You’d think there’d be some sort of warning.A text, a name, a passing mention at breakfast like, “Hey, by the way, we’re going to a funeral today.” Nope. Carmen just handed me a black shirt and said, “Don’t wear the sandals.”That was the full prep. I assumed it was a church thing. A mass, maybe. …
The message came via Paco. Which means it wasn’t so much an invitation as a grunt, followed by “mañana” and a vague arm wave toward the hills. Carmen translated. “You’re going to a men’s lunch.” I blinked. “What does that mean?” She shrugged. “Meat. Wine. Shouting. Possibly cards. Possibly guns.” She was joking. I think. …
It started, as most of my questionable decisions do, with Carmen saying something like, “It’ll be good for you.” She meant the olive harvest. Her uncle Paco needed an extra pair of hands. I needed, apparently, to “feel the land.” She said that too. With this sweeping gesture across the valley like she was some …
Walking home after meeting Carmen, I felt… I don’t know. Lighter? Different? Something had shifted. Not in a big, dramatic way. Just… there. Sitting in the back of my mind. I wasn’t looking for it. I’d been caught up in getting things done—fixing the house, learning how to cook, hiking every damn trail in the …
Rosa ambushed me with it. “You need company, Robert. Not just hikes and cooking disasters.” I tried dodging, but she wasn’t having it. Next thing, I’m sitting in a café in Órgiva, waiting for a blind date. Rosa’s doing. I checked my watch, tugged at my sleeve. This was either going to be a laugh …
I didn’t move to La Alpujarra for the food. But the food, somehow, became the thing. Didn’t see that coming. Back in London, I cooked because I had to. Quick meals, nothing special. A bit of chicken, some pasta, whatever could be thrown together without much thought. Just something to shove in my mouth between …
I don’t know how I ended up here, standing in the middle of a village square, hands warm from a bag of roasted chestnuts, watching a fire crackle while an old man tunes his guitar. I mean, I know how—I walked out of my house this morning and followed the smell of woodsmoke and sugar. …
One of the first things that smacked me in the face about life in La Alpujarra? The weekly market isn’t just a place to buy vegetables—it’s the town’s pulse, a noisy, fragrant, beautifully chaotic organism that makes the sterile, fluorescent-lit supermarkets of London feel like a scene from a dystopian novel. Órgiva’s market is the …
La Alpujarra doesn’t just feel like another place. It feels like a whole other world. I noticed it straight away—how time stretches, how the air carries something quieter, something older. There’s no rush, no urgency, just space. London, on the other hand, was full of noise and movement. The streets always dragged you forward, schedules …
Fixing up an old townhouse in Pampaneira has been a mix of small wins, big setbacks, and a whole lot of trial and error. When I first stepped inside, the place had that kind of faded charm you either see as a project or a problem. The floors were uneven, the beams cracked with age, …
Pampaneira feels like a place time forgot, but in the best way possible. The second I arrived, something just clicked. It wasn’t just the beauty of the place, though there’s plenty of that. It was the quiet, the kind that isn’t empty but full of life in a different way. The streets twist and turn, …
Didn’t mean to come here. That’s the first thing. Not in a grand, “oh, fate led me here” kind of way, just—didn’t think it through. Saw some pictures, liked the way the mountains looked, needed out of London, and… well. That was that. Could’ve been anywhere, really. Booked the flight before I could talk myself …