Christmas is a difficult time of year here at the Olive Mill, there are grandkids and festivities going on back in the UK that we just can’t be part of, we have to be here for the animals. So normally we just close ourselves in and ride it out. This year, however we decided to try and visit the beautiful city of Cordoba for the celebrations as this is our fourth Christmas here, but we have never experienced it.

Firstly, thanks to a Christmas donation from my Mum, we treated ourselves to a lastminute.com deal at a top secret hotel in the city. This meant we could enjoy the luxury of a warm room and heating for the night. We paid £36 for a night, but you don’t find out which hotel until after you book, so it is a bit exciting. We fed all the animals and headed in to the City for a late lunch at El Corte Ingles, the best burgers in Cordoba. Then we checked in to the hotel, the NH Armistad based in the ancient walls of the city. Perfect location for checking out the Christmas celebrations.

We then spent a lovely evening, in temperatures more akin to a UK spring, wandering around the city taking in the Christmas lights, and visiting the ‘belenes‘, nativity scenes set up in all the churches. Some photos below.

So, while we were in Cordoba, we read that there was to be a New Years Eve concert, in the Plaza de Tendillas in the centre. It was to start at 11pm. So we left the house at around 9pm, thinking we would get there early, have a drink somewhere and chill for a while, but when we arrived in the city, there was not a soul anywhere. The place was like a ghost town. Even the bars were closed. WTF. So we headed to the concert area, and sat on a bench, with our eight layers of clothes on. Gradually as the time got later, the place started to fill up, and by midnight there were thousands of people jumping and singing along to the music. At midnight, as expected all the Spanish popped their grapes in to their mouths on each ‘bong’ of midnight, followed by lot of kisses, drinks and fireworks.

This was the second article published in the Weekly Telegraph on 19th July 2012

Back in the UK Lorna and I had been lucky enough to afford the things we wanted, as we both worked. We had the latest phones, large-screen TVs, and all the modern conveniences people take for granted these days.

But June 2007 proved to be a pivotal month. Having been a dance teacher for 30 years and having gone through a minor health issue that had made working difficult, when I suggested a lifestyle change, Lorna did not take long to make up her mind.

Discussions had started slightly tongue-in-cheek when I suggested moving to Florida, based on two holidays there and a love of SeaWorld. But then the conversation moved to Spain. I had been investigating alpaca breeding in the UK, and after a small amount of research, we decided that this could be a plausible way of life; the industry in Spain had yet to take off, and we could be pioneers.

Alpacas originate from Peru, and were first imported to the UK only about 20 years ago. They are bred for their wool (fleece), which is wonderfully fine. It also contains no lanolin and is therefore perfect for people who have allergies.

Having started looking on the internet for suitable properties with some land for this new enterprise, we found an old olive mill that had been converted, with potential for more improvement, near the Moorish city of Córdoba in Andalucía. The fact that the mill came with no mains electricity and was powered only by solar panels, and water came from a spring in the hillside, meant no bills. Fantastic. However, all gadgets these days are powered by electricity. So, when we moved here and realised that our electricity was somewhat limited, we had to adjust to only watching the TV if the sun was out, no daily use of hairdryers and straighteners and no electric kettle or toaster.

Don’t get me wrong, we have a mobile internet dongle that gets us online, and keeps us in touch with the family, and we have satellite TV to watch English television, so we don’t live like people from the Middle Ages. We have just had to readjust to what’s important. We very rarely turn the TV on during the day, and when we do, we watch a small portable TV to make the most of our electricity.

Nothing is left on standby, and lights are always switched off when we leave a room. We do have a washing machine but that works only on solar power, although it helps to turn off the fridge. Our appliances are all A-plus rated and all our light bulbs are energy saving; some are even LED bulbs and use only one watt of electricity.

