Cumpleaño Malagueño

Sneaker Pimps, Six Underground. Probably my favourite song of the comically limited ‘radio’ selection aboard flight GF6 bound to Bahrain on my inaugural African voyage, 30yrs ago. Eek. Travel was a lot different back then, but here we are on RyanAir with no radio at all…

47 eh? Good lord. Creeps up on you. Normally July is my van time, but this year I’d pulled a bit of a foul by scheduling a course in the middle of leave. It’s part of a set of courses and you have to do all of them, so rather than sacrificing my lovely bit of winter sun in February, maybe, I decided this was the lesser evil. Rip the plaster and all.

Him indoors played a blinder by finding some cheap flights for a birthday treat over to Malaga, 3 nights, but that’s enough for a quick refresh and relax. The duck came along too.

The only trouble with cheap flights is the invariably unfriendly flight times. 7am in this case. The mental maths about projected departure times was predictably horrible, meaning we would have to be gone by 3.30am. That’s not even morning, really, and I didn’t have a preceding night shift to muck around my sleep patterns, so it was just a case of grin and bear it. I drove to the airport, as I’m better at driving quickly with no sleep in the dead of night. I was glad that I’d not pressed the nuclear button by pushing on through after the footy.

Bristol Airport was a bit of a zoo, as it always is during holiday flight hours. We retreated to Starbucks since it’s a half decent brekky with blue light discount. I immediately judged the couple beside us for doing a Little England land grab on the adjoining table, then un-judged them as two more people joined their party, then re-judged them for a further land grab on our table as soon as we left. What is it about the English and SPACE? Parking, boundary, personal. We are an island of utter lunatics. Stay in your lane.

Ryanair did us proud and got us away on time, landing in Malaga shortly before 10am.

We arrived at the off-airport hire car place with a degree of “Or similar” trepidation. Large automatic car should have been a Cupra, but there seemed to be a lot of scrabbling around for keys until we were presented with the weekend’s white elephant.

Well, it was his fault for selecting “large automatic” but in any case, this was an absolute bargain at about 60 quid for 4 days. But what a dreadful vehicle. One of the least intuitive interfaces I’ve ever seen, and turning off the myriad ´safety´features involves going through about 4 menus. If, by chance, you can actually see either the ginormous telly on the dashboard or the speedo display, since neither worked well in sunshine.

By the time we escaped the airport surrounds it was nearly lunchtime so we headed, broadly in the direction of the hotel, down the coast. When in Rome, and all, a lunch by the sea was in order, so I just plugged in Chiringuito and headed to the first fairly convenient one off the motorway. I didn’t fully realise that this would involve then crossing footbridges and walking down the hard shoulder to get to the place.

 

It’s at this point that I have to make clear that I only merely scanned Google Maps, and such is the interface that, once you have searched for a “thing” other local “things” do not show up.

So, having completed the Crystal Maze challenges to get there, I glanced across at the lovely beach and noticed a lady who seemed to have half the fruit bowl on display. ¨Continentals¨thought I, with a wry smile. As we took our seats in the very pleasant beach bar I again scanned the beach, this time spotting a man casually strolling along, flapping in the breeze. And then, in fact, a starkers man just wandered through the Chiringuito.

Despite all of this very un-English nudity, it was nonetheless a very decent fish lunch. Suitably refreshed/emotionally scarred we headed to the Castle. Playa nudista indeed (Surreptitiously bookmarked for next time)

After a pleasant drive into the Andalusian foothills we approached the village of Monda. You can’t miss the castle… it’s that huge rocky outcrop towering above everything else in the whole valley. After a reasonably vertiginous drive up the back of the hill, we entered. Not original, obviously, but a stunning modern reinterpretation.

I can’t recommend this place enough. Stylish but not fussy, and a friendly welcome from the outset. We had one of the standard rooms, nonetheless very comfortable and overlooking the ruins of the castle that once stood guard over the town.

After a brief nap, gamefully resisting the urge to sleep for hours after an early start, I had a wander around the hotel. Fascinating, with a rich heritage and interesting Moorish corners everywhere. As well as a beautiful saltwater pool to escape the excoriating Costa sun.

This is the life. Exactly what I go to Spain for. The beaches aren’t where it’s at. Inland’s where you want to be. Escape the Muggles and crotch goblins.

We headed out in the evening, down the even steeper ‘road’ into the village. I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting but Monda definitely isn’t a pastiche expat theme town. It’s a proper rural farming community. We were pretty much the only gringos in town.

I feel very conflicted in places like this. It felt much like my six month stint on Santa Cruz Island in Galapagos, a wonderful place but somewhere you could never hope to integrate. Still, for the meantime this was absolutely perfect, pulling up a chair at a roadside bar and watching the world go by. A wonderful feature of decent weather and cafe culture is seeing the whole community come out and just enjoy the evening air, and more than a few oldies on zimmers putting in the steps, up and down the road.

It did seem that food options were somewhat limited on a Sunday evening. Down to me, then, to engage the friendly bar owner. No menu, just a spoken selection. I was fairly, not totally, confident of my choices but we ended up with some decent tapas and 4 beers each… €30. Amable

After a quick run to the encyclopaedic little village shop for morning pastries and a naughty gelato, it was back up the vertical street to the castle for a long pleasant period of unconsciousness.

Morning dawned, and it was exploring time. As we wandered out to our big Chinese whale, a stylish Spanish man and his wife/mistress entered their Mercedes 4×4. We’ll come back to him in a bit.

