Made it Ma, Top of the World! (Part 1)

If my memory serves me right ( and I know I does because I've Googled it to check!) James Cagney made the above comment perched on the top of an oil refinery in the movie, White Heat. Well, if you drive to Arboleas and turn left - trust me, you get to see the Top of the World. Absolutely stunning views and scary roads, well I say road - but there wasn't tarmac the whole way across the mountains.

If it is a day when we are not due to play golf, then our mornings usually start with the following conversation over breakfast - so, what do you want to do today - I tell you, retirement is tough.

Anyway, when I played golf last week I decided to go looking for 2 golf balls I had lost in the ravine on the 4th and whilst down there something rather nasty bit me on the top of my foot (don't worry, I haven't any photos to post). Anyway, a couple of days later and my whole foot had swollen up, was burning hot, incredibly itchy and very red - and if I walked on it - it got worse, so on this particular morning the question was easily answered - anything that doesn't involved standing or walking.

Having ventured to El Cortijo Grande earlier in the week, we decided to have another drive out for lunch. One of the places we had considered moving to was Arborleas, about half an hour inland. There was a new development of villas being built there which Neil had been really keen on and so we decided to have a drive and so how the development was coming along.

Once there, we found the whole site a bit of a disappointment, not only had there been no progress since we visited last September - but there are also no builders there anymore, it would seem sales haven't been as they would hope and so they have stopped building and in the current climate I cannot imagine any progress for some time. It would seem our choice not to buy one of them was a good one.

The villas are at the highest point in Arboleas and so we decided to drive a little further along the road and see where it led to. For once we had remembered to put the map in the car and there were plenty of green edging along this one road into the hills and the code says that green edges mean 'scenic' - ok, let's go!

At first we travelled several kilometres through several pockets of villas snuggled into rolling hills..........and then we started to climb........and climb.......and climb. One of the reasons I had suggested going along this road was a red wine that we drink on a fairly regular basis - it costs about €1.75 a bottle and goes down incredibly easily, called Los Molinas. The next village on the map from Arboleas was Los Molinas, so we thought this was as worth a visit. Once we reached Los Molinas we had a choice, left took us on a plain road to Lubrin, right took us along a scenic road to Albanchez. What I didn't check was why this scenic route also had a dotted red edging as well as the green.

Had we known before we turned right, that the key for a red dotted edging was 'Difficult or Dangerous section of road' - we may have gone left, instead in ignorance of what was ahead except the promise of some scenic views we turned right.................!