Competa - Start of a New Chapter

This afternoon, we arrived at Competa... a mountain village 50 klms from the coast... 200 klms southwest of Granada. We are meeting up with our friends Joan and Johnny... for a seven day walking holiday. The place came with high recommendations from our friends Peter and Lorraine... they were here six months ago and loved the place. The routine is that our host (Peter and Sue) take us out each day for a walk to one of the surrounding 'white villages'... the walks will exhaust us... we come back to Competa to recover with food and drink... rest up... and do the same routine the next day.

We are not sure what we will find at the 'white villages'... or find along the way. However, walking is a great way to meet people. Catching up with news from Joan and Johnny will take up a good proportion of the time. The rest of our group is seven ladies from a London walking group... of retirement age. Johnny and I will be hard pressed to retain a male influence... forget about dominance. Time will tell... either we will end up doing a lot of fetching and carrying... or we'll do none at all.

The accommodation is character packed... a sprawling terrace in the old part of town... at a guess, I'd say 17th century.. walls 2 foot thick... absolute delight, except there is no internet.

Competa has modest Roman origins. Those of you conversant with your Latin will know that Competa means 'Crossing of Roads'... but wasn't sufficiently important to get a mention in any dispatches back to Rome. Streets feature Arabic names... so it is likely that Competa enjoyed a long period of Islamic rule. We had lunch in the village at the bottom of the hill (Torrox) that has a village patron who is Arabic (or so the status in the middle of the village square would suggest)... and the area is part of the Andalusia... which was the last stronghold of the Arabic empire in Iberia. Torrox was celebrating its Saints Day... we didn't see who the local saint was. The matrons of the village were parading in their flamenco dresses... toddlers were fashioned in similar style... while the old men watched in sombre silence propping up the temporary bars built in the Plaza. The focus was on a competition between restaurants... as to who had the biggest music amplifiers. If noise is an indicator of excitement, Torrox was heading for a great night.

Tomorrow's activity is the test. Our host will watch how successfully each of us completes this first walk... and choose an agenda for the remainder of the week to reflect our fitness. From the look of the ladies in the London walking group, I don't think we will be last to the finish line.