Mijas

What a night last night! The van never stopped rocking! Stop those thoughts readers. Suddenly in the night a wind like no another arrived. You could hear it building as it came through the mountains and up the lake. All a little disconcerting as we had trees above us.

The van shook, Angela shook, glad when the morning arrived, but still the wind persisted.

Behind Marge was a pathway which led to the famous Camino del Rey starting at the King's Seat. A walkway that is pinned to the steep walls of the narrow gorge in El Chorro.

We took a walk along the path through the trees and rocks. Then stopped. To continue, a ticket was required, and only one hundred people an hour are permitted to go in at a time. Tickets must be booked in advance, and are almost impossible to obtain as people come from all over the world to experience the camino so we didn't try to join the queue of hundreds at the ticket office.

Before we left Marge, there was a continuous flow of coaches dropping off people booked on the walk. We'd like to tell you that tickets were all sold out. But truth be told, we're a couple of lightweights, although John said he would have done it. Angela, well, someone has to take the photographs of everyone entering the lions den!

Walking back to Marge, we met lots of people heading towards the gorge, some so excited they were running, not realising a very large queue awaited them. We sauntered along, miming swinging walkways to them. Back at the van, a man who'd John had spoken to the previous evening, and was ecstatic about being able to do the walk had just returned. You could tell he thought we were a little sissy for not giving it a go. Angela's philosophy is, if you don't want to, you don't have to. We all enjoy different things, and fear is not one of them in her book. Saying that, she's experienced some frightening moments whilst driving Marge.

Anyway, after some discussion with the man about the walk, we discovered that he had also driven down the coast of Portugal as we had. He enlightened us on other countries he had visited, recommending, Greece, Sicily, Romania and Albania. Then we moved onto van waste disposal. He did not use his W.C., he said. They made alternative arrangements. We'll leave you to think about that one! But somewhere in the conversation was mentioned that dogs didn't have W. C.S.

We were thinking of spending another night up in the mountains, having struggled to get there, but the thought of another windy night, and more dragging Marge up steep inclines put us of the idea. So we returned to the coast. On route a vulture, flew over us, there are four different species in the mountain skies around here.

This evening Marge is parked amongst many vans in the town of Mijas, a suburb of Malaga. We think we may have found the 'bargain loving Brits'.

The small town and beach area here is lovely, and has a village feel. There is a large hotel, which you could see was full of British. We joked about staying on the Costa del Sol, and buying a bar. Don't worry children, your inheritance is safe, we're not that adventurous, or stupid. Too many times, we have seen English people on television put all their savings into such a scheme, only for it to fail.

We are in no rush to leave the warmth of Southern Spain, so will continue slowly now along the coast. Thinking about it, perhaps the bar we saw for sale down on the beach here would be a good idea. Just need to find a couple of relatives to run it! You didn't actually think we'd want to give up travelling did you?