First we have to go back to late November 2010 to understand why we chose Spain as our destination. Out of the blue, I received a phone call from a Company called Heritage Resorts. They offered us one weeks stay in one of their apartments at a special discounted rate of £49 in February, or £79 in April. The only date that all three of us were on holiday was April, so we decided to choose the week 16-23 April, although this would cause a problem for me immediately!
Heritage Resorts base their week from Saturday to Saturday. The Company I work for base their week from Sunday to Sunday! So on the Saturday we should be checking into the resort, I would still be at work! Worse, the shift I was doing was my late shift (14:30-22:30). We had to fly to Malaga, and the cheapest option was by Easy Jet departing from Gatwick. We decided to hire a car in Spain, so I booked a car through the website http://www.doyouspain.com/ who told us to collect the car at the airport from the rental company Record Go.
There were only 2 flights out of Gatwick available to us on the Sunday. One departed at 05:40, the other departed at 19:30. As the evening flight would not arrive at Malaga until 22:30, I was worried about driving a strange car, on strange roads, with unfamiliar road signs, at night! I chose the 05:40 flight, although it would mean I got very little sleep in the process. How little sleep, was a surprise to me, as events conspired against me to abort the holiday before it had even begun!
Now I will give a day by day account of our adventures.
It all started on Thursday 14th April. In the morning, I had to take my wife to the doctors for a blood test appointment. As I parked outside the doctors my Land Rover showed a warning light. The picture looked like a car with its doors open. We checked all the doors, but could not see anything wrong. After taking my wife back home, I had no more time to investigate the warning light that day before I had to set off for work.
Friday 15th April. When I took my wife to work in the morning, the warning light came on again. Once I got home I checked the cars operation manual and discovered that the warning light was to do with the ACE (Automatic Cornering Enhancement) system being faulty. I checked under the bonnet and discovered the ACE hydraulic fluid reservoir was very low. As I hadn't checked under the bonnet for a few months, I topped up the reservoir with fluid and then drove off to my local garage to try and get some bulbs for the dashboard that needed replacing. On the way to the garage the warning light came back on again! At the garage, a mechanic pointed out that the system was leaking fluid from a corroded pipe behind a front wheel. Now I was beginning to panic! The garage did not keep the pipes in stock, if they ordered them in, they would not arrive until Monday. To replace the pipes would take the best part of a day to do as the radiator would have to be removed first! There was no way my car could be repaired before we set out for Gatwick!
What I decided to do was stock up with loads of hydraulic fluid, and just keep topping up the reservoir frequently and hope that my car got me to Gatwick without any major mishaps!
Saturday 16th April started off OK, but once I was at work, my plans started to unravel. I was due to finish work at 22:30, and was looking forward to catching the 22:34 train home. Unfortunately my colleague was delayed getting to work and did not arrive until 22:40. To add insult to injury, the next train home at 22:54 was cancelled by London Midland. So I had to wait until 23:30 before I finally left London, heading for home. Once home, I managed to get one hours sleep before we set off to Gatwick.
Saturday morning started off relatively well. I made a single stop to top up the fluid in the car, and we arrived safely at the parking lot at Gatwick. When I handed over the car, I was asked if I wanted to have the car valeted and delivered to the airport when we arrived back. Considering the problem I have with the car, I declined the offer!
We arrived at the airport, checked in, and boarded the flight without any problems. I managed to doze for an hour during the flight. I couldn't discover how to tilt the seats back a bit so I could relax. So we arrived at Malaga at 09:30, Spanish time. I then had to go and collect the hire car. That's when the fun and games started!
It is common policy for the car hire firms to charge you for a full tank of petrol, we were charged
€75 (more about that later), and they wanted to charge us an extra insurance for any damage or punctured tyres we might have. If we didn't take the insurance, we would be liable to pay €300 for any damage. The first car they gave me had the nearside mirror casing practically falling off the car. Also there was a bolt in one of the rear tyres, and one of the rear lenses was broken. Not happy with the car, I went back to the hire desk who told me to take the car down to level -2 where they would change the car. This they did, only car number 2 had a bald tyre! Car number 3 had a broken front and rear lens, and extensive body damage down the nearside! Car number 4 had another bald tyre! Finally car number 5 was all in one piece and we could begin our journey to the resort.
