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Diary of a Downshifter – Part 18 Downshifting to Spain
 The Pillars of Hercules It was when I found our two year old daughter climbing up the cliff from the house to the road that I realised that sooner or later we were going to have to move. Fabulous views were one thing but you can’t live on views alone. Also we became a bit disillusioned with the intensity of the drug scene in the area. The castle and its environs were improving their act month by month but it still had a long way to go. Some of our friends were also leaving and we decided after two years that a move was at least on the cards for us as well. One of our particular friends, a redoubtable 60 year old, very posh English lady who lived in the castle was the first to go. She decided to set up a legal, very high class brothel for rich gentlemen, intending to offer her girls excellent employment terms with top class pay and conditions. She persuaded the local bank manager that this was an excellent investment and secured a start up loan for the project. Unfortunately her plans came to naught when a minor complaint led to the authorities discovering that her letting property was not registered and thus did not comply with all the various regulations – and of course she was not paying tax on any income from it. Who did? She had to sell up fast and flee the country to escape arrest. Fortunately the kindly, local police sergeant gave her plenty of notice of any actions against her and she had time to get away.
 The house, Puerto El Cardo and the cliff 1996
For ourselves, the decision to move Firstly though we had to sell the house and with Castellar’s reputation we knew that this wouldn’t be easy. The house was fabulous and its position even better – we had renovated and built on in true andalucian style. We had turned it from a hovel with no facilities into a well presented, good looking and comfortable home. See the picture above of Puerto El Cardo as the house was known. But it was at Castellar and the only estate agent who woukd take it on his books didn’t try to sell it. We advertised in several places and a few people from various European countries came and looked but to little avail. After 4 months however a film director and his glamorous girlfriend came and saw and were conquered. We had sold it.
But with the fall down of a deal to purchase another plot of land, we suddenly had nowhere to go and we ended up renting an old stone mill in the middle of the hothgarganta river in Jimena de la Frontera. It had no facilities at all of course and only one room upstairs and one down. Under the mill there was a space for our borrowed chemical loo though and we used the river for bathing water. Drinking water was another problem as we had to cross the ruver, climb a steep and rocky hill to a spring and then lug the heavy containers back to the mill. But it was summer, warm and having a swimming hole right next to us was heavenly. Our gas camping cooker with two rings cooked some amazing meals and our BBQ worked overtime. The scents of jasmine and dama de noche filled the air and the scream of cicadas was intense. Despite its primitiveness we loved living there alone in the river. The town was on our doorstep and the bars and restaurants were excellent, so who were we to complain. The only sad moment was the news of Diana’s death.
In the meantime I travelled andalucia looking for another home – away from the hurley burley of the coast and a place that was good for bees. it took some doing and eventually I headed up to Huelva province leaving Anna and Lucy in the mill. We kept in touch with our first mobile phones and eventually i found the plcae where we were to spend the next 9 years – just in time as it turned out as disaster was about to strike.
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 17 Downshifting to Spain
As a diversion from describing our life as downshifters, it’s worth looking at a major feature of our lives at the time perhaps as a warning to others who may mistakenly think that downshifting is all happiness and bliss. One of the features of our downshifting career was a constant lack of money. There is an often held belief that downshifting is all about living the simple life, growing your own and living free from the constraints of the vulgar modern world - and money. To all those who think this, think again. Every downshifter who told me this in spain (and they were usually German hippies) were, when we got to know them better and found out – being subsidised by their parents or receiving one of the home country’s incredibly generous benefits. They had free money. They didn’t have to work. In all our years as downshifters in Spain, I didn’t meet anyone living that life who didn’t either have to work or were receiving money from parents – or even on some sort of benefit from their home country.
On one occasion, following a lousy harvest and a very poor time for us and an overspend on the house, we passed New Year’s Eve with 2 pesetas. You can’t buy anything with 2 pesetas and so I stuck them in my diary with sellotape and welcomed in the year 2000. They are still there. On another occasion, I had to borrow to fly back to the UK to be a seasonal traffic warden for 5 months. I left my wife and kids with no money at all. (Fortunately in many small towns and villages in Spain, you can buy and pay later). When I returned, I spent days going round all the small shops paying our bills.
Being rich isn’t necessarily the way to happiness in life, but it can make you less miserable. I think it was Spike Milligan who said that and he was right. Money – or rather lack of it was a constant sore point in our life as downshifters. many will immediately respond by saying ‘but isn’t that the whole point of it? Isn’t that the reason you chose this life – to get away from the problems and hassles of jobs/money/ commuting and so on? Well let me say now that that is a total misconception. If you are living in a nice place and working hard and you want a beer from a nice, local bar, overflowing with bonhomie and life, just how are you going to pay for that beer without money?
