Andalucia

If you're sick of winter and over work, best not read on - just know we're in Spain.

For others, I raise my cerveza to you from a beach bar in the south of Spain. Have just spent some warm days in Andalucia, searching for Moorish arches, mountains and good food, and discovering the joys of shady plazas, colourful tiles and olive groves.

Things to cross off my list-of-things-to-do: survive an EasyJet scrum in Berlin airport, spend a luxurious afternoon in an arabic bathhouse, perfect the art of tapas grazing, bodysurf in the Mediterranean (never seen anything other than a ripple before!), have breakfast in a Spanish truckstop, see the Sierra Nevada (would also have stopped at some Eastwood and Wayne film sets if I'd been driving), finally say entiendio (I understand) to someone, rather than my usual no entiendio.