Beyond quirky.

Viñuela to Almunécar, 37 miles, Camping Tropical, €14 per night with ECU, 1 night. 

At some point yesterday, sitting in the sunshine, overlooking Viñuela's Martian embalse, we decided to do precisely the opposite of what we planned the previous day. So now we are going to the Capa de Gata first, then doubling back towards Cordoba as we head home. Is this a better plan? Is there any logic to the change? Does it matter? No idea, we have reached the bobbing along on the river of time stage of the journey, simply going with the flow. 

So here we are, parked at Camping Tropical at Almunécar as the sun sets magnificently over the municipal all weather sports pitch; Gill is creating, as usual, something delicious in the far reaches of the kitchen, about a metre and a bit distant, and I am typing away merrily staring at the notes app on my phone. Another humdrum day draws to close in the Gill and Pete mobile household.

It was less than a 15 minute walk into the town, most of it on pavements, and on the short stretch of it alongside the main road, at least you are separated from the murderous drivers by a crash barrier. From up here on the hill Almunécar looks distinctly unprepossessing, a low scale sprawl of apartment blocks. However, there is more to it than that, as we have just discovered after wandering about for a couple of hours. Here are the pictures we took earlier, annotated as ever with pithy and insightful comments, such as 'This is the seafront' or 'Here are some palm trees '

From a distance you suspect Alumecar will all look like this

in fact there is a rather nice Arabic quarter hidden behind the more modern sprawl.

with a cosmopolitan population.

Roman catacombs

A modern promenade

with requisite second rate modern sculpture

and a memorial to Laurie Lee who ended uip here after walking through Spain just before the outbreak of the civil war.

and here are some palm trees....

We chose Camping Tropical because a review on the ACSI app mentioned it was possible to walk from it into Almunécar town centre, but the reviewer warned it had a narrow entrance and it was quirky. Quirky is not a helpful observation, what actually does it mean? The Oxford on-line dictionary defines it as: 

"Having or characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits or aspects." 

Of course the difficulty with this, is the word qualifies the thing it describes without being evaluative; it is infuriatingly 'non-judgemental'. Does it mean quirky in a good or bad way? Let me suggest a few other adjectives appropriate to Camping Tropical which are more specific - ramshackle, grubby, an approach to customer care reminiscent of Blackbooks..

Quirky, with some good points

such as the  view of the mountains

really, its more of  an aire than a campsite - judged on those terms, then it is not bad,...

However, in one aspect I must admit the word quirky hit the spot exactly, and that is in relation to the showers. The site seems to occupy an old olive grove or orchard. Some of the abandoned hothouses still litter the place. The sanitary block is on a lower terrace in an old stone shed. Inside, beneath the exposed rafters, the shack has been halved in two by a seven foot single skin breeze block wall to divide the male and female facilities. In the 'gents' were three toilet cubicles and a couple of grubby washbasins. The remaining area, part hidden behind a shoulder height partition, contained three shower heads with a hook beside each one. 

Eek! Communal showers, I have not had to deal with that challenge since 1969 when bunking off games became an issue of personal honour. In fact, despite having to go through ritual motions of ire, Mr Ritson did not put up much of a fight; as head of 'games' as it was then known, he was probably relieved by my habitual absence, as my lack of sporting prowess was so legendary that he had to bully teams into letting me join in. As for me, I dreaded the arcane rituals of a boy's grammar school shower room far more than being the North of England's most useless under 15s fullback on the 'rugger' field. 

These days I am more relaxed about such matters. I took my towel and sponge bag and thought, the sanitary block will probably be empty anyway as the site is not busy, and if someone walks in while I'm mid dunk, firstly I an never going to see him again, and unlike my previous experience, he is not going to make pointed remarks regarding my physical attributes. 

As I surmised, the facilities were deserted. Though the shower head looked a bit rusty and the plumbing primitive the flow was strong, the spread good - a stead downpour, neither dribbly nor drizzly with lots of hot water. I poured a good dollop of shower gel on my head and began to become foamy. At this moment a door opened and closed, but nobody walked in. Instead I heard a shower on the women's side of the block turn on. My shower immediately became icy cold. I turned mine off, over the wall, next door showering continued, so I turned mine back on. It remained cold, but now next door's turned off. Perhaps I had inadvertently 'returned the compliment'.

A short pause, then a woman enquired, in English, but with a slight German accent, "Hallo, vater cold?" I confirmed this was the case. "Mine alzo" she replied. Another short pause, then my presumably equally chilly, drippy companion suggested, "Perhaps you first then me?" Another pause, then she added, with a note of pride in her voice, "We take turns." I had a vision that somewhere in the depths of Valhalla, in a small corner specially set aside for dear departed schoolteachers from the Bundersrepublic, my shower buddy's former English teacher was smiling down - see, after all these years, Helga did listen and take note of that list of useful idiomalic phrases she once had to memorise.. Sadly, no amount of impromptu international co-operation was able to restore the hot water. Our final joint communiqué asserted that the showers were 'useless'. I de-foamed myself gingerly by hopping in and out of the freezing spray. 

Lack of fortitude had left me less than fully de-soaped I regard all branded toiletries as an attempt to hoodwink the unwary out of well earned cash through preposterous advertising, so as a matter of principle I only ever buy the shower gel that is on deal. This means at the moment I have a stash of very zesty, but commercially under-performing products in eco-friendly green bottles with 'an approved for Vegan logo on the back. The gel is very big on menthol. I exited my semi-communal shower only partially rinsed, but smelling beautiful, like a very large tube of extra strong mints.

It is not yet 9.15am. How has my day been so far? Quirky, in fact, beyond quirky - surreal, bizarre, but not boring, which is good I think.

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