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. [...]]]> 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 in the castle and realised that we were the only people in the world who didn’t take drugs of one sort or another (alcohol excepted of course). Everyone else did and it wasn’t long before we realised that the culture of the castle was almost entirely based on drugs which even extended to us finding ourselves in the middle of a gun battle.

We decided to move some bees one night and when we arrived with the new set of bees to position on the knoll in front of us, we realised that we may not have been alone. Perhaps it as hunters out after deer we thought, so we whistled and sang as we worked moving the bees into position reckoning that as bees and deer didn’t whistle or sing we should be OK. Then the gunshots began and we felt the urgent need to sort the bees out as swiftly as possible and get home. We soon realised that it wasn’t deer rustling because the sound of gunshots moved to the castle and we knew then that it was something to do with the local industry.

It was a shame in a way because apart from this aspect it was an idyllic spot. I met several really talented people there – one who could out play Pink Floyd on the guitarr and who gave tremedous renditions of their music and song at the castle talent nights but he ended up in prison for manufacturing, and another who could make the most fabulous jewelry but she eventually gave up because it was just too difficult any more in her cloud of smoke. Huge talents just wasted.

I then heard that a famous American beekeeper (Steve Taber) then living in France wanted to return to his home in the USA and he had give his beehives away and so I quickly contacted him and set off for the Toulouse area in France in a hired van. It was beautiful trip right up through the entire length of Spain, over the Pyrenees and into France. The bees were soon sealed into their hives, over which I placed on each hive an extra empty box with a gauze cover. In the box I placed a wet sponge and every hour I stopped and sprayed water through the gauze onto the bees, always keeping the sponge wet. The hives were crammed into the van with as much extra equipment that I could carry away and the initial part of the journey back over the mountain went smoothly. I passed the Valencia region where the smell of citrus blossom was overwhelming but as the bees were well and truly locked in I thought all would be well. I knew trouble was coming however when a bee floated past me with a small bit of sponge in its mandibles and buzzed against the front windscreen. Then another, then a few more and then hundreds. I quickly pulled into a motorway service station to reseal the hive(s) and leapt out of the van.  A small group of spectators gathered to watch me but unfortunately I had left the van door open and the small group soon became a small panicking group as the bees launched an immediate attack. I quickly leaped back into the van and fled before authority arrived but with more and more bees coming out of the hive, the windscreen began to fill up. It must have been about twenty kilometres down the motorway when two police motorcycles finally got me. The van was full of flying bees however and the policeman motioned at me not to open the window. He shouted at me from safely outside the van, waved his arms in all directions, thumped the van door and finally waved me on telling me to leave the area. I did. And things got worse. I had to do an emergency stop later that afternoon and bumped into a grass bank. Despite having nailed the hive boxes together, six of them  came apart in the van and in seconds I couldn’t see to drive because of the number of bees on the windscreen. I kept wiping them out of the way and pressed on, leaving the main road and travelling into the local hills where I finally stopped and waited for nightfall. The bees dutifully returned to their hives and I carefully reassembled everything and blocked them up more firmly. For the rest of the journey which took three days, there were still bees floating around but in very small numbes.

Arriving back home  at around ten at night, we were both able to quickly set the hives on their prepared stands with little fuss except for bees crawling all over us. For a few days after, the bees were more than usually angry but they are hardy creatures and they soon settled down to their new accommodation. It did actually show me that even if locked in their hives, bees will be fine if they are given sufficient room and plentiful water for cooling purposes and using this method years later I was able to keep bees safe in their hives during local crop spraying times.

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 [...]]]> 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 trees and cattle through which ran the Victorian rail line put in by the British in the 1800s from Algeciras to Rhonda, and to our left we could view the Rhonda mountains dotted with small white villages all with Arabic names. At night, these same villages looked like small jewels sparkling in the dark mountains.  To our extreme right we saw the brooding presence of Castellar itself, a Moorish castle which housed the main part of the village and which also housed an exceptional bar.

However, we first had to sell Finca Granadero and arrange to stay in it until the birth of our daughter. We used the original etate agent but also went about this by placing an ad in a German newspaper to see if there was any foreign interest. Knowing no German we asked a neighbour to write the ad for us stating that we wanted the Deutchmark equivalent of 6 million pesetas (we had bought the house for 4 million). Due to a mix up in numbers the ad put it at 8 million and that’s what we got. A very nice couple came to see it and fell in love with it immediately. They did not intend to live in it permanently or immediately and so we were able to stay in it until March 1995 when our duaghter was two weeks old.

In the meamntime I had gone down to our proposed new place to assess it for alteration and to get some ideas from a French friend of mine (a builder) and an English friend about altering the new hovel to make it fit for a family to live in. After a very successful day out we returned to find that our houses had been evacuated due to the approach forest and scrub fires. When my wife and others had phoned the fire brigade, they were unable to respond quickly due to most of them being in bars watching on televisions Spain playing in a world cup match. Eventually they turned up however and the house and surrounds was saved.

