Covid concerns notwithstanding, we managed to sneak away for a couple of blissful days recently.

A friend of ours, Karen Considine, has recently written a book that Andrew designed ready for publication. Over the summer months, we had worked hard to help Karen with the promotion of the book leading up to publication day on 28th August. Needless to say, the dreaded Covid stepped in and put paid to any launch party, but it was decided that we should convene regardless, as a reduced group, to celebrate the book and just have a rather lovely few days.

Karen lives in the beautiful village of Gaucín, in Málaga Province, and it was this village that, over 20 years ago, ignited my love affair with Spain. It seems difficult to believe that this trip to Gaucín many years ago was my very first trip to mainland Spain. Prior to that, I had a very misguided idea of what Spain was like, based solely on horror stories that focused on the tourist hotspots along the Costa del Sol, Benidorm and Magaluf and Palma Nova on Mallorca, none of which held any temptation for me.

On that first trip, I arrived into Gibraltar and took the fairly grim drive through La Linea de la Concepción and along a short part of the Costa del Sol, and this short section did little to charm me. However, as soon as we hit the A-377 and left the coastal motorway behind, I was utterly beguiled. I had no idea that Spain was so spectacularly beautiful, and even to this day the vast expanses of wild landscape and enormous skies cures me of all ills.

Gaucín has the gracious air of a still-flirtatious dowager duchess, and was one of the first villages to draw in the wave of non-Spanish residents looking to resettle in Spain back in the 1970s. Over the decades this beautiful collection of whitewashed houses hugging the folds of the southern-most slopes of the Serrania de Ronda has attracted artists, writers, historians, politicians. It is easy to understand the appeal, given that the village snuggles into green forest and gazes languorously across to the straits of Gibraltar and the mountains of north Africa beyond. What we found interesting on this trip was that Gaucín has managed to retain its integrity. Despite its undoubted popularity with a non-Spanish population, there are reminders that this is still, and always has been, a traditional Spanish village, and works as such. Incomers and revenue from tourism have both contributed to the village’s coffers, but it doesn’t feel like a museum piece or a tourist attraction. Perhaps unkindly, the village and its surrounds have been labelled the ‘Cotswolds of Spain’, but compared to the far more gentle and bucolic hills of Gloucestershire, the Serrania de Ronda has a wildness that jabs you right in the solar plexus.

We were very generously offered a stay in a beautiful home belonging to another friend; someone who offered a free stay to healthcare workers as part of our #MyTravelPledge campaign. Whoever does get to stay in this private home as a result of the campaign, in the glorious paddocks below Gaucín, will be very fortunate indeed.

Karen lives in the heart of the village and has done so for the past 14 years. She is a keen horsewoman whose career was spent largely on the international polo circuit and then running riding holidays here in the Serrania de Ronda before she finally decided to semi-retire. I say semi-retire, as Karen then decided to embark on a slightly barking mad odyssey.

When Karen was 15, she was given a copy of a book written by Penelope Chetwode, the wife of poet laureate Sir John Betjeman. In 1961, Penelope took it upon herself to ride on horseback through a corner of Andalucia, and she subsequently charted her progress in a book entitled ‘Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia’, the middled-aged ladies being herself and her mount, La Marquesa. The book is a fascinating account of an extraordinary journey through a very hidden-away corner of the world, where life was hard and the people poor. Penelope’s adventures remained with Karen and inspired her, once she had retired, to retrace those pioneering footsteps (or hoof prints). So, in April 2019, along with 2 trusty steeds, Karen set off in all weathers on her own horse-borne odyssey.

As fate would have it, Penelope’s Route passed through our very own village of Moclín, and when Karen was planning her trip, we were introduced by our mutual friend Manni Coe of the bespoke travel company Toma and Coe. Karen and a friend, Marcela, arrived at our then temporary home one wet autumn day, and so we became involved in this marginally eccentric escapade, albeit in a small and modest way.

The route runs from Íllora, and the Duke of Wellington’s estate just outside the village. The trails then cross 100 miles of some of Granada and Jaén Province’s most unspoiled corners up to the Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas.

Karen’s own account of this journey is a charmingly and engagingly written insight into something uniquely Spanish but mixed with a fair dose of Karen’s unique brand of Irish wit, and philosophy. It is fascinating to see how time has affected these barely touched pockets of Andalucia, comparing the lives led today with those lived almost 60 years ago. There are people in some of the villages that Karen visited who still remember the tall and elegant Penelope arriving on her horse - a very unusual sight in 1961. Penelope’s Route is a journal of a life gone by and lives that have done their best to adapt in order to survive. At a time when we are actively advocating the vital importance of rural inland travel in inland Spain, this book provides so many reasons to support this drive. Villages that once had 3000 inhabitants now have 500, and with each generation, the villages are gradually dying away. Young people leave to go to university and then need to emigrate to the cities in order to find work. It is inspiring to read that, despite often bleak outlooks, there are passionate Spanish people who can see the potential of sustainable tourism and are converting abandoned cave houses into quality travel accommodation. However, these small initiatives have difficulty getting traction when they are viewed in isolation, and there needs to be a concerted and combined campaign to promote the riches of this kind of travel.

Penelope’s and Karen’s route. Illustration ©Andrew Watson — Penelope’s and Karen’s route. *Illustration ©Andrew Watson*

Spain is vast, and as we have written previously, there are areas where you can count as few as 12 people in a single square kilometre. There are vast tracts of wilderness, that transport the traveller back thousands of years. In any post-Covid world, this is a country that offers the security of social distancing without having to try; here, it is just you and nature.

I read one passage in Karen’s book this morning that seems to sum up the very essence of these shared experiences, separated by 60 years of time, and the fragility of existence:

“I returned a few months later to ride with José on his horses in another part of the park and called in to see my friends in Don Pedro. A few days earlier Maximiliana [earlier described as ‘the very un-whimsical granny but who remembered Penelope’s visit and who proffered branches from a bay tree to Karen to ward off evil spirits] and Juana had been busy making preserves of the produce of their fruit trees and vegetable garden. Full of plans and leaving everything ready for a final bottling next day, the old lady went to bed and never woke up. I rode in to find a tearful, diminished little family, telling me she had been looking forward to seeing me again. “We miss her love”, they said.”

It brings it home that, as incomers, we have a responsibility to these glorious corners of Spain and the warm and welcoming people who live here, who have stories to tell. Amidst the maelstrom of Brexit, scrabbles to get residency in Spain, get a toehold on the property market here, juggle around our travel plans to fit in with whatever ill-conceived restrictions have just been imposed in our Covid-governed world, Karen’s book takes us out of the vortex and reminds us that there is another world out there and that we can take the time to reconnect with nature and places that have changed little with time.

We had a glorious time in Gaucín. Alfie made a new friend in Rory, Karen’s collie, and never have we seen a pair of dogs who seemed to be so in-tune with each other. I’d say that it was because the pair of them are two bricks short of a load, but Rory is actually very bright and sharp-witted. The two of them bonded immediately, and it was a joy watching the larger and slightly older Rory taking the whippersnapper Alfie under his wing, showing him a few ways of the world.

We all fell in love with Gaucín, and will return as soon as we can. Two nights in Karen’s company would inspire anyone, such is her dynamic approach to life - something that seems to be common to the ladies of Gaucín; there must be something in the water.

All I have left to do now is persuade Andrew to clamber on board a horse and disappear with me and Alfie into the wide blue yonder…