Sandiego Nobcche

A cool, green oasis in the kasbah

The beauty of Les Borjs de la Kasbah is that it is completely unexpected, slap in the middle of one of the busiest and dirtiest bits of Marrakesh. To get to this boutique hotel involves a short drive from the airport, in all likelihood in a taxi with no seatbelts, along roads that bear a closer resemblance to alleyways than thoroughfares, even if they do seem to hold the same amount of traffic as the average high street back home.

Eventually, you pitch up at the door and think ‘This can’t be it’, because it’s far too unprepossessing, looking as if it might be a hostel of some sort, not the environment-friendly spa-hotel you think you’ve booked. However, once you’re inside, Les Borjs is chic and entirely peaceful - you can just about hear the call to prayer, but that’s it.

As my sister, Katy, and I arrived on a Saturday morning after just six hours’ travelling door-to-door, we met Françoise Bruce-Mitford, one of the owners, who designed and built Les Borjs with her British husband to prevent them becoming bored when they retired from running their holiday company, VFB Holidays.

Though based in Wales, she comes over at least once a month for a few days, which in itself goes to show how easy it is to get to Marrakesh for a long weekend, as we were doing. It seemed incredible that we had been in freezing Britain that morning and here we were drinking freshly squeezed fruit juices and peeling off layers in the 24C sunshine.

Les Borjs is now a year old, and when setting it up the Bruce-Mitfords were concerned to use as many environment-friendly, energy-efficient and all-round ethical ploys as they could in both the spa and the main hotel. Much of the electricity comes from solar panels, and rubbish is disposed of in as eco-conscious a manner as possible. Even the lowliest potwasher in the kitchen is paid nearly double the statutory minimum wage, and the couple are involved in several local charities.

Not that the hotel feels uncomfortably worthy in any sense. Although more or less built from scratch on the sites of seven houses the couple bought over a period of years, the new buildings do look quintessentially Moroccan, all twiddly ironwork, latticed windows, polished plasterwork, traditional rugs and painted tiles - they used a local architect and entirely Moroccan crafts team.

The 18 bedrooms are sympathetically finished and normal hotel luxuries aren’t stinted on: you still get a flat-screen telly and a minibar, but little notes gently encourage you not to use too much hot water, and toiletries are in dispensers rather than disposable bottles. Lighting operates by motion sensors, so corridors are lit only when they need to be