Jerez

We have flown to Jerez twice now. It is a bit further from Montanchez than Madrid or Seville but if we have a bit of spare time it is our airport of preference mainly due to the fact that we love the town. The first time we went we were just the two of us and spent a couple of nights in the Barcelo hotel in the town centre. I enjoyed our stay and the style of the hotel. The staff were friendly enough, the furniture very contemporary despite the age of the building and it was very comfortable. I wanted to go the the riding school but we were not there on the two days a week that they have a performance so instead of that we booked to go the the Carthusian Stud Farm. We were shown around the stud and told how it was run and a bit about the history of the place. It was amazing to get up close to such beautiful animals. The tour was followed by a show which was breathtakingly good. Unfortunately, my camera was getting past its sell-by date and I have a lot of pictures of the back sides of horses. This picture was not taken by me!!

On this visit we also went on the Gonzales Byass Sherry tour. The last thing I wanted was to sit on a stupid train with a load of other people and be trundled around the site but actually it was very interesting and all the processes and history of sherry were explained to us - we would never have learned as much without a guide.  I must admit that I can 'put away' my fair share of Fino and enjoyed my stay in the home of sherry.

On our next trip to the city we took our elder daughter, her husband and their then 18 month old daughter. We stayed a couple of nights at the Casa Grande.  I had noticed this hotel in an article in the magazine Living Spain and booked it, as recommended, through www.anamazinghotel.com This was a much more down to earth hotel, with very friendly staff and a knowledgeable and friendly owner.  We were recommended a place to eat on our first night which seemed to be full of locals.  It was amazing food but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the place (how useful is that?  I could take you there however if you fancy taking me to Spain with you!!)  Although we didn't have tapas, we ordered several dishes and shared them amongst ourselves.

Apparently Jerez gets very few days of rain a year and I think in 2008 we saw most of them.  Whilst enjoying our meal on that first night there was an amazing rain storm.  The locals appeared quite surprised by it and were borrowing bin bags from the restaurant with which they fashioned make do waterproof cloaks.  The second night was the end of a fiesta and the fireworks were fantastic - amazingly Florin (my granddaughter) managed to sleep through them!!

My daughter is horse mad, so having seen the stud farm ourselves we booked to see the riding school show.  Yet again we were able to look around the site but there was no guide or information about the animals themselves.  The show was interesting but nearly all the horses had bloodied sides by the end which we didn't feel comfortable with.  If I had the choice between the two venues, I would definitely chose the stud.

Spring in and around our finca

We visited the finca in spring 2008.  The weather was warm and the spring flowers were out in abundance.  I have added some pictures taken when either out for a walk or wandering around on the finca.

Progress so far

We didn't imagine that it would take quite so long to get our building licence but there it is. We needed a certain amount of land in order to build which meant that we had to buy three fincas and join them together. We then had to get the plans drawn by an architect who then submits the plans to the School of Architecture for approval. From here it goes to two other 'councils' and can get held up at any stage. We are, I believe on the last stage and are just keeping fingers and toes crossed that we don't have a problem.

We will have no main services to our property and will rely on solar power, bottled gas and our bore hole. The bore hole has been sunk, in fact it was done over a year ago so that is one less cost for the future. We are also going to build a wooden storage/studio. Of course Will has designed this and had it made and we now need to transport it out to Spain.



Originally we were going to drive down in our van with the skeleton, erect that and then buy the cladding and other requirements locally. Will is now thinking along the lines of having it transported out there together with all the fitting and timber needed to complete the project. A concrete plinth is already there waiting for its arrival. It is set in the olive grove and will be a lovely additional bit of accommodation should we need it. It will also enable us to stay independently of Pippa and Manfred when we visit. They may be friends but there is a limit to how often they want us staying with them.

