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 [...]]]> 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 up destroying the closely knit fabric of communities. Now we had our own phone we didn’t have to go to the ‘telephone man’s house anymore. Going there was like going to a form of social club. We met others waiting to make their calls and chatted and got to know them, and we caught a glimpse of real Spanish life as we became part of the telephone man’s family life. We were there for their meals, their rest periods, their arguments, their television (which was always on) and they would tell us of their triumphs and disasters. Because there was no instant communication we learned to wait; we learned patience and we learned about the rest of our community. They were all interested in us of late because Annabel had become pregnant and this news caused quite a stir. 

The bees were now established in two apiaries and having got over the problems of varroa – which was in Spain but not in the UK at that time and so caught me by surprise – we were able to plan our next business moves. We survived the swarming season – just. The first swarm hung up in a tree just below the house and I went up a ladder with my box to collect it. I banged the branch with my hand and the bees dropped into the box. Holding the branch with my right hand and the box in my left, I was about to descend when the ladder fell away and I was left hanging. I called Annabel who arrived centuries too late and by this stage I had hit the ground nd was covered in bees. Even swarm bees get angry if you mess around with them enough and these got angry. As usual I hadn’t put any protective clothing on so the pair of us fled. A small gang of them got up my trouser leg and were moving rapidly upwards In this circumstance it is important to stop them at the knee, and as I hopped around holding my trouser leg Annabel rushed inside the house and locked the door citing unborn child and so on. I’m still not sure how I survived.

But as I said, we were getting itchy feet (all our lives we had moved every year or so due to military backgrounds and in my case a military childhood as well) and so we decided to move and we began looking around at suitable sites and locations that would be good for us and good for the bees. Little did we know that we would end up in the centre of a bunch of hippies in a hovel half way down a cliff with no water, no electricity and no approach to the ‘dwelling’ other than scrambling across a near vertical rock face with foot holds carved into it – with a two month old baby!  But more of that later.

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.