Cave tourists

I made the brisk half hour walk down to the Church shop again this morning to celebrate the nine thirty midweek Eucharist there. Once more we were a dozen people, and among the newly arrived visitors was a retired priest and his wife from Norwich diocese. He told me after that the local rural group of churches where he lived had just lost both its full time clergy, and this had left him rather busy, with three funeral as well as regular services to do last week. He was thankful to have his holiday time here pre-booked!

The Europe diocesan website now has a useful page dedicated to requests for locum duty clerics. What with home leave and duties during vacancies, it's quite a challenge to fill all the gaps. The number of places where a ministry to English speaking expatriates has developed continues to grow, especially in France and Spain, as a result of people retiring abroad, if not moving for professional purposes.
 

After the post Eucharist coffee at Rosie's next door, I went off the the Hotel Balcon de Europe to meet a young civilly married couple who requested a blessing ceremony here in Nerja. All the arrangements were made with Fr Geoff during previous visits, and this was my opportunity to meet them and prepare for their big celebration, which will be tomorrow afternoon in a restaurant overlooking Nerja. They showed their bi-lingual Irish wedding certificate, which I needed to see in order to proceed. They are excited that their romantic dream celebration of the new life they've already started together, is about to happen. Weather forecasts for tomorrow are none too comforting. I hope it doesn't rain, as it'll be held outdoors. However, the groom is Irish and the bride Scottish, and it'll take more than wet weather to dampen their enthusiasm for a happy feast.

i went home to lunch, arriving before the rain started. After an hour it stopped and the sun came out, so we drove up to Maro and visited the extraordinary limestone caves. Only discovered fifty years ago by some local lads, the site has been nicely developed for tourism, and has logged over half a million visitors a year, justifiably. One of the largest caverns has been equipped with seating for several hundred, and a level floor created as a performance space. There's an exclusive dance festival which happens here annually each July. We had our photos taken on the way in, and were presented with the opportunity to buy it as we left. While I hate having a commercial photographer take a picture of me without permission like that, the result was decent enough and on impulse we both agreed it was eight euros worth of amusement, if a little cheesy.

The photos I took in the caves can be found here. A tripod would have been a boon companion for perfect picture consistency. However, some of the handheld flashless photographs taken with my new Sony HX5 underground justify my guilty purchase.