Ok I know it´s now Wednesday am … I really must catch up! At least I´m up mega early so should get this posted before anyone logs on. Woke up really early and decided to go up on the roof with my tea to play with Mori cat who has been up for hours, but it is still SO dark … seems only a few weeks ago that I could play ball at 6am in the light!

Anyway back to Tuesday. Another slightly slow day for me as was awake a lot in the night due to the storm; I probably would have dozed through most of it but little Mori was very unimpressed and took ages to settle. At least the air has cleared a little and it definitely seems to be getting slowly cooler (and darker!), AND the rain has given our filthy old jeep a good power wash!

Does feel like Autumn is coming although we are so lucky here as I described these months in Spain to a friend in the UK the other day as like the English summer without the rain! Things are also slowly becoming quieter. My friend Emma in her “Have Your Say” article talked about how she liked the fact that Almerimar was a seasonal resort and we residents got the beaches to ourselves for most of the year. I agree but at times do find it a little quiet in the winter, probably because I lived in a fairly busy part of the UK. I always feel more comfortable when there are people around so in Winter will have to adjust my exercise times so that I´m not the lone runner down the beach.

Overall I think it has been a busy Summer for the restaurants and bars here, the square in particular has been pretty mobbed in the evenings with all tables full and nowhere to park. However I think the main season is still too short for most businesses as it didn´t really seem to get going until virtually August. To me August was the busiest I have seen here, even the Mercadona was packed every day. This was maybe because of the number of new developments that ‘came on line’ this year.

I know that the businesses here are very concerned about the hotels and apartments closing and the fact that the push seems to be towards ‘residential’ tourism which certainly doesn’t generate as many customers for the restaurants and bars. There is now a group called the Foro de Almerimar which gets the business owners together from time to time to discuss initiatives. This will probably be more active again in the winter months when everyone has more time.

One other positive note is that, although the golf hotel and Sol Almerimar appartments are closed for refurbishments, the estates agents have been busy this summer with private rentals so maybe this is the way Almerimar will go. We certainly need more people coming here throughout the year and spending money to keep our bars and restaurants going, and then hopefully some more of the ‘locales’ in the darsenas will open up and thrive as something other than estate agents.