Female readers reflect on their experiences of travelling alone in response to an article by Joanna Moorhead Thank you for Joanna Moorhead’s wonderful article on solo travel (Long lunches, casual friendships, no one to worry about: solo holidays are brilliant for older women like me, 5 March). I’m on my first ever solo holiday, after 52 years of marriage. When I arrived in Vietnam, the guide who met me asked: “Why are you travelling alone?” I felt taken aback, but gather that this type of direct question is a cultural norm. Much travelled but always with family, I feared that I might feel mela ..read more

It’s celebrated as a place that influenced generations of artists. Our writer attempts to recapture the spirit on an overland journey from London to Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains In Tangier, fresh off the ferry from Spain, I walk along the esplanade in cool morning air, then take the steps up into the casbah. My journey to Morocco started at St Pancras station in London three days earlier, and I spent a night each in Barcelona and Algeciras. I feel none of the dislocation or awkwardness that a flight would entail. I’ve seen the landscapes change: the lavender fields of Provence, the peach ..read more

Travel and tour operators are getting involved in the country’s relief effort, knowing how vital tourism is to its economy “My family is safe,” our tour guide Sara Chakir said as we huddled in the streets outside Fez’s medina, waiting for aftershocks until the early hours. Morocco’s 6.8 magnitude earthquake had struck last Friday, 350 miles away in the Al Haouz region of the High Atlas mountains at just after 11pm. It was enough to send our riad swaying, but there was no apparent damage to people or place. It was only in the morning that the scale of destruction elsewhere was clear. Another to ..read more

Yes, flying would have cost less in time and money, but the train trip to Tangier via Paris, Barcelona and Madrid leaves this traveller richer in many other ways • Why rail travel is bestFour great long-distance journeys I’m somewhere south of Paris when it occurs to me that, had I flown, I would be there by now. At the far end of the carriage, I can see the train speedometer touch 300kmph (186mph) then settle at 296, a pace that, before the invention of the jet engine, would have left most civil aeroplanes for dead. The most advanced Belfast-built flying boats, beloved of Imperial Airways bef ..read more

Famous for its vibrant colour and intoxicating culture, this ancient city has something for all the senses. Here are 15 tips for a perfect break A remarkable newly restored garden, Le Jardin Secret was the site of one of the largest riads in the medina, belonging to the chancellor of Sultan Moulay Abd al-Hafid, the last sultan of Morocco before the French protectorate. By 1934 it had fallen into disrepair. It reopened in 2016 with gardens designed by the British gardening architect Tom Stuart-Smith. Split into an exotic garden and an Islamic garden (laid out according to strict geometrical rul ..read more

I’m mortified by the idea of quibbling over prices – though my wife is unimpressed by my principled profligacy On a vast, empty stretch of beach a few miles south of Essaouira in Morocco, there is a woman doing yoga while facing the sea, a warm breeze lifting her hair out behind her as she lowers herself slowly on one leg. She is at peace, until a column of nine quad bikes comes barrelling down the shore, spraying sand and belching smoke as they pass. This sudden invasion seems both jarring and a little contemptuous, especially from my point of view: I’m driving the fourth quad bike in line ..read more

Like many holiday destinations, Morocco is reeling from the pandemic, but a new online tour is connecting artisans with shoppers – and a bringing glimmer of hope It is lunchtime in Marrakech, but the Djemaa el-Fna is so deserted it takes me a minute to recognise what is usually the medina’s social nexus. There are no snake charmers wielding pungi flutes, nor are there any henna artists on plastic stools fanning themselves with their pattern cards in the midday heat. Yet some things remain reassuringly familiar: the sky is blue, the Koutoubia mosque still cuts through the skyline, and my guide ..read more

Author Katherine Rundell dreams of returning to Morocco and revelling in the thronging souks and the surge of heedless humanity I have never thought of myself as someone who loves crowds, but one day, when this is truly over, and we have rebuilt what we can, I will go to the souks in Marrakech. I plan to walk past sacks of spices and dyes, piles of green mint as high as a door lintel, and sweet fried bouchnikhas, and find a place to stand with my back against the wall, out of the way of bicycles and the madly confident teenagers on scooters, and watch hundreds of people go by. I have always be ..read more

Morocco’s Atlas mountains are a short hop from Marrakech – but a world away from frenetic city life My daughter spots them first, glinting like diamonds in the midday heat of the Moroccan sun, irresistible for small fingers to pick at. “Treasure!” she exclaims, kneeling down to pick clusters of tiny crystals out of the earth, some of them clear, others in ochres, oranges and yellows. From gold and silver to cobalt, nickel and zinc, the Atlas mountains are a mineral paradise, as well as an ancient and lucrative industry. Centuries ago, explains our walking guide Abdelkarim, the original silk ro ..read more

Don’t fight it – getting lost is one of the best things to do in Morocco’s most beguiling and ancient medinaIt happens on the third day, after our bookbinding class, having spent the morning deep in concentration learning how to Coptic-stitch and emboss our own leather journal. Within minutes of leaving the attic studio, deep in the heart of Fez’s sprawling medina, we become hopelessly and unavoidably lost. Was it the alleyway to the left of the stall piled high with spices and fresh figs? Or the other one that opens into a market square with stacks of dried fruit and couscous, cages of live c ..read more