Aguilas is about an hour's drive up and down hairpin bends. Of course, one could take the motorway, pay the toll, and be there in about 20 mins, but where's the fun in that?

The mountains between Mazarron and Aquilas are steep and craggy, and we noticed plenty of rubber on the bends - there's been a rally though here recently. At one point, skid marks went off the edge of the road and the dirt verge had a pair of grooves. The car hopefully stopped before plunging 30m down the mountain, but I wasn't going near the edge to look for wreckage.

I've often said that this area reminds me of Cornwall, with villages tucked into fold in the hills and significant mining remains. Like Cornwall, lead, tin and silver have been mined since Roman times, and probably before.

Aguilas has a deep-water port, and in the from 1887 to the early 1900s a consortium of English and Scottish business men invested heavily in railway infrastructure to enable 2 ships to be loaded with iron ore simultaneously. Railway lines were laid to bring the ore from huge open-cast mines inland, the trains disgorging their cargoes into enormous holding areas. There are 3 tracks on the hillside, and 3 tunnels underneath the ore storage areas, in which trains would stop for their wagons to be filled via chutes in the tunnel ceilings. These wagons would then travel out onto the jetty and discharge the ore into the holds of the ships below.

The docks were loading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from 1902. The website doesn't mention when mining ceased, but the steam engine on the prom was built in 1889 in Glasgow, shipped over in a kit, then assembled locally. It came into service in 1 April 1890, and was in regular use until 15 November 1967.

The railway/tunnel site has a visitor walkway, and it looks as though an interpretation centre had been planned, but I expect the project is another victim of the recession. We got in through a gap in the fence, the same way as the grafitti taggers, but saw what looks like the base for an entry kiosk next to a park with paths, through which we strolled out, relieved at not needing to wrestle through wire mesh.

There is a guided tour of the railway history of the town, but it only runs twice a month, so we'll try to get on the next one. That'll test my Spanish!