We’ve been pretty idle these last few days. It’s been hot. That’s our excuse. As a result we’ve not strayed far from the water: mostly the pool here at Forest Hills, today down on the main Estepona beach. The weather has been very clear and we can see Gibraltar easily from our terrace and also North Africa as it comes across towards the Rock too.

We are really having a good time. This little resort is so nice, up here in the hills. Because we are right on top of a pinnacle with barely any land around us, there seem to be no mozzies or bitey things at all. Makes sleeping with all the sliding glass windows and doors open such a pleasure, a step away from sleeping under the stars. And it’s quiet around the pool. No children at the moment at all. And I suppose it’s been a while since we enjoyed the Med. in such a dedicatedly lazy way. We never spend a week lazing by the pool or on the beach in Cyprus – there’s always too much for us to do. So, it’s nice….. We are both very brown indeed.

If we were more active there are loads of things to do, most of which we’ve done on previous trips so we don’t feel that guilty. Cadiz, Seville, Granada, Malaga, Gibraltar, Tangier, Marbella, Ronda are all easy days out from here and fantastic places, well worth a visit. We are going to Tarifa later in the week which has an old town, massive sand dunes and the ruins of a Roman town…..

Today we went down to Estepona and parked in one of the underground car parks beside the beach. The main beach is very long, with restaurants dotted along the back of it and showers and loos too. We perched down at a restaurant called Bikini Beach and used their very comfortable padded loungers. A lounger and an umbrellas was 7 euro, so cheaper than the other beach. The sand is a sort of dark grey gritty sand and there are pebbles out in the sea. It was ok though. I spent a lot of time in the water floating with my noodle.

Bob had lunch from the restaurant and it was a lovely chicken caesar salad. I had brought my cold meat as a packup. We had a really nice day down there. I would go back again definitely.

We left the beach at about 5pm and went to Carrefour to get some supplies. It really is a fabulous hypermarket. Why don’t we have such amazing places???? They have everything, including a massive fresh fish counter. We wanted some fish for dinner so we bought 2 enormous fillets of hake. We also bought some scallops which are huge. And 2 Wagyu steaks for another dinner. We’re going to eat out a couple of times this week so only needed 2 dinners really.

Bob cooked the hake very simply, pan frying them with seasoning and adding some coriander at the end. Absolutely delicious and you could taste the freshness. They were too big in the end to have the scallops as well so we froze them for another night.