The most memorable things about Morocco were the airports and the hotels, with particular reference to the bathrooms, in particular the showers in their many manifestations.

A very small bathroom

The showers were all of the water-saving variety, hand held with a bracket on the wall to hook the shower head into. The faults were many and varied but all of them sent the water out with such velocity that, in some cases the water missed the shower recess altogether and only the shower curtain saved the room from another great flood.

In one case there was no curtain and the hot water was unpredictable so that it would suddenly turn cold. Others reported that if one waited it would warm up again but this never happened to me and I needed to be quick to get a hot shower. I suspect that the hot water was rationed and I was using most of my ration running it warm in the first place as it took some time to come through hot.

There was some difficulty getting to this toilet

There was one showerhead which spread the water so wide that I decided not to wash my hair as I had a feeling that I would never be able to rinse the shampoo out. As it was I had to chase the small, widely spread jets of water to even get wet. The water beat mercilessly against the shower curtain and water went everywhere, except onto me. After I had mopped up the flood which reached through the hall of my little cottage to the bedroom I discovered a hole in the shower curtain and the pressure of the water was opening up the three-cornered tear and the water was forcing itself through and onto the floor.

Another problem was the brackets. The shower heads usually hung their heads and turned their faces to the wall. This made them impossible to get under so the bracket had to be adjusted. The first one I tried to fix fell off and landed on my toes but eventually consented to stay in the wall in the right position. The next one with the problem was not so easy and I had to make a firm roll of sock to place under it to hold it in the right position.

Some other unfortunate traveller had obviously been overcome by his frustration; one of our group was a dentist so there is no reason to doubt his word on the subject - he maintains that the toilet seat in one of the rooms which he and his wife occupied had human toothmarks in the toilet seat. The mind boggles …

At least, except in Marrakesh, as already mentioned, the water was hot.

Unlike my Iranian pages I can’t expound at length on the toilets. I only encountered one Turkish toilet and that was at an unscheduled stop and it was quite acceptable. The rest were of the European variety in variable states of useability. One of our group decided to pass on lunch one day but informed us, when we left the dining area, that she had managed to get all the toilets unblocked and toilet paper put in all the cubicles. Worth her weight in gold …

Before lunch there were no toilet doors but after lunch ...

Most of the public toilets at tourist spots had guardians who ‘sold’ toilet paper by the millimetre but mostly apparently did nothing else as some were unflushable and in a pretty dire state. We all carried either alcohol hand gel or bacterial hand wipes - a seriously good idea.

The most memorable quote was from Our Fearless Leader who announced, during a day on the road: “This is a comfort stop and it is going to be a long way to the next one so I suggest that you all take advantage of the facilities - even if you have to concentrate very hard.”

Concentrating very hard