La Cala de Mijas

There is no marina at La Cala de Mijas so it doesn’t get many visiting yachts but there is a lovely beach and we stayed at anchor just outside the yellow buoys which mark out the swimming area. The reason we picked out La Cala de Mijas to visit is that some really good friends from right back at the beginning of my career have a villa very close to the beach and the timing worked out perfectly with us travelling east in BV just as our friends were in the villa for their summer holiday. A vague plan hatched in March had come to fruition!

We spent several days at anchor enjoying the town with its cafés, iceceam shops and restaurants, plus, because there is a ferretería (hardware store) very close to the beach, we also took the opportunity to get a new gas bottle. One had run out whilst we were in Gibraltar but Camping Gaz is significantly cheaper in Spain than in Gibraltar, or indeed the UK, so we waited to replace it. Must be my small amount of Scottish blood making itself felt.

We also spent some time in the villa enjoying lovely long warm evenings by the pool, glass in hand with the aromas of the barbecue wafting past as we chatted away catching up. We planned to sail on Sunday and on Monday visit Mijas, which is a traditional old Andalucian 'white-washed town’ located on the hillside above us.

When Sunday 21 July came around we wondered where to sail to for the day. The beach at La Cala de Mijas is great but our friends had swum from BV there and they wanted to have a go at sailing. We therefore sailed east a short distance towards Fuengirola. It’s largely a major tourist hotel and beach spot and so, to make things more interesting, we anchored with the view of the mediaeval Moorish fortress to look at rather than the hotels further down the beach.

Almost as soon as the anchor had dug into the sand, BV was transformed into a diving and swimming platform. The children’s enthusiasm was infectious and before long everyone was doing their best to outperform each other leaping into the water.

It was great fun and only stopped for a picnic lunch in the cockpit.

After lunch, as you can see from the picture on the right, the tricky question of how to deal with a troublesome elder brother was also solved – chain him to the dinghy!




The sail back was into wind so we had a lovely time gently beating backwards and forwards before dropping anchor again at our spot off La Cala de Mijas for sundowners.

“Hi Nige!!!”

For the family photo above I suggested they say ‘Cheese’ but they just shouted “Hi Nige!!!” (a chum who lives in their village back home).

After a long and very enjoyable sundowners we found that we had finally put the world to rights and it was time to employ child slave labour to row everyone back to the beach.

As Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows said, “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”.