Before we leave Sousse and hit the road, there's one short rail journey we have to make.

Sousse, it has to be said, has its fair share of whiffy areas, from the bored horses waiting to trot you round the city in decorated carts distractedly emptying their bladders and bowels into the gutter, to the subtle yet cloying aroma hanging around the leather sandal stalls, but nothing – nothing – compares to the fish-market. It's not even the smell of fish. It's just plain bad. And it wafts through the town. Sousse has two railway stations, the main station, imaginatively called the Main Station, and Bab Jedid Station, alongside the fish-market. Guess which one we need for a trip along the coast to Monastir. We stand on the platform holding our breath and taking occasional desperate gulps of fetid air. What goes on inside this market? We never find out.

It's a short journey to Monastir. It's not a big town, so it's relatively easy to find your way around. There's a huge, walled medina, which looks remarkably modern, and, on the coast, there's the Ribat, which is where we're heading.

At the end of the road stands the Ribat, more fully, the Ribat of Harthema,a fortified monastery. An odd concept for someone who comes from a land where monks are jolly, ruddy-cheeked buffoons who attempt nothing more daring than imbibing wine made from the vegetables of the monastery garden. Dating from 796 (though it's been altered and added to), the Ribat is a warren of corridors and cells surrounding an open courtyard. You can (and we do) spend hours here without treading ther same spot. The complex maze zings about like an MC Escher drawing.

Of course, we're here because it was used as a film location. It was the setting for Franco Zeffirelli's terminally pious TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, but that would hardly merit the rail journey. It was the backdrop for much of Monty Python's finest hour, the sublimely funny Life of Brian. Here you can find the square where Roman governor Michael Palin is urged to "welease Woger", and the tower Brian (Graham Chapman) falls from into the alien craft. Despite its odd, and very slightly rude, shape, this is not a Terry Gilliam design but a real part of the Ribat.

To the west, the Ribat overlooks the Sidi el Mazeri cemetery and the dazzling golden domes of the Bourgiba Mausoleum, last resting place of the post-independance, Monastir-born, first leader. I'm intending to take a picture of the cemetery and the gleaming domes, when I notice a lone man furiously polishing one of the tombs. It's a great show of affection and tradition, buffing up the family monument. Only, well, he's not buffing up a monument. He's buffing up himself.

Now, we've spent the last few days being reminded to be careful not to offend religious sensibilities and to cover our fleshier parts, now here's this local guy pleasuring himself in front of the leader's tomb and in full view of a national monument. Are there cultural differences we don't know about? or is this the village idiot? or is he simply hot, horny, drunk and doesn't give a monkey's? I guess we'll never know. All memories of the city are now overshadowed by the Mysterious Masturbating Man of Monastir.

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