Hotel Mamounia and Fowey

Two of my favourite places in the world were featured in programmes I watched yesterday.

The first was Fowey in Rick Stein’s travelogue on Cornwall on BBC 2.

In the early 80s I travelled to North Cornwall a lot and enjoyed many a meal at Rick Stein’s first restaurant The Seafood Restaurant at Padstow.

Fresh fish was caught on the day and the pancakes were delicious.

More recently I have travelled to South Cornwall, renting a house on the Menabilly Estate owned by the Rashleigh family.

This is where Daphne du Maurier lived from 1940 to 1962.

She also spent her youth in Ferryside opposite Fowey where her son Christian now lives.

Rick Stein’s programme supposedly featured the town yesterday but only about 10 minutes of the programme was devoted to it and that mainly about cuisine.

Still it was good to see its winding streets, the estuary and Ferryside with a nod to Daphne du Maurier and Cornwall’s seafaring past.

The second programme was Netflix’s Inventing Anna, a drama featuring Anna who scales the upper echelons of New York and business society with the story that she is a rich German heiress.

In the episode I watched yesterday she visits the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakesh Morocco with a video film producer, his girlfriend Rachel and Anna’s trainer Kacy – a Naomi Campbell lookalike.

Anna runs into credit card difficulties and a stressed Rachel has to bale her out.

It’s all rather tense – and the hotel gets quite heavy – but we are given enticing shots of the gardens, rooms and restaurants of one of the world’s great hotels where I last stayed in January 2020.