Sometimes in the winter, if we have a period of bad weather, we may not be able to do any washing for a week or two, and if we are low on solar electricity, it may mean reading a book by the light of a window, until as late as possible. There have been many nights of candle-lit Monopoly and Scrabble. The lack of central heating and carpets can in winter feel a bit cold, but putting on an extra layer of clothes, or an extra duvet on the bed at night can make all the difference.

In the four years since we left the UK, we now notice that our life has become a lot more simple. We still have worries – money, family and of course health. However, we see a lot of people back home still striving to measure their lives by value. They must have the latest phone, iPad or whatever the latest device is that has just been released.

At Christmas we see people posting pictures online of piles of presents for the children and it becomes almost a competition with each other. This is one aspect of life we have grown to love in Spain, as the holidays are not governed by rampant commercialism. There will be decorations in shopping centres from November, but it is not at all in your face. Easter is a celebration of religion and not of giving chocolate; in fact it would be difficult to find an Easter egg, and Christmas is a time for family meals and conversation.

We spend our time here in Spain out in the fresh air, weeding the land or looking after our animals, and we are not governed by TV times. The Spanish people have a healthy attitude towards life; spare time is spent with family. In summer, when temperatures will regularly soar past 40 degrees, this means going out as a family at 10pm, and can mean staying out (with the children) until three in the morning.

This family atmosphere is encouraged by the apparent lack of binge drinking. I am sure that it does go on, at least in the bigger cities, but I have never felt safer than walking around our local town in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes we will see groups of teenagers in the park, but where in England you may feel intimidated and they might be drinking cheap cider or lager, these teenagers will have bottles of Pepsi and some French bread. It truly is a different way of life.

Everyday in the summer, when it was too hot to be doing anything else, I went off by myself and tried to concentrate, and get down in words some of the amazing things that have happened to Lorna and I. We have been together now for nearly ten years, and been through a lot together from family deaths, job losses, teenage troubles and now moving abroad and animal tragedies. Most of these things are easy(ish) to talk about but it is difficult to get down on paper in a way that you hope people will find funny and engaging.

Neither Lorna or I wanted the book to feel like a long moan about the terrible things that have happened to us, or for it to sound like we don’t like living here because we do, we love it. In truth, it took us longer to adapt to our isolated lifestyle than we ever imagined it would, probably two years, which included the wettest winter in living memory. Now, I really can’t imagine living anywhere ‘normal’ again.

Before we arrived from England, a rumour circulated among the neighbours that we would be keeping giraffes. In fact we had decided to turn over a new leaf and move to rural Andalucia to make a business out of breeding alpacas.

Lorna Penfold and I opted for a change of lifestyle when Lorna chose to leave the hectic world of teaching competitive freestyle disco dancing and move to this sunny part of southern Spain.

The move had been fraught from the start: the day we put our house on the market in England was the same day that the queues starting forming outside the Northern Rock at the beginning of the worldwide economic crisis.

We had managed to source some alpaca females, two from Britain and one from a breeder based in Spain. From the day the animals arrived we have had car-loads of people stop and take photographs outside our house, including officers of the Guardia Civil, guns and all.

We had decided to try Andalucia as a base for our breeding business as this was an area of Europe that was not yet a centre for alpacas. To date there are only about 400 animals in the whole of Spain, compared with about 25,000 in the UK. Alpacas originate in Peru, where there are about three million of them.

With the developing financial crisis, selling the animals proved difficult: the fall in the number of expats moving to Spain, combined with the lack of money within the farming community in Spain, has meant that a few animals have been sold as pets and the market has yet to take off.

This has meant that we had to come up with a Plan B, and as we were renovating our old olive mill, we realised that we could offer people a place to holiday in peace and tranquillity. In the past few years people from Britain have started to venture away from the normal holiday destinations and begun to hire cars and make their own travel arrangements; this has therefore opened up more opportunities for a varied range of holidays.