I was nominated as today’s excursion driver. After more than a little time picking through the menus to make the car less fussy and bong-y I gingerly set out across the driveway. Let’s go down through the village. WRONG. Now, I have to be clear about our terms of reference here. I am, objectively, a highly skilled driver. But this thing was enormous, and unmarked, and with a, gulp, 1700 Euro excess. So, I was a little trepidatious.

It started out well, and continued well down to the village and that corner. There is no way THIS will get round THAT. In desperation I contravened the one way, turning left. Which was fine for about 20m until the bollards. Right, then. Backwards. Only option.

Oh the shame. Bingbingbing BONG BONG BONG as various corners of the giant panda approached plant pots, hidden kerbs, everything. And then, at that moment, the ‘sexy’ Spanish man (yeah, thanks Mark) hove into view around the corner. Sure, he’d shuffled back and forth a bit, but here he was, on my bumper, having negotiated the corner. I then encountered a bewildered builder parked in the middle of the road. “Tan grande” I opined as he graciously moved whilst I shuffled Panda Force 1 backwards down the tiny street until, mercifully, a turning space allowed me to escape the judging yet kind eyes of the Spanish couple. Phew. Peak holiday emasculation.

We ventured towards Marbs. This was an entirely masochistic exercise as I knew I didn’t like the place from previous experience, and I knew he wouldn’t like the place, but he wanted to go through morbid curiosity. After crawling in, urgh, traffic to get in to town we picked the least tight underground car park and docked.

Spain does promenades really well, and this is certainly a long one, however fairly charmless in the scheme of things, with the Puerto Banus crowd screaming up and down on jet skis. After a bit of unengaged but sunny promenading I selected the least pretentious looking chiringuito on the front and enjoyed a bit of lunch.

Our prime parking spot was surprisingly cheap, only a couple of Euros. I was glad I’d avoided valet parking at the casino next door as it definitely wouldn’t have been. Mark didn’t fancy Puerto Banus so we headed back to el Castillo for a relaxing evening.

Unfortunately the hotel pool wasn’t all it could be due to, yes, people. A father and kids fart-arsing around on one half of the pool and then their mother getting annoyed at you being in the way of her laps on the other side. MOVE YOUR CHILDREN THEN Harumph. It’s the space thing again, innit?

Dinner was picky bits at the hotel bar, because neither of us really fancied the climb back if we went to the village.

The next day dawned and, surprise, I was once again the designated driver for our little tour out towards Ronda. It was my birthday, and I was determined to have churros. So, I poked into Google Maps and found a place halfway there, on the sinuous National Park roads. I had the distinct feeling that something, anything other than our pet whale would have made these very fun, as evidenced by the numerous bike groups.

Our first stop was an immediate failure as I drove up the street and saw the Churro trailer forlornly parked up and very clearly closed. Nonetheless we preserved with one of the small cafes in the one horse town for a very nice couple of Tostada and cortados, a very reasonable 6 euro or something, the first cash-only place we’ve been to.

The next stop on our grand Churro hunt was the charming village of Yunquera, above. Dutifully we made our way through the streets towards the posted location with a familiar sinking feeling that everything was getting slimmer and then…no…dead end! This again was an exercise doomed to failure. Like an English new build estate, loads of little meandering roads with no obvious outlets and little warning until you get to the completely impassable bit.

In this case our nemesis was this street.

This was probably my longest reverse of the trip, at least a quarter of a mile around several corners until a merciful turning point and then a rapid dash OUT of the village. The churro place wasn’t even a place, it was just one of those stupid pins because Juan makes great churros. Luckily we had the last laugh, marking it PERMANENTLY CLOSED. Take that Juan, and your fake churros.

Eventually we reached Ronda, far too late in the day but them’s the breaks of dilly-dallying. This was an undeniably beautiful and historic place, but far too much of a tourist trap for me. By this point beggars were not choosers, so we pitched up on the long street with outdoor tables.

I know it’s nice to be spontaneous, but a very quick scan of Google maps showed that there were definitely a few of the identikit tourist trap restaurants which were to be avoided. We sat down at a decent looking one and before long a long-faced man approached and, in a gruff voice, asked “tiene reserva?” Well no, you don’t book tables like this. I asked if we needed one. Harumph, as he walked inside. He emerged a minute later and literally threw a QR code onto the table. “Menu”.

Thankfully, whilst Mark and I have our differences, we can both be equally petty, and don’t suffer ignorance gladly. Without the need for words or a further discussion, we got up silently and onto the adjacent table belonging to the next place along. Take that, grumpy!

Ultimately however the joke was on us as, whilst the staff were friendly enough we ended up with two very mediocre bowls of salmorejo and a disctinctly sad cheese/meat combo platter for the best part of 40 quid.

Cheers then, Ronda.

We came back the slightly longer, but far less twisty route on the motorway. This was fine. Spanish motorways aren’t like the notorious Italian Autostrada. Other than one utterly bizarre moment when a clearly nervous driver overtook a lorry in front of us, and decided the best possible thing to do upon noticing the lorry’s indicator, was to complete an emergency stop in the outside lane right in front of us. Survived, just.

Other than that and the hire car´s regular weird “Eye of Horus” warning signs that I wasn’t paying enough attention, we got back to the hotel unscathed for a very lovely final evening at the rooftop restaurant.

Not haute cuisine, but loads of mainly local dishes done very well.

The next morning demanded nothing other than us checking out and heading to the airport for a mid-afternoon flight. Again a journey where I ruminated on the numerous shortcomings of the Seal U, breaking traction despite good tyres on the merest of uphill starts, an alarming lack of any sort of guts and an user interface designed by MC Esher.

So, that was that. A final hurrah back home with the Portishead Shanty Festival and then back into the delightful grind that is peak summer in the emergency services.

Won’t be buying a Seal U. Will be back to Spain, obviously.