Casa La Concha

As eager dog-owners-to-be, it is fitting for us to be greeted by a highland terrier as we pull up on the residential lane outside our boutique Costa del Sol retreat. Our four-legged porter barks enthusiastically as we retrieve our bags from our hire car, he then leads us, tail wagging, into a pretty white-walled, mosaic-floored courtyard bursting with pink bougainvillea. Welcoming us warmly next is Marie-Hélène, Casa la Concha’s beautiful French owner. She chaperones us past the main boho-deluxe house – where her and her husband live – and around the large pool and into the garden. Mr Smith eyes up the immense lawn and comments that it’s a pity we haven’t packed a football. I pretend to be distracted by stunning views down to the sea but even I have to agree the pristine garden is the size of a football pitch.

Crossing the foliage-framed grass to our cottage-style suite, I spot a cosy-looking sofa outside as well as a garden table and chairs. Marie-Hélène breaks her silence to tell us that this is the perfect place to bring our own food if we fancy it, as there’s no restaurant at the hotel. She then steers us indoors to our welcome bottle of cava, chilling in the minibar. Priorities are all clearly in order.

Our suite is a pristine take on shabby chic and it’s light, airy and thoroughly Mediterranean. A lounge area has a large white captain’s day-bed, and a sturdy Moroccan-souk-worthy coffee table. Our coffee-colour bedroom features a low-slung bed dressed with white throws and cushions, while a small but perfectly formed rustic bathroom flaunts a rainforest shower – they say that size doesn’t matter, but in my book it does when it comes to showerheads. This is all upstaged by the view looking back up the garden. Reaching majestically up behind the main house is an enormous mountain that looks superimposed set against that bright blue Spanish sky. I can’t take my eyes off it. This striking craggy behemoth is La Concha herself. It looks almost painted on, like a kitsch 1970s wallpaper or a first-class theatre set.

Mr Smith flops immediately onto the captain’s bed in our cosy sitting room; it is invitingly stacked with white cushions of numerous sizes so I forgive him for slipping straight into a siesta. At least he contributes to my Smith duties by first mumbling approval that the TV is Bang & Olufsen. I meanwhile, have my sights firmly fixed on the pool. As I settle on a smart brown wooden lounger the cheeky white terrier reappears, and then so does another one, and another… Soon I have not one, but three canine friends fussing about me. My hands well and truly licked, they run off for a frolic on the sprawl of lawn while I get back to my book.

Friends had mentioned August had been ridiculously hot in Andalucia, but this September jaunt treats us to ideal-for-basking climes. My only compadrés on this balmy afternoon are an American couple, currently snuggling together on the four-poster day bed. I’d said hello as we arrived, but they look so entwined that I avoid invading their loved-up space and swim widths rather than lengths.

Floating in the large kidney-shaped pool, with only birdsong and the gentle ripple of water as background noise, I marvel at how quiet these flower-filled, pineapple-treed grounds are. Casa la Concha is far away from the restaurants, shops and sports cars of Marbella or Puerto Banus – though these glittering hubs are near enough for when you crave some see-and-be-seen action. Testament to how exclusive Casa la Concha’s locale is, one neighbour is a Saudi Prince. My dizzy head is momentarily brought back from palaces to reality though when I spot an Ikea label on one of the orange pool towels. An aura of indulgence is reinstated when I wake Mr Smith, open that cava, and pop on a Luis Miguel CD that I’ve found in the room: the perfect romantic crooner for this Spanish paradise, surely?

The narrow cobbled streets, pretty buildings and churches of Marbella’s charming history-steeped Old Town eventually lure us out. What an incredible part of the world the Golden Mile must have been a hundred years ago. Before the built-up coastline of today, there was just the natural beauty of the sea and the mountains: something Casa la Concha is best poised to appreciate. We chance upon a restaurant called ZoZoi and are lured into a beautiful fairy-lit courtyard. Mr Smith is craving a cerveza so I order rioja by the glass and we feel thoroughly decadent as we order scallops then steak – each. And of course we leave some doggy-bag scraps for our cohorts back at La Concha. 

The next morning, we beeline it to the breakfast room in the main house. I’m ravenous again so I confess I'm disappointed by levity of the continental breakfast. Bread rolls, jam, yoghurt and a jug of pre-made coffee – call me a glutton, but I am a sucker for a big weekend breakfast and a freshly made espresso. Still, it gives me an excuse to big-lunch it later. Forget feeling like you're in a boutique hotel, this is more like eating at a well-to-do friend’s chic holiday home. Guests can rent the whole of Casa La Concha (house and all) for fab group holidays or weddings, and I coo to Mr Smith that if we weren’t already married, we could do so here.

When the amorous Americans appear for breakfast, hair tousled, we resist giving them a wink. They’d been expressing their affections for one another again alfresco, so audibly that it wasn’t sheep that popped into our minds at midnight last night, but rabbits. Instead of giggling, we steal a snoop of the huge art-filled lounge with its baby grand piano and vast coffee table loaded with books on photography, travel and fashion.

Informal as this stylish stay is, Marie-Hélène is usually on hand at breakfast to play concierge and offer local advice. Chatting to a thirty-something London couple, she directs them to Ronda, only two hours away. Beloved by Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles, this mountain town is the ideal edifying antidote to the flashier features of Malaga. For us though she’s earmarked local’s-secret San Pedro beach. Here at a straw-roofed chiringuito, we indulge in a bottle of Torres rosé, just-made seafood-studded paella and some zingy alioli (unlikely to be what that American Mrs Smith had been chowing down yesterday). Is it me or does Spanish food taste especially good by the sea?

Post-pink wine and garlicky prawn guzzling, we return to Casa la Concha only to spot that the poolside daybed under its own gazebo is free. We collapse onto the wooden bed (with its stacked floral cushions and sunset-hued throw), in our own private muslin-curtained haven for the rest of the afternoon. Between this poolside bed, our cottage’s day-bed and our king-sizer, we have not one, not two, but three muslin-shrouded mattresses at our disposal. The creators of Casa La Concha must love lounging about almost as much as me. If had a bed by a sun-kissed pool with a mountain view like this, I don’t think I’d ever get anything done. Thankfully for my finances I don’t. But let’s not talk about anything as crass as that right now… I have some more lazing to do.