El Pinet

Maggie has known her friend Jane since they were 9 and at school together. It would be ungentelmanly of me to say how long ago that was but it is a long, long time.

Jane and Rolf are renting a cave just 30 minutes down the road. We've been to theirs to drink their beer and they came here for the melon and to look askance at the traditional rice with rabbit and snails at the restaurant in Raspay. Yesterday we drove to the coast. For us the coast nearly always means Santa Pola because it's the town we first stayed in when we came to Spain.

The Med was sill there looking very nice. The sun was still shining. Santa Pola performed its role as Spanish seaside town admirably. We strolled we gawped, we ate, we strolled again.

After lunch, around 6pm, we went on to El Pinet. It's a funny little beach we said. The houses are built along the edge of the beach, there's a dusty road that runs behind the houses, a couple of old fashioned restaurants painted green and a whole heap of Dutch camper vans parked under the pines by the road. It's so different to Santa Pola or Guardamar or Benidorm.

The houses, the restaurants, the dusty road and the pines (but not the Dutch) were all there. But so were thousands of Spanish holidaymakers. Every house had been rented out to a family. Grans and Aunties and Dads and Mums sat on their terraces snoozing, watching the world go by, playing cards or listening to the football on the radio as they recovered from Sunday lunch. Some family members were doing those exact same things but on the beach. The small child sitting in a bucket to swill off the sand amused me and reminded me of sitting on the drainer to have a wash 50 years ago in Yorkshire.

Written 6 July 2009