This wooden construction is grandly called the Olive House and I intend to paint it a variation of Cambridge blue - you can take the girl out of the fens but not the fens out of the girl!!! I think this will make it blend into the olive grove as it is to blue what the colour of olive leaves are to green. I often look around the fens and think how similar the colours are to Extremadura. Not least the willows that reflect the olive trees. It will have a compostable loo and an outside shower. I have seen one at a chandler that should be adequate.

The Storm

We have not managed to get away from the business much this year. Will and I run a design business. We specialise in hand made bespoke kitchens that Will designs on his drawing board - he is a technophobe and will not touch a computer! Of course it is not just kitchens but all other furniture too and we buy contemporary furniture from both Italy and Germany. We got hit with a double wammy this year what the the recession and then the alterations to the road outside our shop which went on for months meaning that we got no passing trade and people were unable to actually get to us even if they wanted to. I got to work one morning to find that I had to climb over a barrier to get to the door!!

Our business however will enable us to design and make all the woodwork for our project. Pippa has used chestnut for her doors and windows which is lovely and timeless but also rather expensive. Some of the other projects I have seen have used local carpenters and I am not sure that the client got what they were expecting. Much of it is pine and I am not a lover of pine in its new form - bright and yellow and not very subtle.

Our first trip this year was at the end of January, beginning of February. It was cold and wet apart from one day when we managed to go out wild asparagus hunting. We spent the entire week looking for wood to put on the fire, cooking, eating, drinking and reading. We left in a hail storm. How amusing: people only ever think of Spain as hot but we have seen more inclement weather than clement I think. We returned for ten days in late September leaving warm autumn sun behind us in Cambridge. We flew to Seville arriving around 9.30 pm and then drove to Pippa's at Finca al Manzil. As we got within sight (or it would have been sight had it not been midnight and pitch black) Will turned the windscreen wipers on. We were greeted by a laughing Pippa and Manfred who before poring us a large glass of wine, informed us that this was the first rain since they had seen us last. Har bloody har I thought. We have suffered the 'barbecue' summer that had been dreadful and now we were getting away for some more of the same. Of course they needed the rain as the countryside was parched and there was little grazing for the horses and donkeys.



When we got up the following morning it was bright and warm so after breakfast Pippa, Will and I went for a stroll to have a look at a new build down the lane that had just had a natural pool installed.


On our way there we commented on the insects in Pippa's pool and decided that on our return we would have to give it a clean. By the time we got back the sky had darkened and it looked like rain. Before we knew it the rain swept over the finca followed by crashing thunder and lightning. Dry slopes turned to rivers, mud and debris came sliding down the mountain and then the hail settled all around making it look more like a winter scene than early autumn. Pippa thought the storm lasted for about 15 minutes but I am sure it was much, much longer. It was the biggest storm that any of us had ever seen and really quite exciting! It had also been pretty local; Montanchez was hit and some of the house apparently flooded but no serious damage was done. The next day was hot and sunny and that was how it stayed for the rest of our stay. Unfortunately the pool needed to be drained as horse and donkey poo had been swept of the pasture and into the pool leaving it a brown muddy mess. The other amazing thing was that four days later,I looked under the mud and tree debris that had ended up by the wall of the finca and there I found hail stones!

We love it

All we had to do now was built our house. When we were looking in both Italy and France, our budget had been small and we had wanted two, maybe three bedrooms. It was to be our home from home, for us and our friends. Now things had changed. As Will is a designer, he decided to he wanted to be very hands on in how our house would look. We decided that we wanted to copy some of the ideas used by our friends Pippa and Manfred but not in the sense that our two houses would look the same. We admired the way that their property sat well in the surroundings and wanted our house to do the same. One of the features that we particularly liked was the roof high ceiling in their living room with stairs leading to the master bedroom. Theirs in a three bedroomed house with one bedroom upstairs and two others facing out onto an open balcony. We decided to make our house a four bedroomed affair with our bedroom upstairs on the first floor and three bedrooms onto a balcony area and in an 'L' shape. We hoped that this would give us a private room for our use only with a terrace leading out over the 'tower', a piece that Will had designed to join the two parts of the house together.

