Caroline recommends the Hotel Montelirio in Ronda and has a chuckle at one guest’s gripe on Tripadvisor…

The Andalucian hilltop village of Ronda is a world away from the Spanish Costas just an hour’s drive away and well worth a night or two’s stay. Although it can be done as a day trip from the coast it is a different place when the day trippers go home and you can enjoy the magical sunset across the gorge.

We spent a few days in Ronda after one of our holidays in Nerja a few years ago and can recommend the Hotel Montelirio. I had trawled through many reviews of hotels on Tripadvisor and this was the place that seemed to get consistently good reports. I decided to ignore the complaint of one guest who bemoaned the lack of safe street parking outside the hotel. The fact that Ronda had been built hundreds of years ago was obviously no excuse for this inconvenience! Perhaps they felt that the world famous gorge should have been concreted over and turned into a multi storey car park or the houses in the beautiful cobbled alleys demolished to widen the road to accommodate parking.

Inside the hotel

In actual fact, the hotel has a few parking spaces in a garage a stone’s throw from the hotel. The lovely receptionist guided us to it and although we were glad we were in a small car as space was tight it really was not an issue. I have of course commented before on the unreliability of Tripadvisor and this really is a prime example of some downright daft comments.

Anyway we were very glad that we had decided to book at Hotel Montelirio. The small hotel was quiet, despite the fact that our room faced on to the cobbled street, the sunny garden overlooking the gorge was the ideal place to relax on a lounger with a glass of wine, the small pool (unheated I have to warn) great for the hardy who want to cool off and the restaurant superb and reasonably priced.

The pool and view

Above all though, the views from the back of the hotel across the gorge were pure magic. As we enjoyed our delicious suckling pig at our window table the sun was sinking and a more romantic setting would have been hard to find.

Window table at Hotel Montelirio

Sunset from the restaurant