What’s a perfect beach day in Morocco?

Morocco’s coast is breezy Atlantic rather than calm Mediterranean, and the perfect beach day belongs to Essaouira — the white-and-blue fortified port that catches the trade winds. The morning is for the beach itself: a vast, flat crescent of golden sand that runs for miles, perfect for a long barefoot walk with the wind in your hair and the spray off the breakers. You wander out past the old fishing boats and the ruined fort that the waves crash around, and then you climb the Skala ramparts — the cannon-lined sea walls where the Atlantic smashes below and the gulls hang in the wind. It’s wild and romantic and completely unlike the inland cities.

Lunch in Essaouira is one of the great simple pleasures in Morocco. You walk down to the working port where the blue boats unload, you pick your fish straight from the day’s catch laid out on ice — sardines, sea bream, prawns, calamari — and they grill it on the spot over coals while you sit at a plastic table by the harbour. A squeeze of lemon, fresh bread, the smell of the sea and woodsmoke. There is no fresher fish lunch on the planet and it costs almost nothing.

The afternoon depends on your energy. Essaouira is one of the world’s great wind-and-kitesurfing spots, so the adventurous take a lesson and spend a few exhilarating hours on the water. The gentler option is a horse or camel ride along the immense empty beach south of town, hooves in the surf, the kasbah shrinking behind you. Or you simply find a sheltered spot out of the wind, dig in, and read. The town’s relaxed, artsy, hippie-ish energy makes doing nothing feel entirely justified.

As the day cools, you climb to a rooftop terrace overlooking the harbour for a mint tea or a sundowner, and you watch the light go gold over the masts and ramparts while the gulls wheel and cry. Essaouira’s sunsets are spectacular because the whole town faces west into the Atlantic. Then dinner of more seafood in the lantern-lit medina, the sound of gnaoua music drifting from a doorway. A perfect Moroccan beach day is windswept, salty, simple and unhurried — the country’s coastal soul.