Ronda

After an early breakfast at the hotel we got the train back to the airport to pick up our hire car – a trip that entailed a certain amount of confusion, firstly because they were expecting us to arrive on an airplane and secondly because it took us a while to work out the alien satnav and we ended up driving round the short-stay car park for a bit instead of immediately hitting the open road. After that the drive was largely uneventful and the scenery was beautiful: mountains and golden rolling fields of wheatstalk and sunflowers with occasional green patchworks of olive trees. The narrow Rondean streets were a little hairy in the unfamiliar BMW but we found our hotel by the Old Bridge over El Tajo, the gorge the town is built across, and then walked up its edge to the Puente Nuevo, from where the view was quite shaky for those of us with a vertiginous disposition. After we’d taken in enough of the view there was coffee, the Bullring, the sports shop, pasta and a pleasantly funky hotel (apparently we were in the Edward Hopper room…)

Of course...!