Golfing in Marvellous Marbella

With plenty of things to do with families, from playing on lovely golf courses, to watersports, shopping, lounging by the pool, and eating, Marbella is an affordable venue in Spain, with a selection of budget flights into Malaga airport from round the world. Live Listings commentator Jai Singh visited Marbella and had a wonderful time. Read his account below.


Marbella is so friendly and many British choose to live in the micro-climate there which is said to prolong your life. In truth, you can find a variety of nationalities.

Surrounded by mountains, in the heart of Marbella's golf valley, catering to all levels of players lies the Los Naranjos Golf Course. The 18-Hole Championship course is laden with luscious green grass, amazing views and overseen by very friendly staff, headed by Jessica Kronborg.

The Los Naranjos course is one of the finest in the world, with golf buggies equipped with GPS guiding you to the next hole, varying holes that simultaneously take your breath away with the stunning view and challenge you with the difficulty.

While playing, you will feel totally away from the busy, hustle-bustle of city life. All that's there is you and the flag, and maybe a duck or two in the ponds. The staff ensure that all is catered for and are very quick to help. In fact, customer satisfaction is so important that the club makes sure the number of members is kept below 200 (as opposed to other clubs which hold up to 1,000), so they can take that much more care over the players. You can relax after a day's play in the Los Naranjos Restaurant and sip on cocktails in the sun if you like. Just be careful not to hit the club-house on the last hole!

It was at a Marbella International Film Festival, and on a more serious note, that we saw "More Than A 1000 Words", a documentary following renowned Israeli photographer Ziv Koren. Director Solo Avital followed Koren over a two-year period, shooting in the heart of riots, terror attacks, secret meetings with wanted militants, all the way to Israel's pullout of Gaza. The movie however is not about the Israeli Palestinian conflict; it is merely set in it. It is a movie about a man's struggle with a history in which he is involved, and the place he finds for himself and his family in it. Like Ziv it seeks the universal through the most personal. The movie does not pretend to portray a political agenda, instead it shows the human tragedy of what is going on in that part of the world. We see the troubles the Ziv deals with, what his wife goes through living as second in his life to photojournalism, and all the personal troubles of life in a war zone. That is something which we often forget and Ziv reminds us with his often shocking images. 

In Marbella we came across Clifford Thurlow, a successful London-based author who is also an expert on film. He has just written co-written, along with Captain James Ashcroft, "Making a killing; the inside story of private security in Iraq." This is his 14th book. Between coalition troops and the Iraqi security forces lies an unnamed and unaccounted third column: soldiers of fortune. This action-packed page turner tells the story of Captain James Ashcroft's 18 months on the front line in Baghdad and Clifford Thurlow reveals how ex-soldiers employed to protect US and British interests are earning up to $1000 a day in a war that is slowly being privatized. His book on how to make short films is part of the UCLA syllabus.

Marbella is also home to an English-medium local radio station, Radio Europe Mediterraneo FM.

Our favourite hotel is the Hotel Puento Romano complex, in which you can find an original Roman bridge from the 1st Century, over two thousand years old.

Jai Singh