So much for my punctuality in getting my travel log off by the start of each month. Some of this is actually being typed and written for the third time! Thanks to several technological glitches, exploding cameras, faulty memory sticks and a severe lack of access to Microsoft word in the high mountains. For what it´s worth my phone has also died. But at last it is here! Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I have spent the last 5 weeks in Las Alpujarras, the mystic heart of Granada province. A beautiful mountain range with deep wide valleys sweeping south of the Sierra Nevada, whose peaks are still covered in snow, including Mulhacen, Spain’s highest mountain. But here in the valleys spring has arrived. The almond and cherry blossoms are out, ladybirds are creeping up the plant stems and the days are getting warmer and longer. If Almeria had a sad beauty, Las Alpujarras’s is mystical. The mountain air is wonderfully thin allowing sounds to travel far; the sound of flowing water is almost ever present. The mountainsides have little white villages hanging to the sides of them, each with its own fountain. Within the forests there are natural springs to drink from, including one, the only in Spain, which is naturally fizzy, infused with iron and other minerals. The beauty of this part of Spain owes much to the genius of the Moors. Water, as it was in their days, is still the local gold. It is argued over and discussed in some way every day. The very channels that were dug all those years ago are still in use and thanks to them it has transformed a potentially dry valley into one lush with growth and deciduous forest. They dug and directed an incredible series of irrigation routes bringing water from the high Sierras and thus making life as it is possible here.

It´s not hard to see why this part of Spain is so popular with alternative types looking for a piece of paradise. The landscape is beautiful, the pace easy and the weather sunny. Many foreigners have come over and bought their little piece of land, rebuilt a ruin, started a business, planted a seed. Some have done it along official lines and others not. I´ve chatted to several people around here about such topics as planning permission and land prices. As I´m sure many of you are aware, in Ireland you can build a ‘tool shed’ without permission on your land, which people then secretly live in. Well the same thing happens in Las Alpujarras, only here you can go to even greater extremes. I´ve been told that if you do build a house without permission and are caught all you get is a fine which may only be a few thousand euro. That´s pretty incredible. There´s laws in place but Spaniards after so many years under Franco don´t like being told what to do. Thus there is a refreshing approach from the authorities. They´ll ignore you for as long as possible and when you do have to visit them they will not only ask the questions but give you the right answers too. That said it is hard to get things done. If you are not ´plugged in´ called enchufe here you will wait some time to get the local digger truck driver to arrive. If you are building in anything other than the local style you won´t find much of a support network, nor materials. Thankfully the local style is for the most part aesthetically pleasing. Houses need to be clad in natural stone from the area, un-sawn timber is used in roofs and window lintels. All roofs have to be flat and packed with local clay on top of slate. This though is rather bizarre and causes consternation among many. These roofs need yearly maintenance involving the family jumping on it to repack it and close any gaps.





My first week here was supposed to be spent at the local Steiner school in the town of Orgiva but that got cancelled at the last minute. I found out later that there is a lot internal strife going on at the moment within the school body. Pity for the kids really. All told the teachers just want to teach but raging arguments about what to teach and how has meant that nobody is getting taught anything at all. And so it continues. So instead I extended my stay in the city of Granada which was experiencing its wettest week in history. But unlike Santiago which relishes the rain, Granada starts to look like a wet dog after a few days of it. My brother was over from Ireland so I guess he brought the weather with him. I introduced him to the wonders of couch surfing but Rob is a different sort of traveller. After several cold nights wrapped in not much more than a tea towel and lying on a small couch he moved down the street to a 3 star hotel. Granada’s main attraction is of course the Alhambra. The small percent of the original Moorish structure that still remains is outstanding, and the views of the Alhambra from the Plaza San Nicholas are pure romance, but you can’t help wondering how it must have looked before so much was destroyed and built over by the Catholic monarchs. The Albaycin is the Moorish quarter of Granada, it’s a maze of little streets and is a designated UNESCO site. It’s hard to walk through it without stopping off in a tea house and smoking a hookah, or helping yourself to a cheap kebab. But it contains the living lanes of the city, away from the main thoroughfares with their chain stores and fashion outlets. Granada prides itself on its generosity with tapas, a free portion of food that comes with every drink you order. Still I find it is best not to go out with any empty stomach expecting to have your dinner that way. You´d keel over intoxicated before you had your fill. It didn’t take us long to find our way to Hannigans Irish bar. It was never planned, we just stumbled upon it, and sure enough a special Super bowl night with a three hour build up was under way. We were invited back for quiz night and open mic night, and we even got free drinks from the Irish owner, but I didn’t get over my hangover in time to return.


