Gathering in the almond crop

Up into the hills today with old friends who sold up in the UK and moved to these mountains for 10 years until recently moving back to be close to her family. The best shower I’ve ever had was standing under an olive tree here washing in water that had been solar heated in a bag. You had to not use too much soap because when the water was gone, it was gone! Jan still showers in her normal UK house by standing in a bowl and pouring the collected water into the loo to flush it. Once you’ve lived counting every drop you never stop. (The best poo was gazing out through the olive trees at the hills while sitting on a throne over a dirt hole under a large carob tree, spade ready. Magic (if you like that sort of thing)!)

Jan and her husband have been tending their and our olive, almond, fig and carob trees which grow on terraces large, small and tiny and were built ... when? It is known the Moors built terraces 5 centuries ago, but did they build these??? It was a huge amount of work for poor land way up in the hills. More recently these small fincas (farms) were tended by villagers who would go out to work them and maybe stay overnight when pruning or harvesting. Many families had enough olive trees to keep them in oil all year round (and they use a lot, 50L a year). Nowadays the younger generation don’t want to do this extra work when they may have full time jobs in the town but blow-ins of all ages are choosing to live a cheap and sometimes self sufficient life in the sun in the hills or fishing along the river.

These hills are beautiful. We saw 11 Griffin vultures flying back in the dusk to their nesting area high on an escarpment. They are huge and I’d only ever seen one at Matlock zoo in a cage before.