I look out on an Autumn sky. The sun has just risen even though it has gone eight o'clock. And the date is a couple of days after Autumn equinox. There are as many hours of darkness as daylight and the days will be drawing in shorter from now on. Where has Summer gone. It seems only a short time since Is riding in baking heat. Now the days only get up to a modest thirty degrees at the most. And I'm not exactly looking forward to riding today as Morocco is extremely difficult to wild camp in. By late afternoon I'll be looking for a hotel incurring more expense. This house I've stayed in over the weekend is solid. Like a palace with ceramic tiled walls, comfy furnishing and a garden of fountain water feature and low hanging palm fronds in the central core.

The door shuts behind me and I leave tranquillity to the street, stopping to let pass a panting overworked donkey drawing a cart loaded with demolition rubble from the house next door where builders are busy gutting the interior.

Around nine I'm looking for breakfast but for some reason the place I'd planned on going to is still shut and so is the next place. Could it be a holiday today. The third place is open though. Here I've a crepe and coffee.

Again like the day I left Fes, it feels such a relief to leave the Medina behind and be back on the wide thoroughfare through the modern commercial city. Clean and westernized. The only thing I've to watch are taxis which like taxi drivers anywhere are a law until themselves moving into the curb to let off or pick up a fare as it pleases, then pulling back out without consideration for other road users.

The way out of the city is or seems straightforward. I see the sun and head in the opposite direction. I stop anyway by an intersection to ask the way to Casablanca of a young mobile phone salesman at a booth.

"You are going to Casablanca on that!" he exclaims in disbelieve, then his tone turns to enthusiasm as he asks me all where I've been before telling me to continue straight ahead for Casablanca.

I couldn't tell which road Is on, just it is a divided highway, until I come to a white red top postbox kilometre marker with 8 on the side, meaning national route 8 directly west to Essaouira. Not exactly a direct route to Casablanca, but at least after a hundred and seventy kilometres I'll turn right and follow the coast. Got to be more interesting than the shorter inland route.

The good road continues until abruptly narrowing down to single carriageway old road with a rough surface and no shoulder with long sections of road works where they are resurfacing.

I stop late for lunch at a roadside café with a nice garden seating area a few kilometres short of Chichaoula. Although a nice place the only thing on the menu is targine. Oh how I'm tiring of this dish. At least the café o lay is as always excellent. The coffee may be the only good point about the country.

And a man gets talking to me. Having looked at my bike with curiousity he asks me about my cycle-tour. Also tells me the road returns to divided high the whole way to Essaouira beyond town.

I reach Sidi Mokhtar around five-thirty. I was hoping to find a hotel here, but it is ugly breeze houses on the way into a grimy one street town, so resolve to keep riding until dark. It looks like it may be possible to stealth camp. There isn't another town for quite a way marked on the map in any case.

Approach that time when the sun is low and casting long shadows, there are places where I can camp except there are people just about everywhere. A shepherd here, a group of boys in a field there. There are lots of walled in plots and I come to one where I think to hide my tent behind a wall, but then I see a house nearby at the end. On the opposite side of the road is open tree dotted scrubland, so I crossover and push the bike down off the road in among the bushes. I pause a moment looking for a level place for the tent. The ground is stony. Then decide I'm too close to the road and begin pushing the bike further back. I head for a eucalyptus crowned height. I still see there isn't any houses nearby.

On the height I notice a house of kinds shrouded in bushes a few hundred metre further back, but far enough away. Then a dog begins barking in that direction. Damn it. The dog approaches along a track to the eucalyptus stand then halts a little way off yapping away. I think my cover is blown and reckon I'll shortly have company. I sit and wait as the dog yaps on. But after a while stops and retreats.

I remain sitting under a tree until the sun has gone down before starting to clear stones from a level spot big enough for the tent. The dog must hear the clatter of stones and begins yapping again, approaching along the track. I assume now that there isn't any one at the house or if there is they're not concerned with my presents. There isn't any place else to go this late so I carry on and get the tent up.