Tell any hippy or alternative type you are going to Las Alpujarras and they are sure to mention one place,

You know you are at an unusual party when a drunken guy wanders out the back to pee but refuses to do so until he finds the compost bin to do it in. Or when a friend turns to you to inquire if the person dancing beside you is a man or a woman. You know you are in an unusual town when you take a visit to the farmers market and find one stall consisting of 4 loaves of bread on a small table surrounded by 4 guys drinking beer, intermittently shouting ´Organic bread!´ All the hardcore hippies, crusties and wanderers of the world seemed to have converged on this town and have brought with them an immensity of dogs and years of experience of squatting, protesting, sitting on their asses and general dislike of a system they will never fit in to. It would be easy to judge but harder to ask why so many turn their back on society and whether maybe they have something to teach us. But that line of communication is never opened. The wanderers in Orgiva stay on their side and the locals stare and frown from the other. One thing I can say for certain is that money can distant you from people and when I visited those places where money was scarce, community spirit was strong.

This is a question that has interested me a lot recently. GEN stands for the Global Eco-village Network; it can be accessed at www.ecovillage.org, and has Jonathon Dawson of Findhorn at its helm. He has written a book as part of the Schumacher series on Eco-villages and he lists 5 fundamental attributes of an eco-village.

- That there is a primacy of community.
- That it is a citizens’ initiative.
- Motivated by the desire to rest back control of our own resources.
- There´s a strong body of shared values.
- They are centres of research, demonstration and training.

Just outside Orgiva there is a well-known community called Beneficio and some 40km east towards Almeria there is another called Valle de Sensaciones. I visited both of these recently and found that what defined them most were not their similarities but their differences. The greatest being how to deal with new people coming to stay and live.
Beneficio prides itself first and foremost on its level of freedom. There are no rules written down because there is no governing body to write them. Indeed there is little organisational structure at all. There is just an open door to arrive when you want and if there is space then you can stay. And so Beneficio attracts all types, it can thrill you with its diversity of people or torment you by its chaos. In one way many things are possible here but in another its refusal to self organise closes the door to its own growth. It´s a paradise to some who wouldn´t change a thing but for others the doors are too open.
Valle de Sensaciones seeks a different route. It wants a strong community and is structured around the preservation and protection of that community. The doors are closed in so much as you can´t just arrive. It doesn´t want to attract ‘all types’ but rather it seeks to grow by attracting the ‘right’ people. To make this distinction it is necessary that visitors and volunteers have to pay to be there. Its vision is very clear and its direction feels as solid as a well fired arrow.
My visit to Valle de Sensaciones was never planned. I had an afternoon free so I decided to hitch out to Beneficio again to visit the Skill surfers who are staying there. Soon enough they flew by in their buses and told me they had been invited out to Sensaciones for a full moon party so I came along. What ensued that evening was a clash of two visions regards what an eco-community is. The Skill surfers have found their feet in Beneficio, it is their type of community. They love its freedom and ease of integration. Sensaciones however only occasionally invites groups out like this and has a set way of welcoming and integrating them into their community. Our first mistake was arriving late in the dark. (I won´t go into the details of how a 40km journey took 4hrs, though it was funny at times..) Thus it was too late to do a proper go around of names and a tour of the site. The small party had already begun and our group were given instead a list of options for eating with them that night, involving making a food contribution or giving money. This was not what the Skill surfers expected at all. It was a strange night felt by each group and as the sun arose on the next day there was a whole range of opinions flying around amongst the Skill surfers. Some felt V de S were elitist and unwelcoming, others laid blame on the disorganisation of the skill surfers group. Either way it was unfortunate but also a great lesson for everyone. Eloy, the main man at Sensaciones, visited us at our vans that morning and we had a long discussion about why last night was the way it was. He respects how Beneficio works but in order to achieve the much clearer objectives of Sensaciones it is necessary that money is brought into the equation and that things are more structured.
It seems to be a fundamental choice in building an intentional community.

My god page 5 and I haven’t even started writing about my three Wwoof places! I´m spoiling you all.



