When I flew to Morocco last week, the mercury shot up by 23C in just over 3 hours! Drenched like drowned rats at Stansted (15C) while boarding the plane, we were greeted by a hot hairdryer blast of Sahara winds (38C), a big orange sun and swaying palm trees on the other side. (At 7pm! Luckily it cooled down at night for dinner-in-flipflops.)
It always amazes me that you can board a plane and a few hours later – in this case, London to Fez on Ryanair for £19.99 – you land in a whole other world, a million cultural and “climate” miles from where you originally took off. (To be fair, it should have been about 25C, but instead it was the hottest May week in Morocco since 1953, while Marrakech sizzled at 43C – agh!)
Hot dry air (like central heating) can suck the life out of skin if you don’t protect it and I’d stripped down my make up bag to the bare minimum so I didn’t have a lot of lotions and potions to play with. But I did have a tube of Barefoot Botanicals SOS Face & Body Rescue Cream and it was a lifesaver. (If you have really dry, sensitive or psoriasis/eczema prone skin this is a good brand to try). Why does it work? A quick look at the label.
It’s a lovely light, non-greasy, neroli and chamomile essential oil-scented cream formulated with Chickweed and Burdock Botanical Extracts which are super soothing and help calm irritation; Macadamia & Evening Primrose Oil (goodbye parched skin!); and Organic Sulphur (MSM) which you can also take internally (as tablets) – MSM is fantastic for conditioning hair, nails and skin.
And with the weather heating up in the UK this week, we need our SPFs! Tempting though it is to let our foundation/tinted moisturiser’s built-in SPF do the work, SPF15 just isn’t enough for summer. I used Caudalie’s SPF30 and a Vichy SPF50 formula – can’t remember the exact product name so will have a look and Tweet it. I was pretty careful about sun exposure as the dramatic climate change was a bit of a shock to the system (!) but both were brilliant, no burning, no redness – the Vichy SPF50 worked even when it reached 40C in a sun that could turn a plum into a prune in twenty minutes.
BAREFOOT SOS FACE & BODY RESCUE CREAM £10.50/50ml is available online including at Being Content
PS: In extreme sun,wear a hat! I take this one everywhere as it crushes into handluggage and springs back into shape, also stays quite cool as it’s made from some kind of natural fibre. I stayed at www.riad-leksardefes.com (bookmark this place if you fancy Morocco for a tan-and-tajine break this autumn/winter, it’s a beautiful spot just 10 mins from Fez airport, if you love peace, quiet, walks and a pool, you might like it, and the hustle and bustle of Fez medina is a cheapish 20 minute taxi ride away.) Ryanair flies to Fez on Thursdays and Sundays, perfect for a long weekend. I’ll post some Morocco pics soon. x