I remember moving from Castellar to Aracena and passing the lights and Christmas decorations of El Corte Ingle on the Seville bypass road at San Juan de Aznalfarache. We had just been blasted out of our Mill in the Hozgarganta river by a huge flood (future post) and were moving up to Aracena, at night, with a van full of cats and dogs in fruit boxes, ourselves and a pile of wet belongings. I couldn’t ever imagine being able to enjoy the scenes behind those Christmas lights simply because at that time, we had no money – or nothing beyond the very essentials of living. It wasn’t a good feeling and we know of many a downshifter (and downshifting families) who had to return to the UK and other Northern European countries simply because they couldn’t find the money to live.
Bartering does work in certain circumstances. For example we let local stockholders use our land for their sheep. Not only did it keep the grass down (and free from being a fire hazard) but it also got us into the local community and as a big bonus gave us in return fruit and vegetables and a lamb at Christmas. Mind you, we had to kill it ourselves. (We out-sourced the job)! We also let black pigs eat our acorns and in return received fine sausages – but none of this can get you a hard earned beer, milk, tampax, decent shoes and clothes or new building materials for essential jobs around the house and so on. For that you need money and before you think about downshifting for real, do get this aspect of your life sorted out. Or let your parents subsidise you, or make sure you can claim a generous benefit. Or make sure you are rich in the first place.
OR, even better start a small business and in my forthcoming book I will explain more. Ultimately, unless you have a private income, you must earn your own money.
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 16 Downshifting to Spain
Castellar was unique. The bees loved it. We loved the views – Africa, Spain, Gibraltar and so on and Mara’s bar in the medieval Moorish castle. The scent of dama de noche and jasmin pervaded the place and the sound of flamenco music filled the evening air. We placed the bees on a small piece of land on a knoll overlooking the valley, a 400 metre walk from the house and within visual range. As usual however we had a heap of DIY to complete before the place was really habitable. We plumbed the place, connected water up from a supply from the castle and built a precariously perched septic tank between two rocks halfway down the cliff on the far side of the house. We met the neighbours Continue reading 16. The Castle
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 15 Downshifting to Spain
The problem with living in a rat infested hovel is that it is difficult to sleep at night and with the amount of physical work that I needed to do to get building materials down a near vertical slope to build a house meant that I needed all of the sleep I could get. Leaving wife and soon to be new daughter in Los Romanes, I travelled down each Monday to Castellar and set about the task of getting the building materials down the slope. With the help of a supermarket trolley on a steel cable I and a band of hippies who agreed to help in exchange for pay and beer we commenced what turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever undertaken. The delivery lorry would drop the sand or cement bags or bricks etc next to the track. Then we would move this to a spot near the trolley and then load up the Continue reading 15. A house on a cliff
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 14 Downshifting to Spain
After 18 happy months in Finca Granadero we decide to move on. There was no rational explanation for this other than the fact that we had got itchy feet and I wanted to live nearer Gibraltar and in better bee country. We looked for many properties in an area stretching from Rhonda down to Gib and finally found a small hut situated down a steep, near vertical slope. The views were amazing. From the sitting room we could see Gibraltar and over the Straits we could see the African shore dominated by the other pillar of Hercules, Jebel Musa or Musa’s mountain. (Gibraltar is a corruption of Jebel Tarik or Tarik’s Mountain. Musa and Tarik were the Muslim generals that first invaded Spain under the Caliph and brought Islam to Spain for over 700 years). Below us was a huge valley populated with cork oak Continue reading 14: Downshifting Even Further
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 13 Downshifting to Spain
We had been in Spain for 18 months and for some reason we had itchy feet. The small house called Finca Granadero that we had bought was now a beautiful Andalucin cottage with beams and nooks and crannies that the previous owner had blocked up and that we had opened up and revealed. The plumbing was good and worked (by this stage I was a master plumber) and even the electricity worked as well as could be expected. We installed a brilliant little wood burning stove and built a chimney, which kept us warm and generally we were becoming comfortable. The authorities offered each house a radio phone and we quickly took advantage of this and so were finally contactable. This communications ‘improvement’ in our lives actually turned out to be one of those brilliant, modern ideas that can end Continue reading 13: Finca Granadero
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 12 Downshifting to Spain
My next move in the Sharam electricity saga was a visit to the company offices in Velez Malaga accompanied by grovelling explanations about misunderstandings, absences of mind, invalidism; genuine error of judgement and so on but all seemed to be of no avail. The electricity was to be cut off in two days and legal proceedings commenced. There appeared to be only one solution and that was to go nuclear. The next day, Sharam drove me down to Velez and after having generally scared me to death, parked on the yellow lines outside the glass windowed offices of the electricity company. He then emerged from the car, sticks akimbo and hobbled painfully into the office where he fell flat on his face. I hadn’t actually asked him to do that but it was very effective. Numerous staff members rushed over to help Continue reading 12: No Electricity
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 11 Downshifting to Spain
