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 [...]]]> 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 trolley. It could take 3 bags of cement or 6 breeze blocks or 15 roof tiles. The first three bags of cement which comprised our very first load rocketed off down the hill, hit a rock at the bottom near the house, exploded and shot over the cliff to the valley far below. Spectacular but expensive and we had to retrieve the very bent up trolley. Pulling the trolley back up the cliff was a killer in itself. Gradually we got the hang of it and over the next 3 months of blood, sweat and tears we moved an entire house down the cliff, brick by brick and tile by tile. Sand was the most difficult item and also the heaviest and there was never enough. My friend from Los Romanes, Jaques masterminded the building and within a couple of months a house emerged from the ruin. The views were spectacular and the place was fit for wife and daughter – and all the furniture, boxes and other heavy belongings that we had to manoevre down the cliff. The bees were very happy at their new location producing some of the best honey and honeydew that I have tasted. An old item of furniture left over from the recent hippy occupation of the place provided firewood for our first open fire and the presence of cannabis hidden in the knot holes of the wood provided us with our first and only trip leaving  me dreaming of small and vicious teddy bears. Heaven only knows what it did to our two month old daughter but we survived and the rest of the wood was thrown out, only to attract a group of the local hippies who diligently searched it for more knot holes. After this, a stiff drink in Mara’s bar in the castle was definitely called for and as this bar was the only cannabis free environment in the area it was doubly welcome. The castle boasted a village within the walls with narrow streets, scented bouganvillia, jasmine and dama de noche climbing the walls and trellises and flamenco music from Diego’s bar (which sold my honey) adding to the wonderful atmosphere a place which time forgot. There was even a tea room in one of the tiny little bars. Many of the hippies (who lived mainly outside the castle walls) were delightful people and it is easy to remember people like Jeff who was I believe the best guitarist I’ve ever met – his rendition of Pink Floyd and other artists was supreme, or Samantha who could make some of the best jewelry items around. Unfortunately it was a culture based on drugs, hard and soft for the most part and many of the hippies ended up caught by the police and ending up inside or wasting their huge talents on doing absolutely nothing – or even dying.

It was in the castle that I came second in an international cookery competition with my special curry. (International because the hippies came from all over the place). The first place had to be won by a female Spaniard which was entirely acceptable and so my second place was all the more pleasing and Annabel has laughed about it ever since. Even more pleasing was that because I packaged my honey in small hexagonal pots and put these in little wooden crates stamped with the words ‘Miel de Andalucia’ and placed a picture of the castle on the label and so on, my honey became the accepted honey of the area and earned me more pesetas (at the time) for less actual honey.  It was good business and everyone was happy.

When friends came out from the UK to see us we put them up in the Posada in the castle, a magnificent old place owned by Jenny Hoad (wife of Lew Hoad the Australian Wimbledon champion). The place was run by Dotty, an Englishwoman in her 60s who had previously wanted to run a high class brothel in the area and had even secured a bank loan for the purpose, but eventually this didn’t work out and so she ran the posada. Her foodwas excellent and her hospitality generous and she was loved by all. Unfortunately she eventually had to flee over some petty regulation or other and was a sad loss to the castle. Fortunately the authorities had warned her of her impending doom before actually doing anything so that she had time to flee the coup. The castle was populated by a wealth of such characters often living on the edge of things and even Philipe Gonzalez the bonzai loving, first post Franco prime minister had a house there and could often be seen cooking an evening meal. All in all, definitely the perfect background for a good book.

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.