Final blow-out

With the start of a new week the pool area got a little busier, which prompted us to find the "big" pool further down the twisting roads of the urbanizacion. This was next to a small bar and sales office for the estate and also a tennis court, but the thought of running about in the heat did nothing for me. The sunbeds were a little less pristine and the bigger grass area a little more rough than the surroundings of the "small" pool but it was a nice enough spot to while away the afternoon. The boys certainly enjoyed the change of scenery and when the Threlfalls arrived there was great whooping and hollering, no doubt much to the disdain of the other residents and holidaymakers who who have preferred a quiet afternoon in the sun. All the children were lining up to be thrown hither and thither in the water by me, Axel and Sharon in her "Witchy Woo" persona. Noisy, it was!

Even Angus was up for being thrown in the water. He's been very confident in the water this holiday, admittedly with his armbands on and using the tube floats to great effect, but it's good to see him enjoying the water. Rowan too has been good, up to a point where he either gets cold or bored and has had enough. His swimming still isn't improving noticeably. Leaving his custom-built prescription goggles at home didn't help as he undoubtedly isn't happy when he can't see properly.

We headed back up to the villa and pulled together a quick dinner party for the Threlfalls to come over later in the evening. Axel's Mum has had one of the terraced properties across the way for twenty years but it was the first time he had been across in Villa Cantarranas and he certainly enjoyed the view and the novelty of looking down on his Mum's property that he's been visiting all this time. The kids ate and watched a DVD while the adults sat out on the balcony and chatted till the sun went down. It's been good meeting a new couple and getting to know them a little and I'd like to think we'll keep in touch with them. Jane is a writer for Sky News and Axel is the anchor for Reuters Business Insider internet TV channel so they are an interesting couple, working in the media and living in Shepherds Bush in London. It makes a change meeting people who exist in a completely different sphere.

As night fell the boys were keen to repeat their skinny dipping exploits of the night before. This started with Finn jumping into the pool with his T-shirt and shorts on and carried on in a similar vein although Angus and Oskar were a little too tired to join in. We finally called a halt after more diving and synchronised jumping in and each retired to their own house.

Tuesday was our last full day and involved plenty of steady packing up of stuff and using up of the last of the food in the house. Once again we sought out the big pool whre the boys were having fun on Edie's inflatable crocodile and playing with the dive sticks although it took me an age to locate and retrieve one from the middle of the deepest part of the pool.

We saw out the final evening by our "own pool" with a final chance to catch the glorious late afternoon and evening sunshine filtering through the palm trees as we read and had a last, leisurely swim. We headed into Mijas, parking down the side street and walking up into town and on up to Calle San Sebastien, an asthetically pleasing upwards curving street lined with restaurants and shops and whitewashed houses. The Secret Garden caught our eye and we headed inside and through the back to...the not so secret garden, judging by how busy it was. Sharon and I shared the Argentinian barbecue while Sean and Finn tackled the aptly named Mega-hamburguesas. You'd have needed to unhinge your jaw to get your mouth round one of those. I'm increasingly ambivalent about barbecued meat. Generally I find it tough going with food inevitably getting stuck between my teeth. A sign of age I suppose. This one was nice but a bit too meaty and could have done with some vegetarian balance.

We staggered out stuffed, but still had room for a stop at the nearby gelateria where the boys feasted on yet more ice-creams before waddling back to the car. A full and fitting last night out to end a fine family holiday in the sun of Spain.

Donkey

On Thursday afternoon we returned to Urbanizacion Voltacado and successfully located the Johnston's villa. We had a splendid afternoon relaxing, chatting and nibbling by their pool with Carol and Mark and their friends Gary and Nicola while the combined families played pool and in the pool. Their villa, booked through Mijas Villas was one of the newer vast, airy, tiled affairs with plenty of space to roam around in and a large garden with pool. Eve showed Sean up by doing multiple cartwheels although I didn't know Sean could do a one-handed cartwheel. And his headstand is coming on well too.