Sharam’s new home needed to be remote because of his continuing requirements for daily challenge and I knew that the small place down the track from us belonging to an English couple from Birmingham might well do the trick. They only frequented the place a once or twice a year and upon enquiry were delighted to have someone look after it in the meantime. It had electricity and more or less mains water and was perched on the side of a steep gorge. Having secured permission for Sharam’s move we negotiated a reasonable rent with a consideration for me, and Sharam happily moved in. Unfortunately, this coincided with one of those rare periods in Spanish country life when ‘the system’ decided to start being efficient and just after Sharam’s move, along came the authorities in the form of an electric Continue reading 11: Sharam
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 10 Downshifting to Spain
Within a year, we had turned a very pretty Andalucian country cottage that had been turned into seaside villa back into a very pretty Andalucian cottage only now with better facilities such as electricity, water, a wood burning stove and an operational septic tank, and we had started some basic landscaping. Things were getting easier all round. We had established our bees in several places but found that they weren’t thriving very well. Also, I lost hives due to varroa, something I had no experience of in Lincolnshire. I should have known it was in Spain and I should have taken precautions but I was new to the game and hoped that it just wouldn’t appear in my hives. Some hope! But that’s another story. Continue reading 10: Our Neighbour
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 9 Downshifting to Spain
Now that the house was literally out of the mud we were able to start turning it back into a small Andalucian country cottage. We wrecked and re-did the bathroom; we ripped out the false plasterboard arches which concealed beautiful wooden beams; we placed wood and glass doors between the sitting room and the stairs area and we built another toilet near the stairs. Old Antonio the retired goatherd from up the road came to visit frequently. He limped up the driveway with his black and white cat which had an identical limp from an identical injury and would talk for hours about the times when he lived in the place. The new glass and wooden doors between the stairs and the sitting room were one of our last luxury items. We had them made to fit by Ernesto Crespillo a small scale master Continue reading 9: Andalucian Country Cottage
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 8 Downshifting to Spain
I’d never done any plumbing before but I did have that book – The Readers’ Digest Book of DIY and so armed with this I set about re-plumbing the entire house whilst Annabel knocked down false walls with hideous arches, revealing the beautiful and original eucalyptus beams that held the house together. Within a week we were able to test the plumbing. I had sore, stained fingers from the flux, burnt clothes from the blow torch and I was totally fed up with the whole thing and vowed never to do this again. The test was an abject failure. Water shot out from every joint – some of them inside walls and the shower head shot off with such force that it cracked the porcelain and I knew that I had to start all over again – but first I needed a drink or two and headed for the bar on the road to Benamargosa. I drew
Continue reading 8: DIY and Bees
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 7 Downshifting to Spain
In common with many old Spanish houses in the countryside, ours was dug into the bank. This meant that when it rained, the back wall of the house would become damp. When it really rained, the wall would start oozing water and when the rain increased, a steady flow of water would flow through the wall, across the kitchen floor, through the dining and sitting rooms and finally exit in orderly fashion out of the front door. As the plumbing hadn’t yet been sorted out I suppose that it was a source of water but you don’t imagine this when you first view the house on a nice summers day. Anyway, we realised soon that the house needed digging out. Spain is full of JCB diggers rumbling around everywhere but of course when you need Continue reading 7: Old Cottage in the Rain
Sustainability in all aspects of our lives is a laudable aim in my opinion, but what has this got to do with downshifting. Take an example: Mike and Lynn decide that they’ve had enough of the stressy jobs, the grumpy bosses, the commuting and the sheer lack of time to enjoy life. They look at their circumstances and decide to go to Spain and set up a small but interesting business providing proof reading and translation services to expats on the Costa del Sol. They buy a small place just out of town in a semi rural area for the peace and quiet and work almost entirely by computer/internet. They work their own hours, set by them, don’t commute to anywhere unless it’s to the local tapas bars; go to the beach every weekend and summer afternoons; have two children who grow up bilingual in the only two truly global Continue reading Editorial – Downshifting Hijacked by the Green Movement
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 6 Downshifting to Spain
Everything started out as it should have done. Antonio and Carlos picked me up an hour late and we went immediately to a bar for some fortification. Had I known how the rest of the night was going to pan out, I’d have had ten more and stayed there.
To cut a long and painful story short, it soon became obvious that my colleagues were both theoretical beekeepers and knew nothing about any of the practical issues. They loaded the hives up without strapping them so that bees leaked in all directions; they didn’t do their protective clothing up and so were stung constantly; they used their smokers so frantically that blasts of flame were coming out of Continue reading 6: Beekeepers and Restoration
Diary of a Downshifter – Part 5 Downshifting to Spain
It was now time to acquire some bees. After all, that was why we were there. We heard from a friend that an old boy was downsizing his bee stocks and contacted him in Velez Malaga. He turned up about an hour and a half late for our appointment and immediately took us off to one of his favourite bars for a pre-work brandy and a gossip about bees and how there was so much future in it and wasn’t I lucky to be able to buy at very reasonable cost his bee hives full of specially trained, hard working, completely tranquil bees. As usual, reality was different. We approached his apiary along a horrendous series of narrow tracks with million foot drops on either side and on arrival were nearly pasted into oblivion by the bees which attacked on sight. I’d heard about the Iberica bee and so wasn’t unduly surprised at their Continue reading 5: Spanish Bees
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