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.