Changes

By all accounts, the Alpujarra is a beautiful and fascinating place. It sits in Andalusia in Spain, on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and is characterised by its fertile farmed terraces. It is rich with history, having been one of the last frontiers in the Catholic ''reconquista'' of Southern Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the al-Andalus Muslims who had lived there since the Moorish conquest five hundred years before.

Based on the author's own experiences, the book is partly an account of a British family buying a home in the Alpujarra and partly a love letter travelogue to the region itself. It opens about a year before the house purchase, with a riding expedition. The landscape is stunning. The riding is hazardous but joyous. The people are welcoming and full of humour. And, Dalrymple decides, one day, he will buy a house here.

But what really makes the book is the people. Bob and Linda may well have been dreadful but there's Antonio and Carmen, whose house the Dalrymples bought. I loved the idea that Carmen was still behaving as though the house was hers even a decade later - walking in without knocking, "sharing" the washing line. There are bar owners and hunters and musicians and drinkers and farmers. I loved them all.

 

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