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 [...]]]> 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 him to a chair and untangle his sticks and limbs. He grinned at me as he was solicitously sat down in a comfy chair and immediately we were at the head of the queue. I explained to a harassed supervisor that here was the criminal himself and that he was expecting the electricity to go off the next day and that if he fell over in the dark and broke his head open or disappeared down the gorge, he deserved it for being bad, but that it wouldn’t stop him suing the electric company for their inhuman practices in depriving a handicapped man of the essentials of life. Sharam nodded his head in agreement as I spoke. The Spanish are very particular about this sort of thing and would go a million miles out of their way to avoid impeding someone who is disabled and within minutes the by now horrified supervisor had organised for a new electric meter to be installed at the house, a new reading to be taken in two weeks time, the line paperwork to be regularised, apologised for any inconvenience and giving me a knowing smile said “obviously a paperwork error seňor. You can take the gentleman home now.” No mention of legal proceedings, fraud or nameless other charges. Sharam and I hurried out swiftly in case anyone changed their minds and just to be on the safe side, I drove home.

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 [...]]]> 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 meter reader, who noticed that the shack had no meter but it did have electricity because with Sharam in it, it had a light on. Rules and regulations in the countryside of Spain were often sidestepped and few people took much notice of them but every now and again failure to obey the rules did have consequences and the consequence of this particular sidestepping was the arrival of an electricity company inspector on my doorstep. He had with him proof that electricity was being siphoned off from a mains line and not being paid for and that as I was responsible for the building, I was responsible for the theft and fraud as well as Sharam and the owner of the property. He informed me that the electricity would be turned off in two days and that the owner, me and Sharam would all be prosecuted for fraud and other nameless charges which he would think about in the meantime. The fact that just about every other house in the area was doing the same and had been doing so ever since electricity reached the area was evidently of no importance. This was out first tricky time with the authorities since we arrived in Spain and it was case of learning fast how to deal with the bureaucracy. I immediately went up the track to the telephone man’s house where the local public phone was situated in the family sitting room and over the blast of the TV, I contacted the house owner. “Oh yes, David, we did fix up some electricity a few years back. Took it off the mains. Why, has the line broken?”  I explained the situation. “Oh well,” he exclaimed cheerfully, “I’m absolutely certain that a man of your calibre can sort it out. Keep in touch though; let us know what happens. Annabel can phone if you’re in prison.” When I had put the phone down, the telephone man’s daughter turned the TV down so that we could negotiate payment for the call and after paying and exchanging the usual niceties with the assembled family, I hurried off home.

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 [...]]]> 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.

Our nearest neighbour was a man in his 70s who was renting the house just above us. He had some terrible muscle wasting disease and couldn’t walk without sticks and even then not for long. But, we would see him struggling over the uneven ground on his evening walks and giving cheery waves to all who passed. He always had a smile on his face and seemed at peace with the world. His name was Sharam (he was Swiss but had taken on a Buddhist name) and he told us that he lived out in the wilds because it presented a constant daily challenge and this challenge and the hardship that went with it prevented him from giving up. He was too busy trying to keep moving to die. He had a small car in which he went off to town every now and again and he usually returned on the back of a transporter after rolling in the ditch somewhere due to his inability to drive because of his disease. I always wondered how he managed to keep renewing his licence and one day after he had arrived back in a particularly battered state I called round for a glass of beer and eventually got round to the subject. “Oh that’s easy”, he replied to my question with a huge grin. “I just send the renewal forms off to Switzerland with this photo” – he handed me a photo of him at the age of twenty – “I white lie, obfuscate and blur all the other essential details on the form, obviously no one checks anything and eventually another license appears. What else can I do? If they take my license away that would really be the end”. A true downshifting expert I thought and my opinion of the Swiss bureaucracy rose 100 points on the spot. I had thought they were efficient!

One day however, much his distress, Sharam was told that the cottage was to be sold and that he had a couple of weeks to move. The subsequent shenanigans nearly caused us all to be arrested.

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 [...]]]> 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 carpenter from Velez Malaga. He used pine that he explained came from abroad by ship, plane and train and he assured us it wouldn’t swell or warp like local pine. His work was superb but expensive and a new local factory called ‘The Black Cow’ started to mass produce ready made pine doors of all shapes and sizes and very much cheaper prices. Sure enough, Ernesto went out of business and the area was flooded with Black Cow doors which either wouldn’t shut or if they did shut, wouldn’t open again unless it was hot and sunny in which case the pine shrank so much that gaps appeared between the frame and the door. Consumerism was rapidly advancing in Spain which one the one hand made life easier but on the other, products were dumbed down to a more trashy level which I guess most people now accept as the norm.

