Everyone is complaining about how cold and cloudy it is this winter here. We are not. It is wonderful walking weather. Not too hot or dazzlingly sunny. Yesterday we went to the famous Playa de los Muertos…beach of the dead! It is a wonderful long stretch of tiny pebble beach well protected from the ravages of commercialism by being just inside the boundaries of a national park. On one side, just over the boundary, is a large commercial port. It is surreal to turn one way and see the ancient remains of volcanic outcrop and then turn the other way to see a huge ship and cranes. That seems to sum up Spain in many ways. We shop at a modern supermarket that might be anywhere save for the special section devoted fo ham ( the culinary  religion of Spain) where several large pork legs, complete with trotters are fixed ready to be sliced. We drove to a village, Lucainena de las Torres, reputed to be one of the prettiest in the country. Indeed it was. The drive of over twenty kilometres was made over a road carved across stony mountains with hardly a guardrail to be seen. Few were the stretches where two vehicles could safely pass each other. Approaching one of the many blind hairpin bends therefore became a white knuckle exercise in case we came face to face with a motorist going the other way! One of the few places it was safe to stop and regain our composure was a jaw-dropping site of many acres of solar panels. This plant was out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by many blossoming almond trees. Sometimes I think I am in a science fiction movie.

Although it is too cold to swim, a little paddle in the clean clear waters of the pebble beach was in order before the scramble up the steep hillside to the car park.