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Jump to navigationJump to searchBetween the Sierra & the Sea by Marcus Dalrymple (view source)
Revision as of 21:28, 6 February 2024
, 6 Februaryno edit summary
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.
Buying a house in the Alpujarra as a Brit means you buy from a Brit, isn't quite what I'd imagined but it's true. Alan Bob and TinaLinda, our ex pat estate agents are generally awful, rude, grasping and probably corrupt. But it has to be done. And really, Alan Bob and Tina Linda are just a blip as we follow the family through the years as they navigate buying a house, renovating it, making friends and bringing up their children.
You can't resist Dalrymple's awestruck reactions to the landscape and his mouthwatering descriptions of the local food and both its special and its everyday dishes. And the book is punctuated by fascinating historical detail. So much has happened to this little piece of land. Dalrymple also talks of population flight and the difficulties in earning a living and other contemporary issues facing this remote area, as well as its traditions, such as boar hunting and riding.
But what really makes the book is the people. Alan Bob and Tina 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.
Part autobiography, part travelogue, ''Betwixt the Sierra & the Sea'' is an engaging read. Full of larger than life characters and passionate about the importance of friendship and family, rooted in place, culture and history, it's a delightful read.