Will even made a paper model that we took with us on our next visit - this was when one could take things like that on Ryanair!! Amazingly enough when we got the plans back from the architect, it looked nothing like the model! We were so lucky in that Manfred who is Austrian, speaks many languages so he was able to help us get the plans right. I don't know what we would have done without him really and I am not entirely sure we would have even started the project without his help.

Our finca is down a muddy/dusty lane (depending on the time of year and the weather) that leads from the village of Arroyomolinos to Montanchez, the highest point I believe in Extremadura. Montanchez is a quaint large village with a couple of hotels, many bars, a few shops and a supermarket and a wonderful Moorish castle that sits on top of the mountain looking down on the sierra. On top of this there is a weekly market and more jamon outlets than you could shake a stick at. Extremadura is the land of the black pig. You see them all over the countryside and they eat the holme-oak acorns that are in abundance in that part of Spain. For some this is food heaven but for me it is hell! I am one of those odd people who don't eat mammals. Eating out therefore is hard work, not least as I am having huge problems with getting to grips with the language. Even if there does appear to be something on the menu that is mammal free, more often than not there is pig hidden in there somewhere. But then for us it is not really like being on holiday any more but being at home. The jamon comes in many different qualities. I am told by my meat eating family that the cheapest is the best. And who am I to complain? It was my decision to cut out that particular part of my diet and in other parts of Spain I have eaten the most wonderful food that could have been prepared with me in mind. So not only have we chosen to build when we wanted to do a bit of restoration; buy in Spain when we had decided on Italy or France; bought in the middle of nowhere when we wanted a village; bought two and half hours from the nearest airport when we wanted to be able to make use of the place for long weekends but and this is a big but, we have decided on a place where the food is a nightmare for vegetarians or as I am, non mammal eaters!!! Who cares I just love it.

<

Some 4 years ago, Will, my better half, and I decided we wanted to buy a place abroad. At this point our budget was quite tiny and so off we went to Italy with some friends to see what was available. The idea at this stage was that maybe we would buy a place together - silly idea - but on our first trip to Puglia we saw nothing that hit the spot. We did however fall in love with Ostuni, a marvellous white town sitting on a hilltop and although nothing came of the trip, Ostuni is still a place that I would love to return to and would recommend it especially to the foodies amongst us. We returned a few months later with our younger daughter and were driven around by a so called expert who showed us quite the most unattractive building I have ever seen. He kept on telling us that he was an expert but somehow managed to take us on a two day road trip from A to B to A and then back to B. In other words we spent 2 days in his Alpha feeling car sick whilst he drove and breakneck speed talking to 'his men' on the phone.

Our next preferred destination was southern France and luckily for us we had some friends who had recently moved to a place near Quillan so we combined a visit to see them and some more house hunting. France for me was more comfortable as I can speak a bit of French. We loved the area, found the people friendly and the food rather good too but we just couldn't find the right sort of house. You see we wanted something that was in a village, that needed a bit of work doing to it, that was spacious enough for us to take friends and family away, that was not too far from an airport to enable us to make use of it at weekends but that also had some outside space. It would appear form what we learned that village houses ( in that part of France anyway), don't have much of a garden.

It just so happened that one of our oldest friends had moved from Portugal to Spain and asked us to pay her a visit. Spain was out as far as we were concerned; the image of crowded beaches had tainted its appeal. She and her partner however lived in Extremadura in central southern Spain. They had bought a large plot of land, had built a barn and then a three bedroom house in the middle of nowhere and were running it as a B&B/ barn rental business.

We fell in love. Extremadura is wild, non touristy and very, very Spanish. Whilst there we had very hot sun, rain and the most amazing thunder and lightning. It made the rather long flight and two and a half hour drive seem worthwhile. After a week with them we bought a finca!!