Normal service restored

As forecast, blue skies and warm sunshine return, and even  better they're predicted to stick around for the next ten days.

This is a relief, we are now three weeks into our trip and there have been very few days where it has been comfortable enough to relax outdoors; too many cold and rainy ones that have trapped us inside. Eventually it becomes claustrophobic for two people to live within the confines of a 7 x 2.5m box on wheels day after day 

I celebrated the beautiful sunny morning by visiting the recycling bins, not exactly a romantic gesture - they are situated beside the N340 outside the campsite gates. The road itself runs alongside a scrap of grey gritty sand which purports to be Valle Niza's beach. However, as a spot to unload a bag load of plastic and half a dozen empty bottles, a skip with a sparkly blue Med view has got to be better than most.

We keep changing our plans, the latest one is not weather related, more fundamentally we're going to have to curtail our trip and head back home ten days earlier than planned. The builder emailed us to confirm he will begin building our extension during the first week of March. We've booked Eurotunnel for the 26th February, that gives about three weeks in the Mediterranean before we start to head home.

The plume of warmer weather is forecast to spread northwards from the coast raising temperatures north of the Sierra Nevada into the low twenties. This is quite unusual so early in the year. We are planning to revisit Granada then head towards Almeria using the inland route across the Tabernas desert. 

It will be a welcome change from hopping from one crowded , over-developed resort to the next. This year campsites and 'areas autocaravanas' are even busier than ever. At times we have struggled to find a place. Gill has taken to phoning ahead, we have never needed to do that previously. Partly I think it is the result of the police cracking down on free camping, but also I think more northern Europeans are buying motorhomes, not just retirees, but younger people too in Campervans.  It's a more mixed bunch too, Italians, Poles, Czechs as well as the usual suspects from Scandinavia and Western Europe. Maybe a home on wheels is replacing a 'place in the sun' as something people aspire to.

Though Granada is where we are aiming for next we need to hang around the east of the Costa del Sol for a few days more, just to let temperatures build a bit. At the moment we are parked at the area autocaravanas run by the harbour authorities at La Caleta de Velez. 

It's ok, a bit soul-less, packed full of snazzy big mohos, attracting a crowd that enjoys being next to the amenities offered by a Costa del Sol resort. It's difficult to ignore them, blocks of apartments stretch along the shore to the east and west as far as the eye can see - the  Costa del Sprawl. 

An esplanade runs along the length of the development. It leads you to ponder just how many hundreds of kilometres of Spain's Mediterranean coastline looks just like this?

It's not horrible, in fact it can be quite pleasant on a sunny Sunday like today. Nor is it entirely dominated by pallid invaders from the north. The string of towns along the coast from Malaga to Motril are sizable settlements. As well as locals, many Spanish people have holiday homes here too. The result is that even in January, at the weekend, the beach restaurants that line the esplanade are all busy.  However they are subtly differentiated, some providing the  grilled fish Sunday lunch as required en-mass by local families, others offering a more international menu pitched towards tourists.

The divide is startling. A hundred metres to the right of us is a small restaurant doing a roaring trade providing for the locals and Spanish tourists . 

Immediately to the left is a place offering tapas and pizzas. It's packed with foreign tourists. Just to make sure there is not a native invasion, the management have provided a live Country & Western duo to suppress any outbreaks of multi-culturalism.

It was to escape the yeehah music which drove us to take a long stroll up the esplanade in the first place . I have never quite got the hang of Country music despite an early brush with it due to my mother's penchant for Jim Reeves' schmaltzy songs. Later It became forever associated in my mind with 'The Good Ol' Boys' from the Blues Brothers, in other words with red necks, white supremacists and more recently Trump supporters. I am sure there is more to it than that. Matthew, our eldest, recommended I listen to 'The Highwaymen' - a Country supergroup, but I can't bring myself to do it. There was nothing about today's performance that tempted me to change my mind anytime soon.

After the pair had finished extolling the delights of West Virginia they explained that they haled from Hamburg and Sweden. The latter snippet did not surprised me, one of the unexpected aspects of our trip to Sweden last summer was all the  gas guzzling vintage US cars we came across. Our friend Svenerik explained Americana was big thing, as well gleaming Chevrolets, country music, line dancing and cos-playing Oklahoma is very popular too. I suppose this should not come as a surprise, after all Burns Night and St. Patricks's parades are a big thing in Japan.  I suppose in a 'wired world' most cultures are headed towards hybridity.

It's odd though how this works. At times cultures mix and merge - like British Asian cuisine. In other circumstances different cultures simply co-exist in the same space in parallel to each other. This afternoon felt like that. In fact quite often in Spain's Costa's, though concrete triumphs, and the the place is flooded all year with foreign tourists, Spanish culture prevails unscathed nonetheless. Even the architecture, - amid  villa complexes and hi-rise apartment blocks you still happen upon  a row of old houses which look as if they belong to local families, kids kicking a ball about in the street, parents and grandparents hanging about having a chat..

In truth hereabouts these remnants are few and far between. Winter retirees flock here. The all year sunny climate has ensured most of the coast from Estepona to Motril is more or less completely built-up. That amounts to 185 kms. of sprawl. After a few days it becomes dis-spiriting no matter how blue the sky. As well as how it looks, noise is a problem too. The motorhome parking area in the harbour area of Caleta de Velez is next to a boatyard. Most of today someone has been using an industrial high pressure hose, to clean boat hulls we presumed. The high pitched screech started first thing and continued until sunset. We need to find some peace and quiet, a patch or two of greenery would be nice too.