Whether you are settled on the coast permanently or here just for a few months to escape the UK winter blues you will need friends! Some people just head down to the nearest bar and within a couple of hours have acquired a brand new set of friends!

However after the initial rush has worn of you may find that some of your instantly acquired best buddies are rather boring-or worse-dodgy (what….dodgy geezers on the Costa del Sol never!).

But as a good back-up to the bar fly saga you could try joining a few clubs and societies and meet some like minded people. The coast is brimming with clubs!

Golf Clubs
The golf club is the obvious place to start. We are over endowed with golf clubs here so you won’t have to go far! Some are more exclusive than others and there are municipal courses around as well which can be a more reasonable option and will also give you more of a chance to meet genuine local people rather than the expats and holiday makers who make most of the crowd at some clubs.

Football Clubs
Football clubs and cycling clubs are to be found in even the smallest villages due to national fanaticism about these two particular sports. There are even British only teams in the local Marbella league!

Horse Riding Clubs
Horses are another Andaluz obsession and “Asociación amigos de caballos” abound .These clubs arrange group rides into the countryside, equestrian exhibitions and social barbecue type days.

Tennis and Cricket
Good tennis clubs are all along the coast and Malaga has a cricket club for those essential Sunday afternoons on the green!

Don’t despair if sport isn’t your thing there is a range of more sedentary type activities too!

Let’s give a run through first;

jazz appreciation societies
sliming clubs
choirs and orchestras
gardening clubs
university of the third age
theatre and acting societies
poker clubs
photographic clubs
language and language exchange clubs
and just plain no nonsense social clubs!

These latter clubs are a good place to start.

The International Club of Estepona (ICE) is in the Bahia Dorado urbanisation near Estepona and offers friendship, classes, trips, parties and good food. Torremolinos and Fuengirola also have well established social clubs.

The American Club of the Costa del Sol has lots of branches and there is even a good old British Association in Marbella (remnants of the Empire!)

Theatre clubs are very big on the coast and everybody gets dragged along to see at least one amateur production during their time here. Great fun! There is Thespa; the English Speaking Players Association which meets in Fuengirola and TAPAS meets in Alhaurin el Grande. TAPAS puts on several productions a year.

Charity clubs are a very useful way to spend your free time. There are numerous animal rescue charities which raise money to rescue and house abandoned dogs, cats, and horses.

This is less of a problem than it used to be but you still see heartbreaking sights in every town, especially after the summer when puppies get dumped after the long hols. Clubs like The Lions can be found in Marbella and, of course Gibraltar!

Lots of good causes are tackled.

Finally back to the more Spanish clubs – every population in Spain has its “asociación de mujeres” more or less like the WI. All sorts of cultural activities are arranged, dancing, singing, traditional cooking, IT-and you can pick-up Spanish at the same time!

The APAs or PTA s of the local schools are also a great place to make local friends.

If you are driving a foreign registered car and living permanently in Spain (with residency) then legally you must import (register) your car within six months of being in Spain. EU legislation requires that a car be insured in its country of registration, so if you are now living in Spain with Spanish residency your car cannot legally be foreign registered.

You must make the appropriate changes – registration, license plates, insurance and drivers license (non-EU citizens).

An insurance company will require the car to be road legal and ask to see a vehicle inspection certificate (ITV – Inspección Tecnica de Vehiculos) and municipal road taxes must be paid. Importation for vehicles can be complicated and various documents are required to complete the process so it is best done with the assistance of a gestoria who will take care of all the paperwork for a small fee.

You must provide them with proof of vehicle ownership, a NIE or pasport number, current insurance and MOT (if a UK registered vehicle) so the transfer to Spanish registration can be done.

All car owners driving and living (resident, non- resident or visiting) in Spain must have car insurance (seguros). There are many companies that provide competitive pricing and many offer services and policies in English.

Spain, like many other countries has taken on the responsibility of keeping the roads safe for all drivers by making sure that all vehicles are road worthy. Depending on when your car was licensed, a periodic inspection by ITV is mandatory for all vehicles.

Once your vehicle has been inspected and passed, you are given a sticker and advised when to update the inspection. You must present this certificate to the gestoria as part of the registration process as well as proof of payment for municipal road taxes.