The bus to Pitres takes you to the far east of the valley, past all the picturesque touristy villages to an area that is less visited but equally beautiful. There is a wonderful group of authentic villages here called together La Taha, an original Arab term. My 3km walk to the farm I would stay at for the first week was a perfect introduction to the landscape here. I walked a little out of town then descended down a forest path, winding around some valleys and hopping over streams on the way. The views are far reaching all the way, taking in the opposite mountains and distant snowy peaks.
My hosts were Andrew and Claire, a young English couple, who bought the place 3 years ago after wwoofing themselves before falling in love with the area and buying a little plot for themselves. They win hands down so far for location. They like the remote feeling of their spot, and it certainly feels like you are the last little house at the end of the entire valley. The choice to live here also keeps them away from the eyes of the authorities. I had my own little cabin for my stay there with incredible views. On the first night a storm picked up and raged through the valley. Winds rushed up and slammed against the house, shaking the windows, and causing me to dive onto my bed on one occasion. We woke the next morning to solid rain and to find that one large tree had fallen taking a large chunk of sloping land with it. The very slope where Andrews horse fell and broke its neck some months before. They’ve had some bad luck with animals. Their goat was a terrible nuisance so they sent it back and thus plan to try sheep next. They’ve currently got a donkey, two rabbits, four dogs and six cats. When I arrived there were only four cats. There are probably ten by now.


The picture above shows the fruit of my one weeks labour. It is of course a chicken shed. They wanted a rustic looking thing (my favorite design method). I´ve patented the design, being particularly impressed with my Picassoesque oblique angled chicken run. It also features a removable roof, door with open and close function, many ventilation holes and outside nest box access, although in its current location it would involve falling off the terrace to get at the eggs. You may be wondering how it could have taken me all week to build it. Well Claire and Andrew’s house has no road access and the getting of materials means a strenuous walk uphill to retrieve palettes and the like. After that you had to tie the palettes to a wheelbarrow and then let gravity race you into several ditches on the way down. I´d have an easier time trying to direct a bull backwards down that track. A beautiful location comes with a price when there is no easy access to your house. Everything in their house has a number attached to it.

Couch – 2 men/1hrs to get it to the house
Table – 4 men/1.5hrs
Masonry stove – Don´t even ask.

Well that’s why they bought the horse, to transport things to the house. But now they are training in their donkey Morris for that job.



Unlike in Ireland where you have corner boys hanging around and gangs forming, in Spain the equivalent is old ladies and they own the streets. Not happy to stay behind doors and rearrange teacups they march down the streets, arm in arm, six deep, and shoot you stares and disapproving looks that would have Jesus himself shaking at the knees. They storm out of bakeries holding baguettes like baseball bats. They order brandy in their coffee and eat meat lie grown men. But their greatest weapon is the word. They are fountains of knowledge and tradition ever ready to argue a point, roar opinions and plunder conversations. Theirs are the loudest voices in the square. They lecture in the supermarket ques treating the purchase of vegetables like a religious act. But family is their greatest treasure. Tighter than an atom, you wouldn´t want to try split them.

Torviscon is a small village on the south side of the valley. An area where the irrigation channels never reached. Thus it is a drier landscape and is taken over by large plantings of hardy trees such as almond (above) and olives. I spent two weeks here working with Lizzie Wynn, the Straw bale builder of Las Alpujarras. She has a small eco construction business called Eco-casa giving advice and offering practical skills to self-builders. She is also currently building her own 153m/sq straw bale house. Any land bought with a ruin on it here gets instant building permission, so Lizzie is fine in that case. Building with straw is a trickier question. Lizzie´s approach, as seen a lot around here, is to just build the thing and plaster it. As she says ‘Nobody will know what the walls are made of!’

So I spent a very pleasant two weeks breaking the law at Lizzie’s place. It has been some of the most pleasant and rewarding work I have done so far on my travels. I love to work with stone more than any other material. There is something so pure and natural to the work. I once heard this attraction of stonework being explained by how it exercises both mind and body and this is certainly true. After a days’ work you feel invigorated in the mind and a lovely sense of tiredness in your well worked muscles. I´ve mostly done dry stone walling but at Lizzie´s I got to practice mortar work using lime. Lizzie is also a fan of the earth ship building technique and is using recycled car tires packed with gravel in her walls too.

