Gastgeber aus Almachar

We bought a big five bedroomed house in the village of Almáchar about 10 years ago. We'd had a nice holiday nearby and wondered if we could afford an Andalucian home as a holiday project. Our son had grown up and moved out. This was at a time when British banks were positively forcing loans on their customers. If you weren't sub prime, the manager wanted to know why. So we got our mortgage extended on the nod of a bank clerk and bought this big beautiful property.

At that time we were in our early 50's and had middle management jobs in the middle of London. Naturally our chief execs became more and more interested in replacing us with 30 year olds, piling on the pressure and "reorganising" with a view to being rid of us before the age discrimination act became law. So we decided to take stock of our prospects from a personal point of view. It seemed to us that staying put for another ten years would only get us older and deeper in debt for few rewards. Our small pensions had been eaten into by crooked bankers, crooked insurance salesmen and crooked politicians so it seemed wise, if we could, to build up a little business in a place we could afford to live, while we still had the strength to start again.

So that's what we have done. We sold up lock stock and barrel and bought two little cottages and a couple of hectares of land laid down to mangoes, pomegranates and almonds in the little hamlet of Cútar.

And that's where we are now.

We like the region, its people past and present, its fantastic exotic history, its food and fiestas and those long balmy evenings and swaying date palms that remind us we are no longer stuck halfway up the Holloway road.