able to get a Wi-Fi signal for long enough to get a new eSIM and download my tickets. The advice online for train tickets in Morocco for westerners is a little outdated - with going through 12Go being recommended generally. The way this works is you put in your requested dates and a local will then buy the tickets for you when they become available locally. I'd done this and had my advance tickets ready to go, although strangely not my return tickets. The strangeness continued when I boarded the train (a modern high-speed carriage, the same you see in France) and someone else was sat in my seat. After pointing this out in my best Franglais, she also showed that she had the same seat booked. Hmm. After studying my ticket a bit more, I soon realised that I'd had a ticket bought for the same date last month. In a bit of a pickle, but also not wanting to get off the train and missing my connection to Marrakech, I found the only non-reserved seat I could find and hoped they just didn't check tickets here (I'd already somehow got through several rounds of ticket checks before boarding - so there was a chance!).

This wasn't the case, and I was soon found out. However, the conductor was very understanding and taught me all about how to actually buy tickets properly. The ONCF app is actually perfectly usable for foreigners, and definitely my recommendation for next time.

In Casablanca, I switched over to the final train of the journey, direct to Marrakech. This train was much older, and felt more like the trains of old where there's 8-10 of you sat in a compartment looking in at each other. Another fun novelty is the toilets on board don't flush, it all just goes down onto the tracks! Anyway, after the 3-hour journey, I finally arrived in Marrakech, ready to actually begin my adventure.

The Tour - Desert

The tour (ran by G Adventures) began at a hotel in Marrakech. At around 6pm you meet up with the rest of the group for a welcome meeting, which, it turns out, is not a welcome meeting for everyone. A lot of the tours actually join onto each other, with some members of the group having joined in Spain, others in Northern Morocco, and others, like me, joining for the next leg of the tour - a journey across the South East of the country to the Sahara Desert.

After all the introductions and a brief overview of the next few days, we all headed out for dinner at a local restaurant. Which as it turns out was a rare chance to not eat tagine (nothing against tagine, it's actually very nice, we did just eat it for every meal at a certain point of the trip). We then headed into the medina to explore a bit of what late-night Marrakech has to offer.

The next morning, we headed out of the city, through the Atlas Mountains towards our first stop - Skoura. There's not a lot to see here, but we did get to visit some of the locals' homes, and have some tea, which was nice.

The following day was a bit more action packed, as we headed to the Dades Gorge for a hike at The Monkey Fingers. A local dog befriended us for the hike, which was quite cute - waiting at the river while we headed up the gorge before running after the minibus as we drove off. That evening we arrived at our desert camp, and got to experience a camel ride at sunset. Unfortunately, as is quite typical, it was quite cloudy, so the sunset/camel ride under the stars wasn't quite as spectacular as it could have been, but it was still a great experience.

The next day was filled with lots of desert related activities - a 4x4 trip (that was a bit of a letdown after the camel ride), a tour around the local Berber village, and a cooking class in making a Berber pizza. That evening we headed out into the dunes to go sand boarding, experiencing a proper sunset this time, before dancing around a campfire and just generally having a very good time.

For much of the trip so far our guides had been telling us about how people would sleep out on the dunes overnight, and how it was all perfectly safe because the government sets out traps around tourist areas to catch scorpions and snakes. I'm not entirely sure why I believed that last bit, but me and the other guys on the trip decided to take them up on a bit and had a very wholesome night out under the stars, sharing stories from our lives. Of course, it's also quite sandy on the dunes, so this did have the side effect of me finding sand every (and I mean every) where for the next week. Still - 10/10 would recommend.

After our night of bromance in the desert, we began our journey back to Marrakech, with the next day's highlight being a visit to Ait Ben Haddou, a rock city now famous for being used in Game of Thrones. I've never seen Game of Thrones, but it was still a very impressive place to visit, and we did supposedly recreate a still from the show when there.

The next day saw us head back to the Moroccan capital, for a walking tour and then a big night out to sadly say goodbye to some of the group who were heading home the next day. We managed to find seemingly the one place in Marrakech that served alcohol after 10pm, a karaoke bar where I also met this guy.

We then had a full free day in Marrakech, where I decided to visit the gardens of Majorelle, owned by Yves Saint Laurent. A very good place to escape a hangover. That evening was then a new welcome meeting for the next leg of the tour where we'd be heading West and exploring the Coast.

The Tour - Coast

With a newly rejuvenated group, the next morning we headed west to our first stop Taghazout. En route we had a wander around Taroudant, which I found almost entirely forgettable apart from this picture I got with a very big tea pot.

Taghazout however was beautiful. The sun sets over the Atlantic, and it gave us a chance to get up to plenty of activities over the couple of days we were there. We started things off with some surfing lessons, at which I was pretty awful, not managing to stand up once in the couple of hours we were out on the waves. Definitely a skill to pick up in the future. Then, me and a few new friends from the tour headed out to a ranch for an hour of horse back riding, followed by an hour of quad bike riding. I don't think I've ever ridden as many different things as I had on this trip (get your mind out of the gutter).

Later that evening we headed out to the beach for a campfire, without the fire. (So sitting on a beach in the dark.) Still a very good time, apart from some stray dogs starting on the stray puppy that had come up and befriended us, but what can you do.

The next day saw us head out for our final destination of the trip - the very pretty fishing town of Essaouira, famed for its fish market. Here I had my first ever hammam - basically a Moroccan spa, which still plays a significant role in Moroccan culture (although perhaps not quite at the fanciness levels I was able to enjoy). It was here I also finally began to succumb to all the travel, having developed a pretty nasty cold, as well as some other issues downstairs (don't eat figs off the floor).

My journey back was roughly the same as my journey to Morocco, only differing by an extra day spent in Algeciras to go explore Gibraltar, which lay right across the bay, and a great need for tissues on my part. I had an amazing time in Gibraltar (in fact I think it's up there as one of my best days ever), but I'll leave that as a post for another time, when you too can learn how to complete Gibraltar in 24 hours.