Spanish Holiday Villages

Hello! Pilgrim's managed to get a look in at long last! This is because I'm using the computer in the Club House where I'm staying, rather than the fancy, if temperamental, mobile phone. It's certainly quicker to type on this keyboard, but I can't post photos. I might be able to if I'd brought all the right wires and CD roms, but I'm supposed to be travelling light - it's bad enough having to carry chargers for everything, and a plug adaptor, without any more equpiment!

I've had another wander round the complex this morning, and even gone a few hundred yards up the road to the next one. Although I've seen pictures of Spanish holiday resorts, not to mention hopeful purchasers of holiday homes on programmes like A Place in the Sun, I had never really imagined quite what it is like here. Clearly there was nothing along this bit of coast 30 or so years ago, and now there are miles and miles of these villages built just so that people can come here on holiday or to retire. The newness gives it all a bit of a wild west frontier kind of feel. Almost everywhere one goes in the world there are new buildings - it just seems strange for there to be no old ones at all. I haven't found the beach yet, although I gather that there is one only a short walk away - the other side of a dual carriageway which is to all intents and purposes a motor-way. Fortunately there are footbridges to cross by, although they do shake rather alarmingly when a big lorry speeds by underneath!

The last couple of days have been an opportunity to reflect back on the business of travelling itself. Since I left Saumur, I've had a strange variety of experiences of travel. Because of the much lower differential between first and second class in France and Spain, I've done the long journeys in first class - in Spain you even get fed, like on Eurostar, so that pretty well makes up for the extra cost of the fare. The shorter, local trips I've done second class - most of these trains don't even have a first. Getting to and from the station, I've used buses where I can, although in some cases I've had to resort to taxis. I also discovered the joys of the Madrid Metro.

When I was organising the various hotels along the way, I sorted the options on the booking web-site by "cheapest room" and went for the first one that had reasonably decent customer reviews. There is something interestingly incongruous about being pampered in a first class railway carriage with warm hand-wipes, free newspapers and cooked breakfast, then being taken by taxi to a hostel-like establishment above a souvenir shop with rooms the size of shoe-boxes, and walls so thin that you could hear every word of conversation in the room next door.

I've never really travelled abroad alone before. As a child I travelled with my parents, and before I met Roger I did one solo trip to Greece, but in an organised party. Since we got married, I've been off my own in the UK a few times, but the only time I went abroad without Roger was to Israel, again in a group. I wondered what it would feel like, and I've actually found it surprisingly relaxing. To know that, whatever difficulties you get into, the only person who is going to get you out of them is yourself or God is quite liberating. As is the knowledge that however stupid or disorganised you are, the only person to suffer will be you! The biggest problem I've encountered is having to take my luggage with me to the loo in bus and train stations; although even that had its uses in Cordoba bus station - a suitcase makes a good door lock!

Now, here I am in a place where millions of English people come on their annual pilgrimage to the sun. The weather is very pleasant in late April, but I'm sure I'd find it too hot, as well as too noisy and crowded, in July and August. I'm off to Granada and the Alhambra tomorrow, which will be the first time I have seen much of the European Muslim heritage - the architecture in the north of Spain has some Moorish influences, but this area was in the hands of the Moors for much longer.