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Sunset in Andalusia:
the story of
Cencerrita
Follow the joy ... and the pain ... in this
upbeat tale of how Alan and Colleen rewrote the sunset of their lives by
moving to Spain. Living in a small flat in the south of England, the pair
decided they needed to change their lifestyle – there had to be more than
work/eat/sleep. Even having lived in other countries over the years,
neither of them could foresee just what they were undertaking when they
gave up their jobs, sold everything in the UK and bought a semi-ruin in
the mountains of Andalusia.
Alan, a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy, could turn his hand to
anything. Colleen, a Mother and Office Manager, could attempt everything.
Between the two of them, doing all the work by themselves, they converted
the old almond farm into a thriving, holiday-rental business for a
specialised market: all the other people who really wanted to escape from
the UK, even if only for a holiday.
The tale starts at the very beginning, when the idea was just a small seed
in their minds and works its way through all the stages to fruition. This
is definitely NOT a “how-to” book. Technical explanations offered by the
Chief Engineer have been cut short by the Mother. In fact there are many
instances where it is more of a “how-not-to-do-it” book.
Written generally in a light-hearted manner, the book reflects not only
the sheer, hard work that it takes to succeed when living on top of a
mountain in Andalusia but also some of the fun to be had along the way. |
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Perched precariously on a
barstool, I ordered some belated Dutch courage. We had just been through our
first viewing of a potential new home and business in Spain and needed to
re-group and re-think our plans. Could we possibly be any good at avocado
farming? Without any starting point to judge our capabilities in this
unknown field, it was an unanswerable question. We had no idea.
Using my very best
Peruvian-style Spanish, I requested two large beers. The barman leant
towards me and stared hard.
‘Mexican?’ he asked
doubtfully.
Clearly the Spanish I had
learnt in Peru was only just comprehensible to him but whenever a foreigner
makes the effort to speak Spanish here; the warm response from the locals
makes it all worthwhile. Delighted to have an audience in the otherwise
empty hotel bar, the barman took it upon himself to introduce us to one of
the apparent joys of Andalusia: namely, olives. But I cannot bear olives.
Neither the taste, nor the texture. To put it basely, they literally make me
vomit. Smiling genially, he filled a tapas dish with olives from the hotel’s
own trees, poured a generous amount of vinegar over them and topped the
seemingly huge mound by some determined grinding of a gigantic pepper mill
which he’d fetched from the kitchen. Still smiling, he nudged the bowl over
to us and indicated that we should enjoy the olives, served in the very best
way possible. Oh no! What can you do? Pulling my mouth into some semblance
of what I hoped he’d take for a thank you smile, I placed one of the green
balls in my mouth. I rolled it around with my tongue, trying hard to swallow
the repulsive thing. My stomach was already warning me what would happen if
I should continue along this disastrous path – but the barman was watching
me expectantly. I swallowed. The olive oiled its way down my throat and sat
there solidly in my stomach. I smiled broadly at the barman. I was going to
be lucky; it was going to stay there, at least for the time being.
‘!Deliciosa¡’ I
proclaimed happily, thankful my stomach had not instantly returned the
unwanted intrusion.
The barman mistook my smirk
of achievement for a smile of pleasure. Grinning, the barman pushed the bowl
yet closer to me, telling me I should eat and enjoy them all. Just as panic
set in, I was desperately relieved to see a party of other tourists arrive
in the bar and our new friend reluctantly left torturing me to go and attend
to them. Alan would have nothing at all to do with the olives, so the bowl
was emptied by me … into a few tissues found in my handbag. Sometimes highly
useful things are unearthed in my hamster nest of a handbag. Heavens knows
what the barman thought we were doing with the olive stones. Luckily, before
he came back, we managed to escape into the dining room for dinner. There
was an anxious moment when the apparent twin of the barman brought yet more
olives to our table but I was grateful to realise that this new man was more
concerned with taking our order than worrying whether or not we were
enjoying the olives. The swallowed olive sat there greasily in my stomach
for the rest of the evening, stirring threateningly at uncomfortable
intervals. I am sorry to say that after our delicious meal, the olive made
its bid for freedom - thankfully in the privacy of our bathroom. I have
vowed next time to be more firm with such attentive barmen!
*****
When the new millennium
began, Alan and I were living contentedly together in a flat on the South
Coast of England. We had left our old lives and marriages far behind us and,
whilst delighted to have a second chance in life with each other, we knew we
were just treading water and that the outlook for our future if we continued
in this way was mediocre and unexciting. Neither of us wanted to spend our
lives slavishly rising with the alarm each morning; fighting the traffic –
and often the weather – on our way to work; spending the day doing something
generally not of our choice; before again doing battle with the traffic;
cooking dinner; eating dinner; maybe a film or game of cards before going to
bed … and then the next day it all starts again. Living only for the
weekends. True, each of us enjoyed our jobs to a large extent – but work was
simply not enough. You know those days in winter when you don't see your
home in the daylight for months and your fingers ache with the intense
coldness when scraping the ice from your windscreen? When everything is
grey: the roads, the rain, the sky, the houses – even your mood? We knew
there had to be more to life than this, much more.