Before…



And after


The work, in a nutshell, involved first choosing the window lintels, getting the correct height and then building them in with stone and mortar. Each line of tires needs to be level, the top level being flush with the roof plate which you can see resting on the straw bale wall on the bottom picture. When building with straw you have a choice between load bearing walls in which the straw bales hold the weight of the roof themselves or you can build a frame to hold the roof and then fill in the walls spaces after. Straw bales are well able to hold the weight of a roof but it does raise the challenge of different compression levels along the walls. Also a soon as the roof goes on you need to wait a month before plastering to allow the walls to compress fully. This is not necessary if you’ve built a frame. The beauty of straw bale building is the all inclusive nature of the work. People that would usually be excluded from the building process such as children and old people can get involved. Lizzie and a few wwoofers with no experience built a very nice straw bale tool shed in just three weeks with tire foundation and bamboo roof for very low cost. The speed of the build can be amazing and is sometimes referred to as ‘bale frenzy’ the excitement that takes over a group as the walls fly up.
So for Lizzie I built up one side of the original wall from the ruin to hold the roof veegers. It was lovely work, wandering in to the fields in the morning to collect stones, making up a big batch of lime mortar mix and then working away in the sun, absorbed in the stones having lost sense of time. Suddenly it would be tea break, lunch and then the day was done.

I got on very well with Lizzie. She clearly loves the company of wwoofers and each evening we headed into Torviscon for a few drinks and tapas. Torviscon though is not the liveliest of towns, a one horse town in which the horse has left. There is one hotel serving amazingly bad food. The bar in town is owned by a fusball fanatic, as in the table version. He appears to have bought a fusball table and built his bar around it. You have to wait between games to get a drink and during games the thing is so loud you can´t even speak. Time to move on.



After my two weeks I returned to the area of La Taha where I had been previously for another two weeks wwoofing at Cortijo Opazo. It was nice to be back in the part of the valley where water is abundant and the growth lusher and greener.
Robert and William were my hosts here. An English couple who have set up a very well run rural accommodation business, offering also guided walks of the area. William is also a landscape designer and both have them have done a great job transforming the bare terraces into an extensive garden of ornamentals, fruit trees and veggie a garden. They aim to have it as a nursery in the future selling native plants. Myself and my fellow wwoofer Dan from Australia were very well looked after at Cortijo Opazo. Actually it was like 5 star wwoofing. We had an en-suite room with under floor heating. Both William and Robert are great chefs so lunch and dinner was an event every day. Breakfast was a very English affair with BBC world service on the radio, homemade marmalade and muesli on the table. I loved it.

Of course you don´t get this well treated without having to work for it. The work was certainly hard, especially being at 1250m above sea level. But after the two weeks I felt a strong as on ox. Robert and William are also good in that they worked alongside us in all the tasks.



We built a filtration system for their water storage tank as seen above. This involved using a lot of cement and breeze blocks. Not my favorite materials but undoubtedly quick and useful. I guess it doesn’t hurt to use it in small amounts. During its construction I secretly placed some natural stone within the wall to reduce the amount of cement required. I also vouched for the use of natural stone in some places. Well Robert and William got the idea so they gave me and Dan a pretty enjoyable task of building a paving area in the secret garden, as seen below. We really enjoyed this. We were left to our own devices and added a few designs of our own.


Well that was Las Alpujarras, a great cradle of natural beauty. Some days ago I took a hike high into the Sierras. I´ll never forget the feeling of lying in the grass in a valley having just hiked up for two hours from Spain’s highest village. On that grass with the lovely sound of melt water all around, crystal streams, butterflies and birds and little wisps of cloud in the blue sky above it felt like the door to spring had just been opened. Indeed it felt like the entire world was being given a second chance. It will be a sad day indeed if we are ever denied the chance to relax and soak in the natural balm of silence that only nature can provide.

Right now I´ve returned to Granada city and so has the sun. Everybody is in the streets and there is festival atmosphere all around. It´s such a beautiful place when the sun is shining. I spent 4 pleasant hours writing this this morning, then took an afternoon stroll and have now returned to make the finishing touches. Next stop is Malaga province, back to the mountains and valleys and more volunteering. More tales of that in about one month…

Happy spring 09 everyone.