Car owners are required to pay an annual municipal tax for the upkeep and usage of the roads within the city or town where the car is registered. Proof of payment must kept in your car. The fees depend on where you are registered as living, but do not depend on the make of your car.

Both unlicensed drivers and most non-EU citizens are required to take a driving test (written and practical) in order to obtain the Spanish license required of all residents in this country. The test is complicated and expensive and in many towns you will have to do this in Spanish.

This can be a frustrating process and, unfortunately, necessary even if you already have a valid drivers license from your country.

Regarding use of your vehicle during a short stay. Anyone who is a non-resident may freely drive and use a foreign vehicle during their stay here, but the vehicle and driver must have a drivers license and car insurance. Spanish Law permits a foreign car to drive on Spanish roads as long as the car is road legal in its own country.

Importing a car from the United States can be expensive (roughly 4000 euros) and difficult. The Spanish Embassy in your country can inform you what you need to do to import your car.

The car may need modifications before entering Spain in order to meet European requirements. Once the vehicle arrives in Spain, it is obligatory to follow all of the above guidelines to make the car and driver legal.

Bringing up children to be bi-lingual is becoming a more and more realistic option for an increasing number of families living on the Costa del Sol and in the inland villages. What a fantastic advantage and an incredible start to life. An advantage that needs to be nurtured and treated with respect!

If you are a couple who have different mother tongue languages your child will automatically pick-up both languages simultaneously as they grow into the toddler stage.

The actual mother tongue will come first as babies spend more time with their mothers than their fathers for the first few years at least( but no sexism here dads are definitely becoming more and more hands on during the early stages).

This means that if Mum is Spanish and Dad is English speaking he will have to make an effort to ensure that he speaks English to the child as often as possible.

As a Spanish Mum or Dad is quite likely to have a lot of relatives around-grandparents for example – this will increase the Spanish language input. But as long as one person, close to the child, is associated with a different language the child should pick it up.

They say babies and toddlers can absorb up to 7 languages as long as they are associated with different people they have close contact with. This seems a bit fanciful to me but there are definitely children who grow up speaking up to four languages at the same level of efficiency.

Gibraltar has some classic examples of children like this-English, Spanish, Arabic and French speaking teenagers continually amaze me with their ability to change language depending on whom they are talking to!

Bi-lingual children who have parents who are both English mother tongue speakers will probably have picked up the Spanish at a slightly older age. First words will be in English but as their knowledge of their environment increase and they become more responsive to other people around them the Spanish will slip in annoyingly easily.

The TV, the neighbours, the shop assistants, the cleaner, the nanny, the guy in the garage, the local barman- all these influences play a role in making a child bi-lingual. When play school or preschool starts most children born in Spain or who came here as small babies will be fluent Spanish speakers.

To help a child to remain bi-lingual you need to ensure that they can read and write in both languages with the same fluency that they can talk! This is not as difficult as it seems! If your child is attending an International School they will be receiving English based education but also Spanish from the word go-so no problems there.

At a Spanish school the situation is a little different as English classes do not hit the curriculum until the child is 8.You need to start earlier,as soon as they can write in Spanish. Hopefully by this time they will be familiar with books and stories in English so the written language won’t be too much of a problem.

Reading in English is very easily acquired, the Spanish phonetic pronunciation works well in helping them start and once they have got the hang of it, the unusual way of pronouncing some words makes most kids laugh!

Try explaining “should and shoulder” to a child that has learnt to read in a Spanish school and they crack up. Getting your child to produce written work in English may well be more of a problem but if you start early enough-letters to grandma and grandpa, and simple stories- they will progress.

The Letts and Smiths type revision English books (from Gib or Bookworld España) really help and are quite fun! When your child is older you may well consider putting them in for the official Junta De Andalucia language exams.

They don’t need to go to classes they can just sit the exams. The preliminary level is quite easy and gives their confidence a real boost!

The alternatives are GCSE English or GCSE English as a Second Language-essential if you want to send them to university in England. These can be sat in Gib or at various International Schools along the coast.

The Mediterranean coast is very beautiful, as we all know, even if it is just a little bit built up now (understatement of the year there!).

