Tourists shift like shoals of fish and many are currently aiming at Turkey and Egypt, despite pan-European strenuous efforts to offset the stronger euro by offering incredible deals on flights, car rentals, and accommodation. The braver traveller is also whizzing off to Vietnam and Cambodia for something completely different: even within Spain itself some coasts are booming and some are having a quieter year than usual, and who knows why? I swap notes with a friend in Tenerife who says his boutique hotel has been ludicrously quiet.  So I’m grateful to have had a few scattered bookings . . .  guest income is earmarked for ongoing spiffication, so every little helps.

I’m now firmly and officially addicted to cycling guests, the last of the cooler weather brought a German cyclist who had booked a cycling tour and, not wanting to stay in a hostel or risk his bike (which he drove down) in communal parking, booked here for a week. Actually those priorities might be the other way round.  He’d return late afternoon, do any running maintenance required on his cherished steed, then spruce up and re-join the group for an convivial evening on the town. He had an absolute ball, loved every minute of the gruelling daily outings, and will, he said, be back after summer when cycling tours start again.

He was followed, also in April, by my first real published writer, ooh! and her husband – they were mid-honeymoon, which was (a little unusually) a sponsored charity walk along the 500 mile Camino de Santiago trail. I’m nowhere near the Camino de Santiago, but Nan sprained her ankle and was ordered to rest it for 10 days before continuing. They turned misfortune into exploration and spent 4 of the 10 days checking out Granada province and the Costa Tropical from the front bedroom, in between writing writing writing – she’s doing a book about the honeymoon and has promised me a good write up. Even better, it seems back in the US she’s a well-known medium so it’s nice to know that old as this house is, there are no restless souls hanging about. There were times, during the renovations, when tools vanished from where they had been left, and doors and shutters banged back and forth in very little wind, that I did wonder . . .

May, a year from the end of the main refurbishments (how quickly that went!), saw a little refurbishment and sprucing, to have the house at its slightly ramshackle best in time for a family visit.  It was wonderful taking a few days off to be a tourist!

That was followed by a fab French-Canadian couple for a week, my first guests to really, and finally, put the cooking facilities to the test. Wonderful mouth-watering smells drifted downstairs either side of their outings to the beaches and Granada, they appeared in the atrium waving pink wine and a spare glass of an evening, and even brought back the occasional goodie I had to try from various bakeries they’d found.  French-Canadians, in my hotchpotch experience of Spanish, French, Belgian, Croation, Irish, Rumanian, Danish, Dutch, American, English and Polish guests, rank high, I find I adore being spoiled by guests.

My first Italians arrive next week, and it will also be my first full house since last year, both rooms booked at the same time, so things are kicking off again for the summer . . .  I think the other guests are Spanish. The websites handle everything and merely tell me when to be ready, and for how long, and this time there were no clues to nationality in the surname. Handy if they too were Italian, eh? Watch this space.

Truly glad not to have guests during the current little heat wave, the Costa Tropical is sizzling gently but not record-breaking (we got off lightly) and it’s a luxury to be in the atrium with an icy glass of lemonade (or shandy) without having to be presentably dressed  for visitors