Lotsa love


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Tis now one month that I have been in Spain and so I write you with some reflections of my travels so far. It´s Stephans Day as I write this
on a laptop in a small village north of Madrid, so I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. Mine was spent around the table of a good Spanish
friend of mine and her family. The rythmns of Xmas are a little different here, I was amazed to see nobody crash out on the couch after
dinner to watch some old movie. In fact everyone went to bed for a few hours and woke up later like it was a whole new day. Here they sing at the table, speak like everyone is deaf…i.e. very load, when it´s time to clear the table everyone joins in and starts doing it while shouting ´let me, let me´ but of course in the end everyone does it. So 7 people pile into a small kitchen to clear the plates and I think to myself ´Well surely that´s enough people´ until my friend pops her head around the door and says ´Well, I´m glad to are enjoying your free time!¨and me just having ate a sack of potatoes. When dinner is served everyone explodes into applause, the chef takes a bow, plates fly, conversation erupts and I commence helping Monolo (my friends father) to drink the wine, as we are the only two that do so.

So back to the reflections and to what I call the rythmns of travel. I´m sure you are all aware of this, that sense of travel having its peaks and troughs, the high points and the times when you wanna curl up and take a break from it all. Thankfully my travels have been full of peaks to the point where I start to feel overwhelmed by all the experiences and new people I´m meeting. Within hours you are thrown into a whole new situation and have to start adjusting again. Well that´s the attraction I guess and makes people like us who get restless so easily want to keep moving…


On the first of December I arrived into Spain and the city of Santander, which is situated in the province of Cantabria. It´s a hook of land with long beaches and views south to the beautiful and inviting Picos de Europa mountain range. Unfortunately they were far too covered in snow and wild at this time of year so I resigned myself to some city living. I organised a couch through Couch surfing and a house of three students took me in. My host was Ana a sixth year medical student. Being monday and tuesday that I was there I figured it would be a quiet few days of sight seeing, far from it. So now I ask you to spare a thought for this poor Irishman who is used to Irish times when it comes to going out. Ana was a fantasticly nice and cool person who also happened to be party mad, how she made it to sixth year of medical studies I´ll never know. When she asked would I like to go for a drink and meet her mates I figured why not, we´ll be home by 11 and I´ll be right as rain tomorrow to see all those touristy things I don´t particulary want to see. Well we didn´t even leave the house till 11pm, imagine on a Monday night! 5 hours later we are wandering the streets looking for somewhere open before Ana and her friends resign to going home like they are being lightweights. Needless to say I didn´t do much sight seeing in Santander as the same operation was undertaken the next night and I started to realise the immense importance of taking siestas in Spain. I have since mastered this art, for the sake of my own survival.





And so I continued west along the north of Spain and made my way to Escanda, a collective of some 20 people living communally on a mountainside in Asturius.
When I arrived they were all dancing naked around a fire and chanting… .oh wait there that didn´t happen. In fact Escanda offers a great mix of people from Spain, England, Palestine, Portugal, and Greece, a mixture of hippies, punks, ´normal´ folk and the like but all dedicated to the project and hard working (even the hippies), out on the land, constructing a new house, organising community events, recording music, performing plays, writing articles for internet. And basically promoting small scale community solutions to these global issues we are all concerned about.


After my course in Community leadership and Conflict resolution at Kinsale College of Further Educations' Permaculture course, it was particularly interesting to observe how they organise themselves. On Monday mornings a ´the week ahead´ meeting is held around the breakfast table with one person taking responsibility to write up tasks on the big board. In fact monday is the general meeting/clean-up day, and quickly the board fills with other meetings to be held that day. A page of daily tasks is passed around and everyone signs up for a particular part of the house to clean etc. The house is a hive of activities soon after with everyone cleaning and people shouting that a particular meeting is about start.



All meeting are of course consensus based, with a facilitator and someone taking minutes if required. It seems everyone here is experienced in this and so the meetings flow nicely, everyone speaks and all ideas are discussed. But as ever the common problems of these methods arise, during a house meeting a rather long discussion ensues regards how to organise the purchase and finances of milk seeing as only half the house drinks it. After 20 minutes and still discussing this with the solutions getting more and more complicated I start to wish I was living in a dictatorship.