Once back in our own holiday house and after a light dinner (everyone had been grazing all afternoon) I headed into Mijas Pueblo myself for an evening stroll. The town was lively with stalls and a band playing in the main square and plenty of people eating and wandering about. I came across a flamenco exhbition in the Alcazabar then wandered slightly off the beaten track to the western end of town. This is more "tipico" and less touristy, with the houses piled up the slope of the mountain on top of one another. After the hubbub of the town centre it was remarkably quiet despite the density of dwellings and I stopped to survey the view to the plains below with peace only broken by the tolling of the bells signalling the hour and the occasional dog bark.

I followed a track that wound round the cliff beneath the bull ring, the hills below tumbling away towards Fuengirola and was surprised to find a very rustic stable in the lee of the bluff with a couple of the many donkeys being stabled for the night. The ubiquitous horses and donkeys and traps that circumnavigate the streets of Mijas have to live somewhere I suppose. There are plenty tethered under the concrete concourse by the main square but I suspect that is a temporary holding area rather than their permanent home. The track carried on and took me beneath the Alcazabar and back to civilisation as dusk fell. On my drive home I nearly piled into the back of a herd of donkeys on the winding Coin road, a feeble red light the only indication they were on the road ahead of me as they were herded across the lane to a back road at the very top of Mijas.

Lazy days in the sun

The remaining days followed a similar pattern to the first. The boys would get up en masse, the DVD player would go on, always slightly too loudly for me to be able to sleep through and Sharon would sleep on, having been disturbed by Angus falling out of the bed in the night, or Rowan thumping his way through the house in search of the toilet or Finn sleepwalking. Angus would typically refuse his cereal while the others mucked about and laughed and ate their toast and jam and fruit and pestered us to go to the pool. The advantage of not having a pool as part of the property is that we aren't worried about Rowan or Angus walking out the door and falling in: the downside is that one of the adults must be with the children to take them over to the top pool. The trips to the pool were generally late morning, up until lunchtime and then again late in the afternoon, before dinner.

The boys enjoyed jumping in with Edie and Sharon bought them more pool toys: noodles (long floats that allowed Rowan and Angus to ride them like horses into the deep end), water pistols (they didn't play with these much) and goggles and masks. Finn's flippers mysteriously disappeared on day one, to our annoyance. Edie and Oscar shared their inflatable crocodile and rubber ring too, so their was plenty to occupy the boys in the pool as well as sunbeds on which they could rest and dry off in the sun. Sharon and I read and joined the boys in the pool and took it in turns to prepare lunch and dinner, passing the time and not worrying about being a slave to the clock. Things have turned a corner with Angus now being old enough that we don't need to worry about naps, nappies and strict routine, although he is still in night-time pull-ups and has chosen to go "for a wee lie-down" most days after his morning stint in the pool. The heat and the late nights have disrupted all the boys to some extent, so it's important to relax when we can.

On Tuesaday afternoon we had a fruitless search for Carol and Mark Johnston's holiday villa in the neighbouring Urbanizacion Voltacado, trawling past numerous sprawling, gated houses in the baking heat. Giving up, we returned to Mijas Pueblo for a wander around and a stop for ice-cream, eventually, after a fruitless search amidst the stairs and terraces of the Alcazabar area. We visited the playpark with possibly the best view of any we've been to, up by the oval bull-ring. Sharon decided to re-attempt to locate Carol's villa with Angus and got lucky. Seeing a curtain twitch she buzzed a gate and found them. Angus spent the rest of the afternoon throwing dive sticks for Cameron and Tom (Gary and Nicola, friends of the Johnstons, were sharing the villa) and having a great time.

For Wednesday lunch we drove down to Cala de Mijas, some 30 minutes' drive from the house down to the A-7 and along towards Marbella. The heat by the beach was only slightly attenuated by the onshore breeze blowing through the beach umbrellas and sunbeds. There was far more people about than we had been used to up in the mountains and my feeling, which the others agreed with, was that we preferred the quieter environs of our villa (quieter that is, when Rowan isn't clamouring endlessly in excited squeals by the pool) to the business of the beach.

