Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain Read Free Page B

Granada in the biscuit tin of a car that I had hired. We watched as the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada appeared from a blue haze above the city and the winter sun set the tops glowing rose pink with the last rays of the day. Ana was enchanted and I too felt a bit dazed by the beauty of it all. What a place to come and live! We left Granada behind and climbed over the pass of Suspiro del Moro, the Moor’s sigh, where the last Muslim king had turned to weep as he was exiled forever from his beloved city. Little wonder.
    Pedro and Maria had invited us to stay the night and late in the evening we turned into the valley for Ana’s first view of our new home. In the light of the setting sun the fields along the road seemed even more beautiful than I had imagined. Ana seemed pleased with it all and I pointed things out to her proudly as we passed. Olives, oranges, lemons . . . cabbages . . . potatoes . . .
    We climbed up over the cliffs of the gorge and into the valley.
    ‘There it is!’
    You get a brief glimpse of El Valero just as you enter the valley, before it disappears again behind a great curtain of rock.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Over there, you see? Up on the rock over the other side of the river.’
    ‘That?’
    ‘What do you mean “that”?’
    ‘Precisely that – that.’
    ‘Well “that” is it. El Valero. What do you think?’
    ‘I don’t think at all from this distance. I’ll reserve judgement till we get a little nearer.’
    We drove on into the valley and stopped at a nearer vantage point. ‘Well, I think it really looks rather nice.’
    I looked at Ana in amazement and delight. She is not generally given to such outbursts of enthusiasm.
    We drove on a bit and parked the car where the road ran out. From here on we had to walk. ‘Piggeries?’ she asked. It was undoubtedly a question.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The piggeries?’ she asked again.
    ‘What piggeries? There’s no piggeries here!’
    ‘You told me that from the road to El Valero was just as far as the piggeries.’
    ‘Did I?’
    The light was failing and I knew there was a long and rather tricky walk across the valley to get to the farm. We set off along the path down the hill, navigating a patch of bog where the way forded a stream, and then through a thicket of huge eucalyptus, sweet-smelling and whispering in the evening breeze, and ringing with birdsong. We emerged on the bank of the river. It tumbled full and clear down a steep bed of stones, crashing and roaring over the falls of smooth rocks and gliding in and out of the stiller pools.
    I smiled and squeezed Ana’s hand as we set out eagerly across the pack-bridge, excited at the prospect of our first view together of our new home.
    An hour and a half later it was growing steadily darker and we were thrashing about in a bramble patch up to our ankles in wet black mud. Spanish brambles are more vicious than English ones. Each thorn is a curved barb, and once they’ve got you they don’t much like to let you go.
    ‘I don’t know how you had the nerve to say it was only as far as the piggeries.’ The matter was clearly preying on Ana’s mind.
    ‘Distances can be very deceptive in this sort of terrain,’ I said pompously, while slithering about in the mud and dangling rather inelegantly by one ear from a bramble bush. ‘But I can’t imagine what has happened. I only bought this farm a few days ago and now I can’t even find it.’
    ‘That is most unlike you.’
    I ignored the remark and peered on into the undergrowth. ‘This looks like the way I took last time, but it’s got a bit overgrown. Let’s go back to the big oleander and try the other way.’
    At last we burst through a wicked clump of pampas grass in the enveloping darkness, and Ana spotted the pale dust of a path leading through clear ground.
    ‘That’s it. I knew it was here somewhere.’
    And it was. As we puffed up the path with its rocky steps that had so delighted me when I first saw the place, I turned to Ana