Hotel La Fuente de la Higuera

La Fuente de la Higuera stands among olive trees about six kilometres north of Ronda, an old mill on a rise with white walls and a long veranda facing the valley. Pom and Tina Piek, a Dutch couple, converted the eighteenth century olive mill and opened it as a hotel in 1999; their family still runs it, and guests are asked, before anything else, what they would like for dinner.

There are eleven rooms, ranging from doubles to suites; the suites add private terraces or small gardens and long views over the ten hectares of olives to the Sierra de las Nieves. Open fireplaces are not reserved for the suites, as the Double and Superior Double rooms have one too. There are no televisions and no lift; the library and the winter lounge with its fire take their place. The pool sits at the bottom of the garden with an honesty bar beside it, and a set dinner is cooked every evening from a menu that changes daily, served on the veranda when the weather allows.

Ronda itself, with its gorge and bridge, is six kilometres away; go in the evening, once the coaches have left. From the hotel, the white villages, the Grazalema mountains and the wine estates of the Serranía are all within easy reach by car.