That said, the boys had a fine lunch of pizza and pasta bolognese and burgers; all very tasty, according to the recipients. My salade grande was less so. By and large, the food we bought and prepared ourselves was far tastier, in my opinion, than the food in the resturants. Maybe our choice of establishment was the cause or maybe the economic woes of Spain have dictated that cheap food now tastes like cheap food whereas once you could be assured of tasty fare at reasonable prices. Now, if you want decent food you have to pay for it.

Rowan and Angus had a play on the ship climbing frame, we had another of many ice-lollies (hours have been spent selecting ice-creams and poring over lolly boards) then Rowan and I visited a supermarket while the rest headed home. In the evening Sharon escaped into Mijas for a stroll about without children and to sit down for a much-needed coffee. She reported the town had a great vibe in the evening, with people sitting out, enjoying their food and chatting as the evening wore on. We had a fine dinner on the balcony ourselves, seared tuna, octopus with chorizo and egg, ratatouille and potatoes, washed down with wine and the quiet sussurations of the trees around us.

Settling in to Villa Cantarranas

Sunshine! The late night didn't throw the boys out of their inner clock, unfortunately, so it was pretty much their usual wake-up time when the round of scraping chairs, thumping feet and sibling squabble began. The main difference was it was gloriously sunny outside and warm!

Breakfast was served on the balcony looking out over cypresses and through palm trees to the hazy hinterland dotted with villas and fincas that stretched from Fuengirola up to Mijas Pueblo. To our left, half-glimpsed through the foilage, across a small car park, was the so-called top or small swimming pool shared by the 180 houses of the Urbanizacion. To the right, beyond the barbecue and chimineria on the balcony, rose the Sierra de Alpujata, blue-brown in the morning haze. As balcony views go, it is up there with the Rome Cavilieri Hilton as the best we've had. And it was so quiet! Apparently many of the houses of the Urbanizacon are owner-occupied and only a few are let out, so the population at any given time is quite low.

The boys were clamouring for the pool so we got the gear together, begin the sun-cream ritual, and trooped over to the "privado" pool. Snag. The gate appeared to be locked and we had no key! We soon found a side gate and there was a button to press to open the main gate so panic was averted. A family from London had just arrived too, Axel and Jane with their children Edie and Oscar. Axel's mother owned the terraced house right by the side gate so between us we had the prime locations for access to the pool.

The boys were quickly in their stride, second skins on (and armbands for Angus) and into the water. The kidney-shaped pool was fairly deep at one end, ideal for Sean and Finn to start jumping in once their confidence grew. Sharon went in search of a big supermarket and ended up a lot further away than she intended, driving all the way to Marbella to do a "big shop" that would see us through most of the week. She eventually returned to prepare us a sandwich lunch on the balcony then the boys settled into their routine of quiet play indoors with iPods and such like as the afternoon sun reached its hottest.

After a second trip to the pool, we changed and drove into Mijas Pueblo, eventually finding parking down a side street. The memory of visiting it from our stay in Mijas Costa back in October 2007 came back as we trooped into the small network of streets around the town centre, passing donkeys and traps and the usual selection of arts, crafts and leather goods shops. We climbed up a steep staircase and found El Capricho, where we had eaten back in 2007. Its frontage is unassuming, a doorway leading on to a staircase, but once up and inside there is a terrace with a splendid view back over the town up to the encircling mountains. The boys were beginning to flag, their late Sunday night catching up with them, so their enthusiasm for the tasty (though expensive) calamari, gazpacho and seafood paella was low with only Sean showing any real vigour. Rowan insisted on listening to Harry Potter on an iPod.

We eventually took leave (and Finn left his iPod behind - fortunately Sharon was able to claim it the next day) and ushered the children back down to the cars to take them home to bed. Sharon and I were then able to enjoy the peace of the balcony in the twilight and subsequent dusk, watching the swallows darting across the darkening sky and then, as the stars struggled to pierce the last vestiges of daylight, bats traced a more erratic route across the rooftops. It was good to sit with a glass of wine and forget all the troubles of the world.

