My husband and I recently spent 2 weeks visiting Spain with another couple and spent the last 6 days at this truly stunning property. It is located about 35 minutes north of the Malaga airport. It is a short drive down a dirt road to reach the property. We loved the beauty and the peacefulness of the home and its surroundings, yet it is in a central location to places one might want to visit in the south of Spain. The owners have supplied the home with everything guests may need for a comfortable stay. There is even a fully stocked medicine box as well as a small travel medicine kit. Fortunately, for us, they remained unopened.

I think what sets this vacation rental apart from other is Donald and Kathryn themselves. We arrived on a Sunday and Kathryn offered to shop for us. She not only picked up the groceries we requested, she had the tapas plated, wine chilled and provided us with a bottle of delicious olive oil which is locally produced. The owners live on the property and are readily available for recommendations and advice. Both she and Donald helped with our touring plans. We enjoyed meeting them, their 4 dogs and Mimi, the cat (their pets are confined to their own enclosure. We asked to meet them and enjoyed their visits). I can recommend this property to other travelers without reservation.

This was our second visit to Cortijo la Serena, but our first one in Winter; still the same breathtaking scenery I remembered, but cooler especially at night; this was not a problem as the the villa was nice and warm. We took the opportunity to travel further afield and had a wonderful time exploring the surrounding area including Granada and Cordoba The weather was perfect for sightseeing and we enjoyed many long walks through the beautiful countryside surrounding the villa.

Once again Kathryn and Donald’s hospitality was outstanding, helpful but never intrusive, the perfect hosts. A fabulous week in a charming home from home.

We chose this property based on TripAdvisor reviews and this was one of those unfortunate times when TripAdvisor failed.

I traveled with my family to South Spain to see the magnificent sites in Granada, Cordoba, Seville and coastal towns. I knew we would clock a lot of mileage (ended up with 2,400km in 8 days ;-) so I was looking for a location that would have convenient driving distance to all the major cities. Antequera looked good (on a map) so we searched for a property in this area. After our first choice did not work out we booked Cortijo de Serena through TripAdvisor.

Confirmation process was swift and we were on the way.

I have to say that we were pretty unfortunate with the weather. The forecast for the area was showing nice and sunny +20 degrees in the few weeks prior to our arrival. However, on Feb 13 couple hours after my plane landed, strong winds picked up and the temperature dropped to +8 and further lower to +1 during the night time.

It is important to note that the rental property is located about 45km (45 min drive) north of Malaga at elevation of 800m according to Google Earth so the temperature will naturally be lower at the property compared with the coast (should be a good thing in the summer heat but worked against us in February).

The rental property is a part of a bigger house with the hosts staying next door. It has a small sitting room with couple of coaches and a small TV. There's a bedroom and a toilet with a shower. Kitchen has a large dining table, two small refrigerators and a microwave. There's a gas fired stove.

Upstairs there are two bedrooms and a split-level toilet with a shower.

The master bedroom has a very small door, so if you are taller than a child watch your head, especially if you are trying to crouch to the bathroom in the dark. I hit my head at least twice there. Also be careful getting up from bed - the steel frame has some sharp edges and my wife scarred her leg pretty bad.

During the nights it was very cold - I guess Spanish houses are not well equipped for the low temperatures. We had three layers of blankets on and we were still cold. The house has several electric heaters but they were not sufficient in this weather. The bathrooms were cold and the water pressure was not sufficient for a comfortable shower.

Outside there's a nice garden and a pool - we obviously didn't use it due to the weather.

There's WiFi but the connection is pretty slow and the hosts asked us not to do anything else other than web browsing/emails - I guess they are on the same network. I need to connect regularly to my office VPN due to the nature of my business - the bandwidth was not sufficient for that so I had to use my 3G connection - with very mixed success either.

The property is very remote, you need to drive on a combination of paved and dirt roads for 10-15 minutes off the motorway. There's nothing but endless olive fields along the way. Our car got pretty dirty driving in these fields. I used Google Maps on my phone to get around and never got lost. You need a local data plan though otherwise it may be pretty expensive if roaming.

Grocery shopping is in the town called Archidona - a mere 4km away in a beeline but takes a good 20 minutes to get to. You pass a Malaga Penitenciario as you drive there.

Bottom line is this. If you like to be in a remote location undisturbed by emails and enjoying the views of the olive plantations - this is probably an ideal location. We found that it was too cold, uncomfortable and remote for our purposes so we had to leave after three nights. The hosts refused to return the money for the nights that we did not spend.

We returned to this lovely old Cortijo for the Christmas season and were not disappointed. Sometimes memory plays tricks and going back to where you have wonderful memories of can sometimes be a let down. But not this time. The house and grounds lived up to our memories of our previous visit. The hosts, Donald and his Belgian wife Kathryn were as welcoming as before and we were treated as returning friends. The setting is so tranquil with just the sound of birdsong, ideal for just chilling out. Malaga with its beautiful Christmas lights is just 35mins drive and Archidona only 15mins. Since our last visit several wonderful restaurants have opened only a short drive away, all can match anything London has to offer. Once again our hosts who live adjacent to the rental property were on hand for advice and recommendations but were never intrusive. We went on beautiful walks around the area to work of all the foodie excesses and discovered places you wouldn't see by car. The place is perfectly situated for touring by car as it is within easy driving of Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Malaga, we even visited a small town called Ubeda, which I had never heard of, north of Granada. Would recommend a visit to this very old Spanish 16th century town. Already planning our next trip in the Summer