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 [...]]]> 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

 in and bumped straight into the car in front of me smashing his bumper. After announcing this in the bar, a worried Spaniard rushed out to see the damage but was back in minutes wholly unconcerned. ‘You hit the bumper seňor, that’s what they’re for,’ and he returned to his drink. I grabbed my beer and wondered for the millionth time about the mind of the Spanish. If I had even slightly scratched his car door there would have been hell to pay, but smashing a bumper? He was right. That is what they’re for! Soon the barman had found out that I was the English beekeeper up at la Peňa and announced that he too was a beekeeper, but he pitied me. His bees were near orange groves where nectar abounded whereas mine only had scraggy little wild flowers to forage off. His only trouble was he claimed ‘the disease’. His bees died from it every year and other beekeepers suffered from it in the area. Did my bees get the disease he asked? I told him that my bees didn’t suffer from this particular problem because they weren’t near crops such as oranges which were sprayed with insecticide each year. No one bothered to spray ‘scraggy little wild flowers.’ He hit his forehead and exclaimed,’ the spray! You think it’s the spray. The one that kills insects? You’re right, you’re right, bees are insects. It must be the spray. You seňor must be a professor; you must come and look at my bees immediately– but no. First you must have a drink to fortify your brain. He poured a generous measure of the local mosto and handed it to me. Mosto* is a deadly brew and within minutes the whole bar was engaged in a discussion about the effects of sprays on bees and as is usual in Spain, everyone had something to say about the subject. Very much later and with some difficulty I made my way home. I never did look at his bees but I did eventually finish the plumbing, Annabel mended the large hole in the wall in the bathroom with mud and stones and we set to building up our bee stocks.

*There are two types of ‘mosto’ in Andalucia. The first is the local ‘homemade’ wine, deadly and wholesome, but there is also the grape juice variety which is sweet and free of alcohol! Be careful which you choose.

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 [...]]]> 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 one… 

Over a week later we awoke to find a large yellow JCB parked on our land and about an hour later the owner arrived in his small white van to explain that he a just off to the bar for breakfast. Another hour elapsed and he re-appeared reeking of anise and we explained the task required but after less than 10 second he waived us away, mounted his steed and rumbled forward to the back of the house where his front tyre was immediately punctured by the spike of an agave plant. Off again in the van with the tyre in the back to get a repair and have his morning break from which he appeared an hour later reeking this time of brandy. During his next break, I determined to go with him. This time though, he actually managed to start digging into the ground and as the rain started again in earnest we hoped that he would get the job completed swiftly, but it appeared that that very thought prompted an avalanche of tomatoes to fall off a truck and block the track a few kilometres away, shortly after which the Civil Guard arrived and ordered him to go immediately and sort the situation out. It was several days later that he reappeared and for over an hour he regaled us with tales of the great tomato saga, and the water continued to flow from our front door. However, eventually, all ended well and within four or five days, we had a large gap between our house and the bank and the house began to dry out. Now we were able to really get to grips with the plumbing and continue with the bees. 

 so does everyone else. We were advised to leave a message at the bar Ortega in a nearby hamlet and wait.

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 [...]]]> 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 them which set fire to one of the hives and finally, the site which Antonio had chosen was on a near vertical slope down which we slipped, beehives and all. Finally Antonio decided on a new site which he reckoned would be perfect. It involved a stiff climb up rocks carrying the by now really angry bees in their leaky hives and finally, as dawn broke, we placed the hives on a rocky ledge sticking out from the side of a cliff. We sat down exhausted and looked at the sun rising over the sea in the distance. I said to Antonio that this was probably the worst site ever known for bees and his reply was, “yes David but just think of how much they will enjoy the view”! He had a point.

Life settled down after that into more of a routine and we began our dip into the world of DIY which lasted non stop for the next 13 years – and in fact still hasn’t stopped. The small house we lived in was very old and was once a typical Andalucian peasant’s cottage with all of the features that made them so pretty such as beams and alcoves. Ours however had been turned into a Costa del Sol villa with false arches and all of the nice beams and features covered with plaster board. The existing fireplace had been stripped out so there was no heating and the part of the roof that was flat had battlements put on it making it resemble  miniature castle. The drains from the bath required water to flow uphill and the septic arrangements were very septic. All had to change but firstly we had to find out how. The answer came in the form of ‘The Readers Digest Book of DIY’ which had been given to me by my father. It saved us and putting all our doubts aside, we started off wrecking the house. Annabel started it off. I was away beekeeping for the day and when I returned, it was to see the bath tub lying outside on the ground with a hole in the wall of the house where it had come out! No bath tonight I thought and I knew from then on that things would only become more painful. Our main requirement actually wasn’t the bath, but was to have the house dug out of the bank that it was set into so that water didn’t flow through the house when it rained. For this we needed the help of a digger and this in itself in that part of Spain where there were so many JCB diggers rumbling around is a story in itself.

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 [...]]]> 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 ferocity, but it was explained to me that it was all due to a series of low pressure systems crossing this part of Spain that had upset them. The television had said so. Usually you could stroke them as though they were flies! What ever that meant! I was never able to stroke an Iberica without having to run for it!
I purchased 40 stock to start off with and we were then rushed to the old boy’s house in town to celebrate with several or more glasses of the local filth drawn up from a deep amphora set into the ground. I took more than I should have (I needed it) and was eventually forced back home, mumbling and scratching my many stings, by my wife.
Now all we had to do was move the hives to some new sites. Three of the locals offered to help me and from the way they spoke I thought they were experts on the subject (another thing I found common in Spain). Bees are moved at night and so one late evening off we set and very soon reality again hit me in the face when I found out that none of them had ever had anything to do with bees before and so another adventure of the Keystone Cops look-alikes began. Only this time the horror lasted all night!