We whiled away a couple of hours shopping in El Corte Ingles this morning, had lunch there and drove out of town as far as the Mijas Golf resort to explore the Fuengirola riverside park, which I've passed several times on weekends and seen lots of people there enjoying picnics and barbequeues. On a Friday afternoon however, there were only children playing on the swings and seesaw on the way home from school. We saw a shepherd on horseback herding several hundred sheep along the riverbank, and there was a flock of green parakeets roosting in the unkempt plane trees that provide the recreational area with shade.
For a good deal of the year, until the aquifers are filled with winter rain, the river bed is dry and dusty. The wide dirt track running alongside it is used by walkers, horse rides, bikers and joggers, but unfortunately also by lorries commuting to a building site up river, plus fast car drivers and quad bike riders ignoring main road speed limits and raising huge clouds of dust. It wasn't the most pleasant place to walk, but we persevered for a while, exploring roads up wind of the dirt track on the far side of the river. Much of the open space on the edge of town is given up to golf courses. You need to drive further out to find open countryside to walk in.
In the evening we attended the annual Burns Night supper in St Andrew's church hall, with about forty others sitting down to a traditional meal of smoked salmon, haggis and swede, presented with the usual ceremony accompanied by an excellent Scottish piper - who happens to be of Argentinan origin and Scottish ancestry. His daytime role is as one of the local English speaking funeral directors. It was an excellent enjoyable occasion, very well organised, and was asked to say Burns' famous grace 'Some hae meat ...' in the best approximation of a Scottish accent I could manage. It made me think of my dear friend Peter Slessor, and those long summer evenings at his house in Sauvergny, eating kippers, drinking red wine and telling stories.
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