Morocco

The 12th October was my wife Sian's 50th birthday and earlier this year it was planned for us both to travel with 4 other friends to Morocco and climb up to the top peak of the Atlas Mountains Mt Toubkal. I had travelled to Tangiers during my time in the submarine service 30 years ago, but this was my first trip to the Marrakech region.

Our first stay was at the Kasbah du Toubkal. A breathtaking locale with great food and hospitality. The downside of this was the obvious inaccessibility for anyone with impaired mobility, but that's certainly not an issue that is exclusive to North Africa. My wheelchair-using friends can't get off the tube at Willesden to see me at home because of a flight of stairs that are just as inaccessible as the final footpath to the Kasbah. The short ascent to the accommodation was via foot over a steep rocky path. Our luggage was transported from our taxi in the village via mules for the last 500 metres of the journey.

Kasbah du Toubkal

The venue runs, like TPS, as a workers cooperative and a 5% levy is applied to the food and accommodation bill to support the local village. The site is decorated with stunning images taken by Alan Keohane whose work appeared on the walls at almost everywhere we went in Morocco. Both the Kasbah and Alan's photographic work are linked to another project that funds education for all in the country. By the time we'd left the area, our group were already planning their own fund raising events to support the education initiatives there.

At 4AM on the intended day of our final 900 metre ascent to the summit of Mt Toubkal, we encountered 85 MPH winds and snow. As the primary reason for climbing this was to take some panoramic images from the Toubkal summit (at 4165 metres, it's Morocco's highest peak) we decided that staying in our bunks at the refuge would be a better option.

In retrospect, this was a very good idea and later that day we walked back to the Kasbah. My blood glucose meter which had been in a bag, within a bag, within a bag was soaking (that horizontal rain gets everywhere) and gave me error messages instead of recording my blood glucose levels. One of the real problems with diabetes in cold climates is that if someone suffers a low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia) one of the additional difficulties encountered is that in order to save depleted energy/glucose, the body automatically slows things down when hypoglycaemic. The really dangerous legacy of this is that you involuntarily stop shivering. Hypoglycaemia can therefore be quickly followed by hypothermia. In lieu of a working meter and despite having really quite good warning signs of low glucose I decided to top up with sugary snacks on the way down as a prophylactic measure. My resultant glucose level on return to the Kasbah and a dry working meter was 25.6 mmols/L (this is far too high - normal range is 4- 8 in people without diabetes). This was particularly annoying as I had remained in homoeostasis (normal levels) throughout the previous day's strenuous ascent. Still - worse things happen at sea.

On the two day trip up and back down the mountain we passed a number of small isolated shacks and refuges where people from the village would trek to each day in order to make sufficient money from passing climbers to support their families. Improvisation and business acumen seemed to prevail everywhere here. Below is a home made refrigerator for cooling soft drinks - the water supply hose is pressurised from a stream above.

We left the Kasbah du Toukbal on Sian's actual birthday and returned to Marrakech where we stayed at the best "hotel" I'd ever encountered. The Dar Zemora is more of a small palace than a hotel and if they ever introduce a category of 6 star, based on the attention to detail and customer service, then Dar Zamora will qualify in my somewhat less than humble opinion. Their web site just doesn't do the place justice and it was luxurious, friendly and relaxing. The venue has been reviewed by so many high profile travel publications from UK national broadsheet travel supplements via Tatler to Conde Nast.

We spent a couple of days walking through Marrakech city centre, a sharp contrast to the decadence of our accommodation about 3Km away. Any traveller who's been to Morocco will know of the street hassling and abject poverty. Tourism is the mainstay of income for most people there, so hopefully our small contributions made a bit of difference.

Adeloa and Aniru

On Friday 1st October 2010 - Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence day, Adeola Ramsay and Aniru Shyllon tied the knot at St Mary Magdalene in Enfield Middlesex. Reverend Gordon Giles runs a tight ship up there in Windmill Hill but his service was so very relevant to the future lives of this lovely couple.

What I've been careful to do for the blog is use images only taken inside - which most of them were. At the times most of these images were taken the wind speed was 18 MPH and from 11:00 until midnight we had a pretty solid downpour of rain. Of course a soggy day wasn't going to stop the wedding or diminish any of the love that Adeloa and Aniru have for one another, but it was a shame that the grounds of the church and hotel were out of bounds due to horizontal rain.

Church entrances, arches, doorways, coves and green bridges almost always provide a bit of shelter with great light for images even in the rain, just like this one above of the bridesmaids.

My two lovely accomplices Sarah and Nedine (below) were given the opportunity to shoot from the bell tower and the view (above) was what they had to look at. It's a tough old job being a photographer you know. Actually taking the images is usually the best bit because it's fun and what we like doing best.

What clients rarely see is the hours of work that follows ...backing up images, clearing out the shots that don't work (flash didn't fire/granddad walked into shot as it was taken etc) then arranging them in some form of viewable package, be it proof book, slide show or disc of images, then the blog, website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, press releases, follow ups to the 20 emails given to you by the guests, the design, editing, clearing up of albums, thank you cards, recharging batteries, replacing and reformatting memory cards, sending back up discs to a remote locale. "Archives are lost via three main methods - Fire, Flood and Theft" (source Tony Benn's diaries, albeit he was quoting someone else when he wrote this). So the images are safe and have been dispatched for the perusal of the bride and groom and the next day it all starts again. I wouldn't have it any other way, but I could do with a months worth of lessons on how to do things better on the computer (like throw the thing out of the window sometimes).

Anyway - because of the late running of the day and more relevant, the weather - we set up theBowens kit in a lovely huge space in the Royal Chase Hotel. The staff at the hotel were fantastic and it was a breath of fresh air to work alongside friendly people who had clearly been really well trained. Decent customer attention always gets a recommendation from me. 5* venue and the grub was great too.

The idea of the mini studio was for couples and groups of up to five to have a picture taken using proper studio lighting and backdrops. We rarely do this at weddings as the grounds of the venue normally allows for use of props with natural light. Adeola was ready to party now the speeches and other formalities were out of the way, but she let us grab this one before she went off dancing. A much greater selection as always is on our web site, but you'll need a password from Adeloa or Aniru to be able to see them. They're at TPS Photos Adeola & Aniru.