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In Which I Finally Get To Insult Ipswich.. From A Distance

March 27, 2008 by Mike

Torremolinos

Route: Marbella - Fuengirola - Benalmadena - Torremolinos

Yesterday? Flip flops and a fleece: recovering from the night before, a little unsure of how the weather would turn out down on the beach.

And today, a 25 mile ride, no more, into the heart of darkness. Or so I thought. But it turns out that.. eek.. I really like Tooor-ray-ma-LEE-nos. I'll be back.

As I (sort of) planned this trip over the years.. well, daydreamed about it when I should have been working.. and enthused to anyone who'd listen, I'd rattle off a list of the highlights I'd be visiting: "St Petersburg and Venice, North Cape and Istanbul, the D-Day beaches, the Crimea and.. Torremolinos. Torremolinos. Shorthand for "mass tourism at its ugliest: high-rise charter English breakfast beer-belly ManYoo shirt sunburnt stuffed donkey kiss me quick Brits Abroad."

I based this deep insight on the song (it goes "Torremolinos TORRaymolinos Torremolinos TORRaymolinos Torremolinos TORRaymolinos" and I'll gladly sing it to you if you ask nicely) and a sort of behind-the-hand snigger that me and my middle-class chums affect at the merest mention of the place.

I've sun-burned my nose in preperation.. wanting to fit in.. and am ready to tie a handkerchief on my head.

Truth is stranger than fiction. Torremolinos earned its reputation because it was the first mass market resort in southern Spain. It still lays claim to being the biggest, with room for 50,000 paying visitors. (It was a village of 3000 fishing folk before the tourism boom.) Yes, it has its share of high rise low rent hotel rooms. Yes.. but less than its fair share. Fuengirola, the next village along, is gruesome in ways Torremolinos can only imagine. Massively, overwhelmingly, utterly awful.

Torremolinos, on the other hand, has a heart of gold: an old town which remains resolutely Spanish; a shopping artery that doesn't *just* sell tourist tatt; fewer high-rise hotels than its younger, brasher neighbours; one of the great secondhand bookshops. (Samantha: I bought a copy of The Lost Language Of Cranes -- there were two copies sitting side-by-side in the bookshop, just as we had on our bookshelves when we married our book collections. Remember? Everyone else: this is a wonderful book.)

It turns out that "Torremolinos TORRaymolinos" is the soundtrack to a bygone age.. the sixties and seventies Brits Abroad.. all prawn cocktails and sombreros.. while all the while, a point I laboured yesterday, the rest of the Costa del Sol now does a decent impression of sixties and seventies Britain at home.

Like St Tropez (I believe?) there are no campsites in Torremolinos. In the French resort, that's specifically to keep the riffraff out. Here, it's because the riffraff have plenty of hotels to stay in. The likes of me settle for a hostel instead. "Close to the action", I am assured. (At this stage I still look forward to Being Horrified by this town.)

But, despite the presence of the National Electronic Darts Championships this week, Torremolinos is empty. The hotel windows are dark, shuttered. The pavements are empty of people and pools of vomit. The karaoke bar right beneath my hotel room doesn't even open: I had been looking forward to Being Affronted By Bad Elvis Impersonators at three in the morning. Waiters stand anxiously at the door to cavernous restaurants, pleading for my custom.

"It was Semana Santa last week, so the Spanish have no money at the moment," says Paul, a waiter in one of the beachfront chiriguitas that, in summer, will bounce with the volume of customers. "And the Brits can't afford to fly out now because airlines put their prices up 'round Easter. To be honest, this week is scarily empty." Just my luck.

Paul is half-Spanish and swapped Britain for the costas as soon as he left school.

He has a mockney accent so Dick van Dyke he can only come from ".. Ipswich, yes. How could you tell? It's a dump, mate. I couldn't wait to leave."

Amen to that;-)

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