Tuesday 8 February - Alhaurin de la Torre and Marbella(ish)

Where's Bertie? He's in a car park a stone's throw from the sea about 10km to the east of Marbella (exact location: 36.48867, -4.76954)
Weather: Overcast morning, with some sunny intervals developing this afternoon. Feeling cool (even if Bertie's thermometer told us it was 18 degrees!).

We were away from our parking spot in Alhaurin straight after breakfast for the 6km drive to the start of the hiking trail I'd selected for today. My research into route options hadn't been extensive: I did a search on Wikiloc, downloaded the first two on the list (which happened to overlap each other for about 500m) and opted for the one that didn't indicate it had a lengthy scramble involved. Whilst I had no firm information as to what the terrain would be like, we've done enough walking in Spain that I had a notion as to what I might encounter. The reality was that the first section went up the bed of a dry stream/river and was rocky and slow. The next section was not quite as rocky, but was steep, so slow. Then I topped out, just under 5km into the route, having taken 1 hour and 10 minutes to get there. Surely the descent would be quicker? It was, but not for the first kilometre, that I managed no quicker than the ascent. Finally the terrain included some sections that were runnable, in due course taking me to a forest track, then to the road and my start point where Mick (and Bertie!) was patiently waiting.

Paths

Views. As you can see, the cloud wasn't far above me. 

There was a quick consultation of the map before we moved on, to check that returning to Alhaurin was the sensible thing to do. It was, so we did, intending to stay another night.

Arriving there too early to go out for lunch, time was killed with the usual coffee/crossword combo, then we dedicated ourselves to watching the 4 workmen who are currently applying a lacquer coat to the imprinted concrete surrounding the parking area. Their inefficiency was quite outstanding. I had assumed that the sections that had already been lacquered were all done yesterday, but having witnessed their progress today I now think they've been at the job for at least a week.

At 1pm we adjudged it a reasonable time (by Spanish standards) to start thinking about lunch, so into town we headed. It's a town with a lot of eateries, but none we found was displaying a menu del dia. In fact, none of them was displaying even a menu. After doing a full round, we decided to go to the Italian place we'd espied yesterday.

Hmmmm. Not pizza for lunch today then.

Another round ensued, then I resorted to Google. The end result was a five minute walk to a Chinese.

A decent meal, but not the Spanish menu del dia we had been hankering after.

I do fear that the availability of menus de los dias (hmmm, not sure which word(s) should be pluralised) has been affected by Covid, with restaurants no longer able to offer such bargain meals. I had expected prices to rise, but the Menus we're seeing are still at the same prices as before (9-11 Euros in the main), but it seems there are fewer being offered. Or maybe it's just the places we've been and it's too early in our tour to make such an assessment.

Back at the car park we weren't immediately able to enter Bertie as, of all the places in all of the huge car park, we rounded his rear end to find a chap having a wee right outside of his door. Given the inappropriateness of the public place, I didn't politely turn my back, but tapped my foot and tutted whilst he finished, then stepped over the puddle to get in Bertie's door. That wasn't what caused us not to stay another night in Alhaurin, but rather we'd decided to get a headstart on tomorrow by going to our next destination today.

The place we'd intended to visit next was La Cala de Mijas, but comments on Park4Night indicated that the Aire there had also been closed down this week. I now doubt that information, as in passing I spotted lots of motorhomes, in a place that matched my recollection of the photo I'd seen. They were all within a confined area of a huge car park, so I suspect that motorhomes had spilled over into the rest of the car park and it was those who were asked to leave. Given we were on a dual-carriageway and had already passed the entrance by the time I formed this view, we didn't turn around to see if there was a space or any prohibition notices.

Arriving here to the east of Marbella we made a meal of settling on somewhere to stay. The first two car parks we visited had plenty of space, but Mick was unconvinced that they were appropriate for us to overnight. A check of photos on Park4Night suggested all of the options (of which there are many hereabouts, all positively reviewed) had the same issues. Eventually, having spent faaaaaaarrrrrrr too long staring at maps on my phone, I concluded that the best option for tonight was to just park on a street somewhere.

We did exactly that, but only a few moments later I spotted another car park (just behind where we were) on Google Maps, so we tentatively pulled in, unsure if it was public, or whether it belonged to the adjacent bar. Mick deployed his best Spanish and established that it's not their land, so hopefully we will have a quiet night here - except for the noise of the waves, which really aren't very far distant.

Statue of the day (trying to hide behind a large flowering bush)