What we have tried to provide is a place where parents or adults can come to relax, and “step off the world for a while”, but also a place where children can be kept occupied, swimming in the pool or interacting with the alpacas, and walking our five dogs. We also try to get kids involved with decorating our gardens. Last year we encouraged all the children that visited to paint us a terracotta pot with their own design so that we can remember them all.

We live without mains electricity, so we cannot just sit and watch television 24 hours a day. Our location also means that mobile telephone coverage is patchy at best and our internet is provided by a dongle that can go off for hours at a time.

All our electricity comes from solar panels fitted on our roof, and stored in batteries; water comes from a spring in the hillside. Living here can be hard work and sometimes we have had to make do without water. If there’s a leak, we have to fix it ourselves and if we have a bad winter without sun for weeks on end, we have no power for our washing machine. Even if we manage to do some hand-washing, we can’t get it dry.

Friends who live in the UK seem to think we live the “dream”, and, in some respects we do have a wonderful life, but I am not sure people realise you have to give 100 per cent to live life in this way and embrace all the pitfalls as well as the good things.

Many of these inconveniences pale in to insignificance when the baby alpacas (cria) are born on the farm. These creatures are remarkable mothers, and generally manage to give birth unassisted. Four cria have been born on the farm so far, including one that died aged four days. This is something that we were not prepared for, but a fellow breeder told us: “If you have livestock, you have to expect dead stock.” That’s a fact of this way of life, but scarcely makes it any easier to bear.

Having now been living here for more than four years, we still get the feeling that some of the local farmers drive past our place, and call us el loco Ingles – the crazy English – but we don’t really mind that. We try to give 100 per cent to everything here, and we hope that the locals appreciate it.

People always ask us ‘Why alpacas?’ Well, the answer is pretty simple really. We fell in love with them. One day, we were on a short break in Prague, and we decided to visit the local zoo. There, we met the strange animal that was to shape our destiny. He was a brown, goofy looking, long necked sheep. He was very friendly, and he came up to us for attention, and we stayed with him for ages.

Over time, I must have googled alpacas, found out that they were a lucrative business, both in the UK, and around the world, and one day, when Lorna and I were discussing her health problems I suggested moving to Spain, and breeding alpacas for income. We made some enquiries, visited a few farms, and fell in love with the animals.

Alpacas come in a range of 22 natural colours, from white, through fawn, to brown, and also grey and black colours. The ancient Incan societies used to breed alpacas, and referred to the fleece as ‘Fibre of the Gods!’ The recent worldwide population of alpacas originates from the altiplano in the Andes, and in the early 1990’s people started to import the animals into the UK, the US and Australia. Throughout Europe alpaca breeding is still relatively unknown, however there is an industry built up around it that includes clothing (alpaca fleece has no lanolin, and is therefore hypoallergenic, and is considered to be of equivalent quality to cashmere), bedding, selling the animals as pets and chicken guards, and selling show quality animals to be used to compete in competitions and win prizes. Obviously the better animals you have to breed with, the better quality the offspring, and therefore the price you can command for sale. The real reason alpacas exist is because of the quality of the fleece, but most farms make money by producing the best animals they can, and selling them on to new breeders. In 2010, there was one stud male, in the US, that sold for $675,000. One animal!

We looked into buying alpacas in Spain, and found a farm that could supply us with animals, the industry was still very much in its infancy in Spain, and we hoped that if it took off as it had done in other countries around the world, we would be getting in at the start of something very big. Sadly, it is taking a lot longer to emerge in Spain as a real alternative for farmers, as here they are very traditional, and would much rather keep a goat, that will cost a fraction of the price yet provide the family with milk, and meat to eat. They struggle to understand how you can justify high prices for an animal that stands around looking pretty and only gives you a ‘harvest’ of fleece once a year. With only three hundred or so alpacas in Spain, the fleece market is yet to take off as well. We are forever hopeful that one day, when the world is in slightly better shape, maybe, just maybe alpacas will take off in Spain.