NEW TRAVEL WRITING COMPETITION: THE JUDGES DECIDE

"Caramel and raspberry red, it sits by the road surrounded by the detritus of local civilisation: burst tyres, perished fan-belts and empty port-a-gas cylinders...To nomads it is the supermarket of the Sahara. Among items stacked behind its counter are ... boxes of Gunpowder tea, candles, packets of `Tide`… and tins of sardines. Fresh fish arrives daily from Boujdour so that even in this God-forsaken place you can sit down at a broken table for lunch. A lame fish-eating chicken hops about after scraps. No one would eat it, I decided, it was much too horrible."

Christine Osborne, on the Café Lemsid in the Western Sahara from the Independent Travellers Guide Morocco.