Horse fair that is. Jerez. Big day out for us country folk.
Horse fair that is. Jerez. Big day out for us country folk.
I love the sweeping backroads. The craggy peaks and pine forests of the sierra are just above, but there’s something smooth, calming and minimal about this Cádiz landscape that never fails to lift the spirits, whatever the weather (which on this day was around 35 degrees hence the heavy sky). Even the graffiti is beautiful (I’m sorry, I love you). It’s a good road walk – during the first 1.5hrs I saw just two cars, but there are endless opportunities for following trails and rivers along the flanks of the sierra.
Got invited to Ismael’s birthday lunch at the farm. Great food – vegetable stew, asparagus and eggs – cooked over the open fire, marinated meat cooked over flames outside, great wine, great company, and great people. Two of the guests were economists. They worked at the University of Seville investigating public spending but lost their jobs when the financial crisis deepened which, as they say, was ironic.
The farm was 40% over the absolute maximum budget pencilled in for a perfect property requiring zero work but, as Manolo said, what was the harm in meeting the owners again, so negotiations were scheduled. I told everyone I loved the place, thought the price was very reasonable, agreed there was a lot of land, commiserated with the three brothers for having to sell, took a picture of some yellow flowers, and then went off to look for the puppy.
More people were milling about than I’d imagined, most of them owners of a sort, and the animals were distracting. The darker donkey got my notes which I’d left on the car seat between its teeth. The sound of trailing exhaust pipes and chassis being dragged over rocks indicated more people were arriving to join in the discussion – or various discussions. Everyone brought dogs. As it got dark we moved inside and nine people talked at once over the barking, and birds (I think they were birds) crossed back and forth.
The conversation had finally shifted from asparagus to business. I felt at a disadvantage having a very small amount of money and no relatives on my team. Not wanting to lose, I felt certain I really wanted the farm. Yes . . . a ramshackle, ancient place with no kitchen, mains electricity or water . . . Oh I’d die without it. I shot my hand up. What about staggered payments spread over a year, a vastly reduced price but still higher than wise and a deal whereby the builder brothers of the selling team would repair the collapsing road bridge and turn a lean-to currently full of partridges into a bathroom straightaway? It was a yes. We agreed a moving in date (May 2nd), and all kissed each other as I wondered exactly what I’d done there.
Ah yes, he giveth and he taketh away. Shortly after discovering a house I hadn’t really wanted had been sold, I began thinking of nothing else, berating myself for the lengthy whiteboard sessions in which I weighed up the pros and cons in pens of different colours instead of driving into town and handing over the money. I imagined a life in the house, a life that included freshly squeezed orange juice on the terrace, a little sketching, tiling in oversized man shirts and felt wistful.
Anyway, then I had a call saying there was a farm for sale, not too far away: small, habitable, with papers and electricity, and cheap. I went over the mountain and down a bumpy track to see it, and it was perfect: a ramshackle gem. If we bought it, said the farmer, he’d throw in a puppy. Ah well . . . that’s a yes!
Then a price was named that was €50,000 over the maximum, I took some photographs of donkeys and we all drove back in silence.
I think it started with a picture of a derelict farmhouse in Almeria. What was standing was standing in a landscape that seemed to be made up of bits of rock and dust that had fallen off it. It was remote, and came with what looked like a quarry dotted with prickly pears and views of cardboard-coloured dusty mountains. It was available for a very reasonable £22,000. I could imagine myself sitting on the shaded deck of the minimalist pod I’d have erected beside it, sketching eagles while visiting friends, keen to work with their hands, rebuilt the walls of the old place. Then we’d all drink wine and eat olives and splash about in the infinity pool. Except there wasn’t any water.
The property, one of hundreds in a similarly parlous state, wasn’t far to the east of the Tabernas Desert, Europe’s only semi-desert; a place that manages to be too hot (peaking on a regular basis just short of 50C) and too cold (substantially below freezing on winter nights) but still rather compelling. The landscape goes on and on, mesmerically repetitive, gouged by rivers that haven’t run for quite some time, and the only things moving on a still day are birds of prey, riding the thermals in a rich blue sky, and their shadows. It’s the kind of place you can imagine being staked out to music by Ennio Morricone. Sergio Leone must have thought so too; An American wild west outpost was created in Tabernas for A Fistful of Dollars, and the spaghetti western was born (although the ‘pork chop western’ would be more gastronomically correct). You can visit the Mini-Hollywood set. It’s been used a zillion times. Look out for it in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, and The Magnificent Seven, as well as great shots of the surrounding desert in Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and most recently, the Ridley Scott epic, Exodus, slated for a December 2014 release (in which Christian Bale fresh from his success as a 70s sleazeball in American Hustle plays Moses). So, an interesting area but impractical for someone who likes a long shower.
Thanks to a chain of completely random events, I am starting my meandering quest for a somewheresville in not only the wettest part of Andalucia, but the most expensive inland area, in the province of Cádiz, south of Seville in Andalucia’s southwest. It is a spectacularly beautiful area of lakes and mountains and white villages draped over the shoulders of a crag. I don’t know anyone for a thousand miles but the people I have met have been amusing and friendly and equally interested in living their lives rooted in the land as they have for generations, though not without the luxuries of good food, good wine, good company, peace and comfort. This is one of the most difficult areas in which to find an affordable country house. The culture is traditional and the land is protected which means I am unlikely to find a suitable plot for a minimalist, modernist pod either. But still, I’ll try.