However there are loads of gorgeous beauty spots all along it-or slightly inland-which with only a small amount of travelling make the most fantastic venue for a day out and picnic.

Let’s start with the Laguna de Fuente Piedra, home to thousands of flamingos. The Laguna nature reserve covers 1364 acres and is home to the baby flamingos while they grow for a few weeks each year before they fly to other parts of Spain.

The Laguna contains all the nutrients required for growth. After hatching the chicks, the adult birds spend all day away from their offspring only returning at night to feed them. Sounds about right to me! The Laguna is only a short drive from the Malaga area.

Moving along the coast a bit there is the beautiful Sierra de Las Nieves, a world heritage site, in the mountains behind Marbella. This, as the name implies, is often covered in snow during the winter and is home to some of the oldest species of pine trees in Europe – the Pinsapo. This pine tree really looks like it belongs to another age! Other ice-age relic vegetation flourishes as well.

Once you get into Cadiz Province the amount of buildings and urbanisations decreases (well, at least at the moment) and the beauty of the Atlantic can be appreciated. The beaches from Algeciras onwards are spectacular and are now part of the Parque Natural del Estrecho. Try the untouched stretches of sand on the Los Lances beach and you think you are in heaven but just go round the bay to the spectacular untouched beaches and sand dunes of Bolonia and you know you are!

Cows, pigs and horses wander on the beach and in winter you may be lucky enough to be the only humans on a seemingly endless spread of fine white sand. There are still a couple of beach restaurants open in winter so you can finish of the perfect morning with some freshly caught and fried Bolonia fish.

Moving inland from Tarifa you hit the magnificent Parque Natural de los Alcornocales which extends through Cadiz province into Malaga and joins up to the equally spectacular Sierra de Grazalema Park.

These areas are full of rivers, waterfalls, fantastic unique vegetation types (the Alcornocales park actually has valleys full of rhododendrons – and I thought you had to go to Richmond park to see those! – and of course animal life-birds of prey and cattle being the main stars!

The best way to visit these parks is to choose a village to visit and take a slow car journey breathing in the scenery on route.

Alternatively, catch the train from Algeciras to Ronda and get off at one of the immaculately kept stations on route to walk and eat. Jimera de Libar is fantastic-the station is identical to a 1950´s British station but the mountainous backdrop certainly isn’t!

Make sure you find out your train time back – there are only 3 or 4 a day in each direction!

On Sept 20th 2009, six friends will embark on an epic journey from Marbella to the Arctic Circle in two right-hand-drive SEAT Marbella cars.

With a 40bhp 900cc engine, and a ‘deckchair’ for a passenger seat, the 6700 mile challenge will be tough, but the six friends from Southampton, Nottingham and Pisa are confident their two twenty-year-old micro-cars will make it from Marbella to the Arctic circle in just 10 days.

They are doing this to raise awareness and money to help sufferers of the painful and incurable genetic skin-blistering disorder, Epidermolysis Bullosa, across the whole continent. In Spain and the UK, DebRA is the research charity which provides patient support and research into the disorder.

The SEAT Marbellas will be decorated with DebRA charity logos and butterflies. This is because sufferers of the disorder are often referred to as ‘butterfly children’ owing to the extreme fragility of their skin, comparable in strength to a butterfly’s wing.

The international adventurers have chosen Marbella to start the journey as they wanted to take their SEAT Marbellas ‘home’ to start the challenge. Marbella is also amongst the most Southerly towns in Europe, and is as far as you can get from the Arctic Circle and still be on the continent! Marbella is also the location of the DebRA charity headquarters in Spain.

Brida Heartford, the niece of one of the drivers, was born with Epidermolysis Bullosa and lived only 14 months before she died of malnutrition, caused by painful blisters in her digestive system. Brida’s great grandmother Dorrie, who has lived in Andalucía for 20 years, never met her before her short life was ended by this painful and distressing disorder.

It is hoped that Dorrie, now aged 89, will be amongst those at the starting line waving the cars off under the famous Marbella sign. More information about the SEAT Marbellas to the Arctic challenge can be found on the website http://arcticmarbellas.webs.com