| Some years ago now we felt that we'd like to spend some time abroad and do something very different for a time. We chose to move with our young children to a then undiscovered part of Andalucia in Southern Spain and we eventually settled close to the town of Arcos de la Frontera in the province of Cádiz. We based ourselves in the Arcos area for about 5 years and this is the olive farm we owned and managed together with the house we built. The property consisted of a large 5 bed house covered terrace, courtyard, exterior patio and walled gardens together with an old cottage and barn which we used for storage. There were 2 wells which provided water for both the house and for irrigation.
We designed and managed the construction of the new house ourselves. This was our first construction project so we learnt an awful lot and we did it entirely through Spanish which wasn't at all easy but it did help us improve our Spanish. Still, that was the point of this, our andalucian adventure.The house interior and the covered terrace were paved with aged ceramic tiles, whilst the courtyard, exterior patio and driveway were covered with exposed terracotta paving. The materials were carefully chosen to provide the house and surrounding area with an authentic rustic feel. For instance, above each window is a vigueta (small wooden beam imitating a lintel) which was the style of an original andalucian farmhouse.
The entrance to the covered terrace was framed by 3 arches, constructed from exposed terracotta bricks, in the original style of a cortijo farmhouse. The exterior walls of the house were thick and contained a filled cavity which protected us from the excessive summer heat. Friends and family often asked us how we managed to live without air-conditioning in the heat of high summer with temperatures always reaching the 40s. Very simply, the house had been insulated, an unusual thing to do in Andalucia and felt quite cool inside. We also observed the siesta throughout the summer months and stayed up until much later in the relatively cooler evenings. One great advantage of not having lived close to the coast is that we experienced no humidity whatsoever. Scorching hot it was of course but none of the dreaded mugginess that one associates with a summer in the British Isles. This drier inland climate meant that temperatures always dropped considerably in the evening and enabled us all to get a good night's sleep.
We planted a large orchard to surround the house with the following trees: orange, lemon, lime, mandarin, grapefruit, blood orange, pomegranate, persimmon, almond, fig, avocado, nectarine, apricot, peach, paraguayo, pear, plum, apple, quince, cherry, loquat, and custard apple.
The interior garden we planted with drought tolerant plants such as the date palm, the Californian fan palm, grapevines, oleander, and lavender. Our kitchen garden provided us with plenty of vegetables for most of the year. Not surprisingly, the climate there allowed us to grow all the heat loving vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, melons, aubergines and peppers outside from spring through to autumn. The frost-free growing season there is very long and almost all year round!
People constantly ask us why we don't still live there, thinking of it, I suppose, as a kind of idyll. Well, the heat, which most of us crave, is very punishing. The local people don't enjoy the long hot summer months and much prefer spring and autumn. Temperatures regularly stay above 40C in July and August and everyday chores become almost impossible. Most people think of holidays on the shores of the Mediterranean which means that temperatures can be cooler there by almost 10 degrees celsius. The constant dryness and dust can be wearing at times and most sane folk long to hear the sound of the autumn rains. Life in the countryside in the Mediterranean region is hard and the vast majority of people choose not to live there permanently, sheltering in the towns and villages from the strong summer winds and enjoying the services that we all take for granted. In rural Andalucia at least, there is no mains water, no mains sewage system, no postal delivery, no tarmaced roads and electricity connections, if at all possible, can be very hard to come by. Not exactly an idyll as some of our friends were wont to say. Still, not to put anyone off, it is possible to live there. It's just very different to living in the countryside in the British Isles.
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