The perils of sociability.

For the first time in our trip the camp site we stayed on, Buganvilla a few kilometres east of Marbella, catapulted us straight into being sociable. The British couple next to us were touring in a smaller camper van style vehicle, so consequently, were living outdoors most of the time. There was no hedging between pitches, and the position of low branched trees made it inevitable that we parked 'door to door', forcing us to break the UK camping etiquette of 'never opening your front door directly opposite your neighbours'. Consequently, not to have made friends would have appeared deliberately 'standoffish'. In fact after weeks of living in a bubble, it was quite nice to have a chat in the morning. They too had retired recently, and soon you find yourself swapping experiences of finding yourself suddenly counted as a 'senior' as the Americans term it.

Through the pine forest next to the site....

you find an empty beach, just 5km from Marbella

so, you have to cross the main highway on a footbridge...

walk a few hundred metres past an urbanisation, but then there is a beach bar

and a quiet beach, with views to the west beyond Marbella...

and ample opportunities for seriously relaxed wave-watching.

What was more challenging was the fact in turn, our neighbours had been befriended by two older British couples nearby, on holiday together, taking a Winter break from their houses further north, near Alicante. The long term retired ex-pats are another breed altogether. They seemed to share a steely determination to party their way through retirement. It soon became apparent that they had a strong sense that their dear homeland was 'going to the dawgs'. We were invited to collude in their diatribe concerning the feckless youth of today, benefit scroungers, immigrants, the woeful failure of schools today to beat recalcitrant pupils senseless. Our polite silence during these interludes must have led them to conclude immediately that they were dealing with a right pair of pinko liberals, which to be fair, they were! 

Such differences in social attitude lead inevitably to moments of inadvertent humour. One topic of conversation amongst our neighbours concerned how cheap booze could be in Spain. One couple had managed to find a 1 litre box of wine for 60 cents. They were drinking this from two lovely tall, flute shaped glasses. We'd just found some rather special looking Temprillo from the small Torro region in northern Extramadura reduced from 7 euros to 5.60. We're down to two mismatched Auchun wine glasses - one tulip, one Paris goblet.  

Hugh says it's up-and-coming...so it must be!

So on one pitch you had a couple reading the Daily Mail, drinking terrible wine in lovely glasses, and on the next, us two with our noses stuck in Mrs Gaskell novels, drinking lovely wine out of terrible glasses, and threatening to look-up the grower in our Hugh Johnson later... What absurd tribal creatures humans are - wouldn't it be boring if it was any other way?

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