Long haul to Mijas

After much excitement in the build-up to leaving, not helped by the atrocious weather which has kept the boys penned indoors for large parts of the week, we got up at 7am on Sunday and got the boys dressed, breakfasted and on the road south. With the Scottish school holidays in full swing, but the English ones yet to start, it made plenty sense to book flights from Manchester, as it was around £600-700 cheaper. The down side is a three and a half hour drive to England. Fortunately the torrential rains of the previous 24 hours had abated and driving conditions were much safer and easier than they might have been.

We stopped at Westmoreland services to appease Angus's cries and Finn's sore tummy. They had an excellent soft play area which afforded the boys a chance to let off steam along with their snack. Seventy five minutes later we were at Manchester Airport. We took advantage of the meet and greet Park and Go service and were soon through baggage check-in and security. At first there appeared to be just a bit of a delay to the flight departure and Rowan was becoming increasingly erratic in maintaining attention, running off, hiding under seats and generally not doing what he was told, which is always guaranteed to drive us daft.

Presently, however, it became apparent that there was more than a slight delay. The departure board changed to "More info at 1500" then 1600 then 1700. We should have been away at 1405. From looking out the gate window it appeared there was some sort of engine fault so I suppose we'd rather be on a late plane that flies that on a plane that doesn't get there at all. There was a soft play by the gate and the boys ran themselves ragged, especially Rowan and Angus, who was his usual sweaty self within minutes.

The delay afforded some viewing of the Wimbledon final elsewhere in the terminal. Andy Murray had become the first Briton in 74 years to make the final and was in with a chance of becoming the first Briton since the legendary Fred Perry in 1936 to win the title. He even took the first set off Roger Federer, perhaps the greatest player of the modern era. Alas, as soon as I started watching (not that I'm overly superstitious as a sports spectator, but my viewing of Murray inevitably seems to coincide with his downfall), Federer pinched the second set and a marathon game midway through the third on Murray's serve looked like it would be pivotal. By this time we were in a Frankie & Benny's restaurant, feeding the boys courtesy of meal vouchers from Monarch Airlines. Eventually we were told we would be leaving at 1745 and duly boarded a new plane that had flown in from Faro, only to then be told that fifty of the bags had been misplaced in the transfer and were now being located. It was around 1900 before we took off, some five hours late.

The boys were remarkably patient and relatively well behaved given the boredom of the delay. Finn did well on the flight, not getting too wound-up on take-off and Rowan and Angus were contained. But it was after 2300 local time as we approached southern Spain on a cloudless night. Angus looked out and said "Spain has sparkles on top" as he surveyed the night-lights from the air. Meantime, Andy Murray had lost to Federer, who had claimed his seventh Wimbledon title and his record 17th grand slam title in all.

Once the bags were collected we located our malagacar.com rep who directed us to a bus-stop from where we were transported to the car hire offices. I dealt with the paperwork while Sharon kept the boys amused with a snack out front. We picked up our two cars, a white Toyota Aris for Sharon and a smaller white Seat for me, and drove off into the night, heading west along the E-15 towards Fuengirola. I had Finn and Rowan with me and we managed the initial junctions well so that we made it along to the A-387 in good time before starting the low gear climb up to Mijas Pueblo. The road then took us above Mijas Pueblo, granting us a first glimpse of the spectacular view back down towards the coast as the Coin road wound around the spurs of the Sierra Mijas. From the west end of Mijas I was able to cut back to the edge of town then bear right down the hill and back up into the Urbanizacion Mijas La Nueva. A few bends later and we pulled into the dark, silent car park behind the Villa Cantarranas.

No sign of Sharon, who had left before me. Rowan and Finn were a bit spooked by the cicadas chirruping in the dark and I struggled to locate the key under various flowerpots around the outside of the house. I found it at last and was able to open the door and put on some much needed lights. Fortunately, Sharon arrived soon after, having missed a turn or two but, with Sean as navigator, she had managed to get back on track without too much trouble.

So, after midnight, we were able to get the luggage in, decide on who was sleeping where and have a brief look out from the balcony to the twinkling lights of the Costa del Sol laid out below us. Here's hoping for a peaceful and happy holiday.