Ancient and modern hill village

After last night's rain, cloud cover remained but more downpours seemed less likely as we reached midday, so we drove up and inland from Nerja to visit the ancient hill village of Frigiliana, dating back to the time of the Moors. The soil of the area is rich and fertile, and we were struck by the terraces of apricot and avocado groves decorating the contours of the valley below the village. 

Expansion took place along the adjacent ridge below the steep main hillside, after a factory was built here in the seventeen century to process sugar cane from valleys lower down. It was constructed of pale yellow brick and stands out, ugly and incongruous, but interesting against the backdrop of small white painted houses side to side in lanes and alleyways running across and down the steep slopes. Cane is now processed elsewhere, but the liquor is brought to the old factory in large drums for bottling. Parts of the factory have been converted to retail regional craft products, and as a place where unique local products including 'cane honey' and local  wines. Malaga regional viniculture make great use of the aromatic Muscat grape, in sweet desert and aperitif wines, also semi sweet and dry table wines. The dry is my favourite. As grapes generally thrive in poor rocky soil, and soil is so rich in this area, I suspect the red variety don't do so well. They do a wine that appears to use a local red grape to impart flavour to a cane sugar fementation judging by its distinctive taste. I wondered what the coach party of French tourists, visiting at the same time as us, made of this local tipple. 

The village was a sheer delight, with flowers growing wherever possible, streets beautifully paved, patterned throughout using the distinctive back and white pebbles seen also in Nerja's old town streets. With very few exceptions, everything was in good repair and well maintained. I imagine a great deal of work has been done to achieve this most pleasing environment. There were no telephone or electricity cables slung between eaves or across streets, no open drains or gutters. Every kind of service that could be buried was buried, except for the satellite dishes on chimneys. A great work of renovation and restoration planning. For me, the piece de resistance and symbol of pride and self confidence were the custom made cast iron drain and service access covers bearing a symbol of the village and the name of the municipality.

Altogether it's an expensive make-over of an historic asset, but so worthwhile. The place has many small shops and the narrow streets are not cluttered with outside merchandising, making it easy to get about un-hindered. Going into cool dark shops to look is part of the enchantment of the place. Hopefully in the long term it will be profitable with the multitudes of visitors and pilgrims to the many small eating places, renowned for their locally sourced cuisine. We lunched well in a restaurant with a small terraced garden, and it didn't rain until it was time to pay the bill. Soon after, the sun came out and stayed out the rest of our walk around. You'll find a slideshow of our walkabout here.