Overcast, overheated

The sky's been overcast but the temperatures remain high. The humidity is quite debiliating, and for the first time we're needing to use the ceiling fans in the house to keep cool at night. We did make an effort to go out for lunch again today, travelling to Torrox Pueblo, which Clare hadn't visited before. Although it's several hundred metres up above the sea, it was equally hot and humid up there, so we took refuge in a relatively cool bar on the main square for a meal that included fried aubergines slices dressed with molasses and salt, plus albondigas, a meat ball speciality.

We walked the streets for an hour afterwards, finding some remnants of its ancient buildings threaded among nineteenth and twentieth century streets. This mediaeval arab trading town expanded greatly as a result of its large suger refinery in the nineteenth century, and then again due to tourism and the influx of German and English expatriate residents in the later twentieth. Torrox proclaims itself to have the best climate in Spain, but on a day like this, you have to wonder.

 

Torrox Pueblo visit

After a morning preparing for tomorrow's services I went out for an afternoon drive to Torrox pueblo. I've driven through the seaside holiday resort of the same name a few times, but not turned inland to discover the hill town, perched on a high promontory in between a couple of steep sided valleys that merge into one wider below the town in the direction of the sea. The N340/A7 Autovia runs across the wider valley on an impressive viaduct and through tunnels either side. When you ascend to town level, you have a spectacular view of this road and the coastal plain  beyond.

As you enter the town, perched on the edge of the promontory is the Ermita de Nuestra Señora de las Nieves. A convent for Franciscan Friars was requested in 1646 by the town council, but the building, including a hospice, presumably for travellers, wasn't finished until 1710. The community seems to have been dissolved and its assets seized in 1836, but its Marian sanctuary remained as one of this region's places of pilgrimage. 

The remaining old convent buildings, behind the Ermita, overlooking the valley below have been modernised to provide an office base for sections of the town's social welfare services.

There was a Roman settlement on the coast, but the hill town developed under Moorish rule and had a key role in the silk trade between Baghdad and Granada. The large but simple 16th century main Parish Church dedicated to  Nuestra Señora de la Encarnacion sits above the spacious main square and Ajuntamento building.

There are many restaurants and small hotels, also many foreign residents and tourists, English and German, so it's all well looked after and has an air of prosperity about it. The tourism propaganda claims that it has the best climate in Spain. 

I only had time for a cursory exploration of the town and how to navigate around it. It'll be a new place to bring Clare for lunch and a leisurely walk around when she comes in a month from now. Seen from a sorts of angles, it's an real attraction  on the way up into the Sierras de Almijara on the road to Competa, another Moorish pueblo blanco.

On the return trip I bought a pack of fresh baby cod fillets at Lidl's for Sunday lunch, actually there's enough for two days meals at an excellent low price. On the whole, fresh food is that much less costly here, that I have to be careful while I'm on my own, not to buy too much, and end up wasting what I can't get through before it goes off, or over-eating. There's an art I'm still learning about how much fresh food stocked is enough. So far so good!