Escanda is beautifully located in a valley and surrounded by high mountains and many options for long hikes. Unfortunately the new high speed Galicia/Madrid train is passing underground right beside them and so there is major construction going on. Each night and day the house literally shakes as more rock is exploded in the tunnels below. Escanda and locals have being fighting to make sure the work is at least done with care, some houses nearby have already had their foundations badly damaged and there is a risk of collapse. But Escanda ploughs on and they are currently building a new house for themselves. One day was dedicated completely to deciding the room arrangement. Tensions were high that day. But some skillfull facilitation got them through it and on construction day it was great to see each person working with care and dedication in building their new room.


Another nice experience of people working together was on the party night when sacks of grain that needed separating were laid on the ground for people to dance on.There are many positive experiences and lessons to be learned from this type of living. There was a lovely sense of community, acceptance and inequality amonst the group. You have no choice but to learn to speak your mind and to work through problems when required. (Two people who weren´t getting on were given certain hours to work together and a mediator was assigned to help them). When you live so close to people all the time there is no choice but for this. I can´t say myself how long I could live like that. I only stayed a week. Having your space would be essential and everyone had their own room. I felt a little claustrophobic after 5 days but with a hike into the mountains that soon passes.

Escanda came about because the old woman who used to own the land and house wanted it well looked after and used for something ´different´ when she died. The local town council decides this and the Escanda group put in a successful application. The future is uncertain though and nobody is certain the council won´t just kick them out some year soon, hence all the community work they do with passion.Fingers crossed it will long continue, it´s a fantastic place still with great potential to grow further

Ah Santiago, anyone who says this place is ´disappointing´ has the imagination of a newt. First the facts,
I spent 4 nights here couch surfing (of course) with another medical student! go figure. right in the middle of the old town, met her lovely friends, socialised lots and loved it.
At this point I can´t help but come over all poetic and wax lyrical cos that´s the effect Santiago had on me.

The old town is like a playground of stone and alleyways, tiny streets opening into open spaces or new hidden corners. One moment you are on a busy street the next a secluded path as though in the countryside. The site of the cathedral at these times is the only reminder of where you are. They say you have to see Santiago after rain and this is true. The stones seem to relish being wet. One morning we ran out of the house to get to the cathedral on time to see the lighting of the huge incense burner. It had just finished raining, the granite streets were glistening, around one corner the low sun exploded in my eyes and you run through orange light barely seeing ahead of you.


On my first night there we walked through the streets with a full moon above in the clear sky and I made my way to the famous cathedral. Its presence is huge, like the sight of a huge wall inside a deep underground cave. It drips wet, the walls moist and indeed it has green moss growing along it. It looks like it was constructed by nature rather than man. My friend assures me it changes colour almost every night, and I confirm this while there. In the main square I marvel at the full moon illuminating the sky behind the cathedral. As I move to walk I catch sight of the moon shining through the topmost statue of Saint Santiago himself, it´s a dance between the moon and architecture.
Throughout my four days there the cathedral always seemed secretive and elusive. Every view is very partial, either hidden behind buildings, trees or its own great size. Inside I get the chance to witness the famous incense burner being lit. Picture a huge chalice shaped burner hanging from a thick hemp rope and suspended from the top of the copula. Eight men in red robes then take up position, the burner is lit, and they start to swing it till it reaching the very height of the church, stops, and swings down again in a powerful arc right over the church-goers.



There was a lot of music in the street when I was there and a great sense of fun and spontaneity. Turn right or left and you find people gathered and absorbing the life of the city in its myriad of ways. In a white tent a traditional Galegan scene is played out, people swinging glasses, dancing and singing to the sound of bagpipes. Further along the street a marching band starts playing and people are dancing again. In the archway by the cathedral a lone piper plays and the meditative drone behind the melody follows you as you walk away.
At night you step into the streets and join in with the moving people, flowing along like streams down the narrow streets and in and out of bars and cafes. Many bars you would barely notice, one we find only because someone stepped out as we passed by. Many are simple affairs, a few stools and tables and an old woman or man behind the bar, quite often drunk, and selling there own homemade wine or cider. In one they sell little bowls of wine for 40c. It is in Santiago too that I get acquinted with Liquor de Café; it keeps you awake they say. In Café Casino, the oldest in Santiago, all ages mix and I sit back trying to decipher the passionate argument had by 6 old ladies, who nearly kill themselves then get up and are all smiles and kisses as they depart, I think they were discussing poodles…



On the morning I left Santiago the sun was again in the sky with not a cloud to be seen. The kind of morning that lends itself well to thoughts of new adventures. Four days passed like a moment there. Needless to say I recommend it. No doubt it would be even more special if you walked many miles to get there. Otherwise, don´t worry, there´s buses.