Alan, as a Chief Engineer in
the Merchant Navy, had spent quite a few months in Spain and Gibraltar
overseeing the dry docking of ships. Whenever possible, I would join him:
not only because I wanted to be with him but I needed to feel a little of
the Spanish sunshine on my skin, particularly during the endless dark, cold
months in the UK. We both took great delight in the laid-back feel of the
Mañana culture, marvelling at the contrasting, vitality that
permeated every corner of this beautiful country.
Slowly, imperceptibly, a
germinating seed was growing in our minds. Whenever we passed an estate
agent in Spain, we would look in the windows and comment on the various
properties available. There seemed to be so many different types and wildly
differing prices but the only ones we both kept pointing out to each other
were the virtual ruins in the middle of nowhere. Property prices had
already started to spiral upwards but at this stage they were still low
enough to us to sell our flats in the UK, buy a place needing renovation and
have a little left over to live on for a while until we could make some
money. Realisation began to dawn on us: we could actually do it - we could
really move to Spain. What was there to stop us? Certainly we needed to sit
down and work out the fundamental details for such an intrepid plan, but
intrinsically we could see no reason why we shouldn’t at least give it some
serious consideration.
We felt it was important to
go for the right reasons: nightmare stories had been well-publicised by the
media about hapless Brits struggling to live in foreign climes. It would be
easy to let a rose-tinted, spectacled mentality cloud our clear-thinking as
the rash enthusiasm took hold of us. Aware that only abject failure or
incredible success were newsworthy stories, we ignored all the media hype
and decided we were going to try regardless!
After interminable
discussions far into the night, discarding grand - and unlikely –
moneymaking schemes, we decided that the only way we could make a living
would be to rent a villa to holidaymakers. Neither of us had any experience
in this field, so we reckoned the learning curve would be steep, but not
impossible. Once that decision had been made and we knew that tourism would
be the most important factor in our choice,
we were able to draw up a list of criteria for where we would like to live.
Spain is a vast country, some 1000 kilometres square with Madrid slap bang
in the middle - there can’t be many countries where the capital is the
furthest point from the sea possible!
At the very top of our
requirements was location: we needed the right place within an hour or so of
an international airport – one which had cheap flights. That determinant
alone cut out many areas of rural Spain as the budget airlines were then
mostly only to the coasts. Whilst the weather throughout Spain is undeniably
better than in the UK, the north of Spain appears to have more than its fair
share of rain – definitely not a requirement for the tourist industry. Down
in the south, Almerìa boasts of having Europe’s only true desert … which we
didn’t want either! We discovered from some friends who tramp all over
Europe in their caravan, spending summer in the cooler climates and finding
warm corners to ride out the winter, that the southern coast of Spain was
one of the warmest of the whole of Europe. I must confess I was slightly
wary of being anywhere too hot: I enjoy warmth but too much heat makes me
feel sluggish and not want to do anything … perhaps not such a bad idea
after all!
To me, day length was also a
factor. I lived in Scotland for a number of years and hated the terrible
darkness of the short days throughout the cold months which were then
followed by crazy day lengths in the summer when it never got completely
dark. In total contrast I had also lived for two years just south of the
equator in Kenya, where the days of equal length throughout the year had me
nostalgically thinking of the wonderful, long summer evenings of the UK! It
was simply great to discover that, although on the same time as central
Europe, Spain is actually west of the Greenwich meridian line. This
means that daylight more or less starts between 7
and 8 am all through the year and in
winter, even on the shortest day, it is still light beyond 6 pm and on the
longest day it gets dark around 10 pm (but the warmth of the day lasts a lot
longer!). It’s just perfect.
Another vital ingredient to
the success of our plans would be some fluency of the language. I had spent
a year in Peru in my early twenties and now, some thirty years later, I
still remembered a fair amount of my studies, so it seemed a sensible idea
to pick somewhere where they spoke “normal Spanish”. This ruled out areas
such as Barcelona,
where they speak Catalan,
and even Valencia as they have yet another dialect. In blissful ignorance, I
had never heard of the dialect they speak in Andalusia … so this shortfall
in my knowledge is one of the main reasons we chose to look in the south of
Spain.
Many hours were spent on the
internet poring over the property sales’ websites. There was an immense
array to choose from in our possible price range … but we needed to do more
than just look at the computer screen: the germinating seed, having firmly
implanted itself in our minds, now required a growth medium, plus a little
nurturing. We booked ourselves a 5 day trip to the Malaga area to see some
of the properties that had stood out in our internet hunt.
See the links above to get the book!
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