In remembrance

I drove to La Garnatilla in good time this morning to conduct a memorial service for a long standing English inhabitant of the village. It's something was I asked to do and prepared for a month ago, but this was the first time to meet all the family and friends, not just the widow. There were twenty of us in the simple, beautifully kept little 17th century cruciform church, dedicated to St Cecilia. The parish priest came to join us. His three main churches are down in Motril Puerto, plus this one. I was glad of an opportunity to converse with him in Spanish. As all the Catholic liturgy books were available in the sacristy beforehand, I was able to find a Spanish prayer for someone who'd died after a long illness, and I used it at the beginning of the service.

Afterwards, the gathering drove down to the coast road and along to neighbouring Salobrenia for a memorial lunch together, in a favourite restaurant right on the beach, full of happy memories, as guests of the departed. The closest family members slipped away together during the pre-lunch drinks to visit a cherished cove, and consign the cremated remains to the sea, in a specially designed urn made of salt, enabling it to dissolve and disperse the ashes in a measured way over a space of time. Such a nice dignified idea. Scattering ashes on the sea on this day would in any case have been out of the question

The food was very good and plentiful, and the meal was long and leisurely. We were all seated at a long table outside, but under shelter, and there was a lovely cooling wind. Salobrenia's old town is a spectacular sight being a hill town on a promotory in the coastal plain. 

It's somewhere to look forward to re-visiting and exploring fully with Clare when she comes, two weeks today.

Afterwards, I returned to Nerja along the N340 coast road all the way. It's the first time I've had an opportunity to do this, and it made the three quarters of an hour journey most enjoyable. I was struck by how quiet the old road is between La Herradura and Maro nowadays. It's only a couple of decades since this was one of Spain's key trunk roads.