While on my travels I heard several people tell about a place called Matavenero. It´s one of the longest running communities in Spain and a very amazing place, go there go there they kept saying. Well it proved impossible to get any travel info on the place so instead I ended up in a tiny village called Requejo, which was inhabited no less than by the very people who started Matavenero! (it was just 30km away but snowed in)



What an interesting little place this was. Set in a low wide valley 8km outside the town of Astorga. The sunny side of the valley had a forest of native evergreen oak, and the shaded side funnily enough is where all the houses were. The hills are covered in heather which must be a sight in the summer. Though this was by no means the most beautiful valley in Spain, the people who lived here certainly brightened it up. They always had an easy smile, a light in their eyes and strong sense of contentment in their ways. They gave a sense of having reached a place in their lives where they know what they love and now happily go about living it. I was given such welcomes as
´Welcome Irishman!´
´Welcome to the fridge´ (the hills were covered in snow) ´
or just a big hug and slap on the back.
The village consists of one street with houses on either side. A lot of the houses belong to a lawyer living in Madrid who bought them up because he wants to preserve the vernacular architecture, otherwise they were going to be knocked and rebuilt in concrete. (My work in fact was restoring one of these old stone buildings). You see even the lawyer is nice in this town! My Wwoof host is best friends with this lawyer and she is employed by him to work his land and look after the cherry plantation. All the other houses are self-builds using clay, straw, wood and stone mostly. And very nicely built too. Nothing ramshackle here. My house happened to be the biggest in the town, an ancient straw/clay/stone house with thick wooden doors. There´s also a church attached with a large belltower. Only 4 old ladies, an old man and a priest from outside the town frequent it now and I´m told their singing is in the key of K#
Anyone interested in doing a sociological study of Eco-communities this would be a good place to visit. One guy I worked with had three kids from two different woman all of whom still live in the town, though he is now with another woman in the town.

My host was a German woman called Claudia. She has four kids all from different fathers. One of which lives in the town. Two of her kids were there when I was, Milan (6yrs) and Edna (28). We had many a laugh about the goings-on in the past at Matavenero. On day two Milan asked if I was Edna’s brother….but everyone gets on great in the village.
Social norms aside my hosts were a lovely family, full of goodness, kindness, wisdom and a refreshing outlook on most things.
Claudia´s main love is the countryside of which she has an amazing knowledge which I only tipped on. She walked me around her site describing the work done, how the soil is and the trouble she has with deer and wild boar. Last year she grew 1000kg of spuds, she has also built extensive stone walls by herself.
Her daughter Edna is rather unique. She never really got a formal education so she is a bit of a wildchild. She’s full of energy, spontaneity, a love of music (she has a group), she sings, bangs her drum, smiles, laughs very load, burps, eats with her mouth open, laughs more, plays games, rubs your hair. She´s a modern Rabelain joker, playing with life, with possibilities, with the absurdity of meaning. I like her a lot for being so human.
Five minutes after meeting Milan he sat down and sketched a picture of me, signed it and presented it to me. Another day he came in with Kinder bueno bar and divided it up between everyone. He´s a sweet kid even though he kept laughing at my mistakes in Spanish.
On the solstice we all gathered together for a meal then literally fell over laughing playing a game which involved basically trying out different ways to laugh, it starts with put-on laughter then it takes you like a wave and soon everyone is really laughing and nobody can remember why. It lasted 30minutes.
And so that was my time in Requejo. Very funny and unique. Matavenro will have to wait till another day.



I´m in Murcia now (this email was not completed on Stephans Day) and in a few days am off down to Almeria to work at a few projects, then on to the mountains of Granada. I´ve got a placement working at the Steiner school there and living in a yurt on the grounds so that should be fun. But that´s all for the next post.




For now I leave you with a little passage from an essay by Tennessee Williams called ´The Catastrophe of Success’, it struck a chord with me and is my message for 2009.

‘The sort of life I had prior to this success was one that required endurance..but it was a good life because it was the kind of life for which the human organism is created.I was not aware how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arms still trashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last.
I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly depressed.’