We arrived at our destination at the Playa Real, Marbesa, around lunch time, and collected the keys to our apartment. The complex was called El Toro, and the views from the apartment were stunning! We had been given one of the top floor 
apartments, so we could see the sea in one direction, and the mountains behind us. You could only gain entry to the complex via an electric 
operated gate. Without our keys, we couldn't get in or out! We had our own communal swimming pool to use too! It was a very spacious 2 bedroom apartment. The fixtures and fittings were of a high standard too. As soon as we unpacked we all had a 3 hour siesta! Later we went for a walk along the beach. Although it was sunny, it was very windy, keeping the temperature down. In 
the evening we went to a local supermarket (OpenCor) to get some milk, bread and some meat to eat. Later in the evening we went to the restaurant in the main hotel complex (Roberto's) and availed ourselves of the special offer of 2 pizzas for the price of one, shared between the 3 of us.
Monday, we went to Marbella to visit their weekly market. The weather was overcast, but still 
warm. The girls bought jewellery, some strawberries and tomatoes. I bought 2 leather belts. 
Then we visited a larger supermarket and stocked up on food for the week. Then we went back to the apartment, cooked ourselves some dinner and had an early night.
Tuesday, was very cloudy. So we decided to go to Gibraltar. Unfortunately, it was still cloudy when we got to Gibraltar. The clouds were so low, the top of the rock was into the cloud base. We walked across the runway into the town. Had a stroll through the shopping precinct before 
taking the cable car to the top of the rock. There we had some very close encounters with the Barbary macaques! Once back down to ground level it started to rain, so we beat a hasty retreat back across the border, stopping off at a McDonalds for a hot cup of coffee, only to find their coffee came in tiny cups, two slurps and it was gone!
Wednesday, we ventured up into the Sierra Navada, and visited the delightful town of Ronda. We even found the sunshine too! The roads through the mountains twist and turn with sheer drops off the edge, and no barriers to stop you going over the edge if you made a mistake! On the way there, we saw farms with groves of Olive trees, orange trees, and a few lemon trees too. We passed through a small village that had some market stalls and my wife decided to buy 2kg of oranges! God knows how we are going to get through that many oranges by the end of the week! Once we got to Ronda, we had lunch in a local restaurant, then headed back to the apartment. In the evening we spent an hour in the fitness centre, because the indoor pool
was full due to the bad weather. By the time we got back to the apartment, the weather had cleared up and I braved a quick dip in the outside pool!As the evening progressed, my wife began to feel ill. So much so,
my daughter and I had to go to a chemist to get 
some medication.
Thursday, we decided to visit Nerja, specifically an aqueduct at Maro. On the way there, we stopped to fill the car with petrol as it was nearly empty. It only cost me €40 to fill it up! How the car hire company can justify charging us €75 is something I would have liked to ask them! When we got there, we found the aqueduct was covered in scaffolding undergoing maintenance and repairs! We then went back to the apartment as my wife was still not feeling well, and now my daughter was feeling unwell too! The evening brought on a heavy thunderstorm, so we all snuggled up on the sofa and watched some TV.
Friday morning, we had to attend a presentation by the resort. They wanted us to invest a lump sum of over four figures, plus an annual top up for a weeks free holiday every year at one of their 31 resorts all over the world. Because of the Spanish anti-harassment laws, we could easily decline the offer. With my wife still not feeling well, my daughter had the sniffles, and being a very generous girl, passed the sniffles on to me! So now all three of us were feeling under the weather. Despite not feeling 100% we were determined to keep going! Later in the afternoon, we just went exploring along the coast in the car as it was still raining. The thunderstorm came back again in the evening, and we discovered the apartment had heaters in the bedrooms. So for the first time all week they were warm and cosy at night!
Saturday, our last day in Spain. After packing everything, I noticed our suitcase was a lot heavier than when we brought it out! My wife told me she would sort it out at the airport once she could
weigh it. After handing in the keys to the reception, we headed for Fuengiro
la, to try and find the market. Unfortunately, my SatNav couldn't locate it, and driving around town for 30 minutes didn't help either. Then we headed up into the national park (Parque Natural Torcal de Antequera), north of Malaga and enjoyed some spectacular views - well we did if the clouds moved out of the way!
Finally, we made our way back to Malaga. My wife insisted on buying more food, despite my misgivings that we had more food than we could take with us. We arrived at the airport and returned the car. On
ce inside the airport, we found a check-in desk with the scales still switched on. The suitcase weighed 30kg, and my wife then started to empty the suitcase to bring the weight down. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't fit everything into our had baggage. In the end, we had to eat a loaf of bread, a packet of salami, a litre of red wine, a litre of yoghurt drink, and a couple of oranges! She also managed to split her brand new leather holdall trying to stuff too much into it! Also she broke the zip of another bag! She was not a happy bunny! When we checked in, all my wife's efforts paid off, as we sailed through without a single hitch.With 2 stops to top up the leaking fluid in the car, we finally made it home without any further incident at 04:00 Sunday morning.
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