The good news is that Nerja está de feria and the bad news is also that Nerja está de feria.

If you’re a tourist or a tourist-orientated business, this is excellent news as the town is packed with processions, winding their way through town, passing in front of the Balcón de Europa.

If you have to enter the town in a car… despair! The huge, surface, car park (Carabeo) is a vehicular no-go area because the fairground is set up there.

Luckily, I was on my bike and had far fewer problems than the poor sods in cars looking for parking. I stopped next to a municipal policeman and asked him how he was doing – he was directing us down a diversion – he said that he was completely fed up with it all. Who could blame him.

But the tourists lining the streets, with a forest of mobile phones extended, were enthralled, bless their cotton socks.

The bar owners in the Plaza Cavana, right along Calle Carmen past the Town Hall/Tourist information office and up Calle Pintada, were making the most of this, out-of-synch, late-summer weather and rivers of tourists – and who could blame them.

Perhaps I’m getting old because I am sick and tired of fiestas, processions and parking problems, so bring on the winter, the rain and a full working week from Monday to Friday without a fiesta in the middle of it.

(News/Noticias: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)