From: The Racketeer 52, January 2004
La Manga Revisited
by Diane Fieldhouse
THIS OCTOBER saw the continuation of the week long Mapperley Park visit to the annexed clubhouse in La Manga, Spain - home to warmer climes, tennis, golf, beaches, barbecues, and the host to this year's Superstars. I am old enough to remember the original series with Brian Jacks's impressive gym exercises and Kevin Keegan skidding across the cycle track. However, on holiday, it was unanimously agreed that all mention of age-related subjects was banned, due to the unhappy fact that we spent the first day and a half bemoaning the youth of today and lamenting our creaking bones.
Let us continue with our tennissy tale. This year the numbers expanded to include Ann Cockburn, Caroline Mansell and Anne Trahearn, together with regulars Debbie Spencer, Elaine Ayto and myself. Anita Jones took a sunshine cheque until 2004 due to her own family being expanded with the birth of baby Ben.
The holiday started early on a cold and crisp Saturday morning, driving to East Midlands Airport, boarding the flight to Murcia and arriving only a couple of short hours later in sunny Spain. We picked up our hire cars, checked the maps and drove for about half an hour to the La Manga complex - lots of villas and apartments surrounded by palm trees, hills, tennis courts, golf courses and the occasional building crane. Our villa was complete with all mod cons, with three bathrooms and a large swimming pool just outside our back door (which Debbie and Anne braved on several occasions).
A sizeable sun terrace, complete with loungers, chairs and table, and a built in barbecue, made for the perfect resting place after a hard day on the courts. We did have an unexpected visit from an ant colony to one of the bathrooms at one stage and we had to 'rough it', doing our own washing up and drying all week as the dishwasher, despite our and the maintenance man's best efforts, did not want to function.
On Sunday morning, we made our annual trip to the Cabo de Palos market in order to pick up some local produce (to eat that is) and all things leather. Among the many underwear stalls, there is thankfully a multitude of real leather handbags to be perused - all at bargain prices of approximately £30 (the equivalent in England is likely to be about £90).
In the afternoon the club had laid on a tennis welcome, where you get to meet the coaches, other people attending the school, play some tennis and relax afterwards with some free Sangria.
The coaching took place between 9-11 each week day, all of us split in groups of about 6-7 people of a similar respective calibre. The actual coaching included a mass warm-up first thing, followed by group coaching focussing on particular aspects of the game and interspersed with demonstrations and tutorials by the coaching staff - they were all very talented players, quite competitive and eager to get one over on their colleagues in the demonstrations - all entertaining stuff - and they made it look so easy.
As well as the coaching in the morning, there were also tournaments held on several afternoons of the week. Mapperley Park fared quite well overall as several of us managed to go beyond the round robin stage; and I, mainly due to my very talented 16-year-old Essex County mixed doubles partner managed to reach the final. Caroline and myself also were doing quite well in the ladies' doubles (in the semi-final) when I had to stop due to a pulled muscle. We shall return next year and hope to do one better.
Besides the tennis, the rest of our time was spent frequenting some of the very reasonable restaurants in the area - both on the complex itself and in the nearby towns, making the most of the barbecue and terrace (Elaine did herself proud once again with her superb cooking) and taking part in other activities such as pitch and putt, the gym, shopping in Murcia and mountain biking in the hills and tracks surrounding the complex (it was Ann and Caroline actually - the rest of us decided to sunbathe and read OK and Hello magazines on the terrace all afternoon).
All in all a good time was had by everybody and we all came back to England tanned, fit and feeling completely refreshed and eager to improve our game.