Wherever I Lay my Hat…

Travelling round Europe, as we do, there’s bound to be a time when we enter familiar territory. We passed through Finestret, a small village at the foot of Mount Canigou, almost as far as you can go in France without being in Spain, on our way down. We lived in Finestret for almost five years, after living the previous five years in the Loire Valley, This time our stay was brief, but long enough to check out some old friends. They arrived in the village as young whippersnappers and are still in the area, but now with what I’m going to have to claim as my three favourite children, all fluent in two languages and ‘getting there’ in Catalan. What better gift can you give a child than a facility in another language? Growing up in sunshine, in a community where manners are deemed to be important can’t be bad either. Not to mention parents who impressed me mightily – and that doesn’t happen often!

Onward, into Spain; familiar territory after living there for ten years, and we’ve finally arrived in the deep South where we spent so many happy years.

Standing outside a house you’ve previously lived in has a certain poignancy about it and we’ve stood outside four of them on this trip. We’ve missed out our house in the Loire Valley this time. That was our first house after leaving England and by some distance the most daunting project. A “Maison de Maitre’ about a mile from any other house with extensive outbuildings and a vast barn even larger than the house.

We’d left England within a week of leaving our jobs. Putting it another way, we’d left within a week of even thinking of leaving our jobs. No plans, see?

We didn’t speak French. I went to a very good school. A school so good modern languages were regarded as a passing fad. I can converse with an ancient Roman, but that was about it. The reasons behind me leaving my job meant we didn’t have time to sell our old house. We just left. It was a scary time in many ways and sensible actions weren’t on the menu.

So, we’re in France, don’t know a soul, there are no neighbours and we’d just bought a rundown and abandoned monster of a house. No money left over, just enough to get by if we didn’t bother to eat anything for a year or two and we needed to know how to do up houses. Urgently.

Other than basic DIY, I could barely knock a nail into a piece of wood. We learnt fast, by trial and error, and within a month I was tackling major construction jobs. Both of us were. I lost count of the times I heard, ‘I’m not a packhorse, you know,’ but we eventually finished it. It took a year of unrelenting toil, living on fresh air, but we did it.

We stayed five years, renting out the main house to Brits in the summer to provide an income.

We moved on to Finestret, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Renovating houses was a doddle, by now. As a means of experiencing life in different countries, buying ruined houses, doing them up and selling them takes some beating. Financially, it’s great too. Buy cheap, improve, sell for a profit. Easy. Until you add in the countless hours of backbreaking work. Then, reality sets in. Doing everything yourself is very rewarding. As far as job satisfaction goes, there’s nothing to beat it.

My favourite house was three hundred years old and had only ever catered for mules. It had one metal door and one tiny metal window. One room inside. That was it. What made it special was where it was. Three thousand feet up in the Sierras Nevada; ringed by jagged peaks and overlooking the Mediterranean with a view across to North Africa it was the best view I’d ever seen.

‘We’ll take it,’ my wife said as we walked past the end of the house. We didn’t go inside – there wasn’t a key anyway – but we both knew this was the one.

We added rooms and terraces, a swimming pool, and divided the interior into rooms. A lot of work, but well worth it. We rented it out for ridiculously large sums while we worked on our next ruine and lived in it the rest of the year.

Last night, I stood on the terrace I’d built –the owners only come here in the summer – and wondered how a view could still be so perfect.

We drove on and parked up on a piece of land we still own. The last house we owned in Spain was just up the road. The new owners had added a glazed conservatory. It looked ridiculous and must have been unbearably hot in the summer.

The main road leading to my plot of land. It’s not a busy spot.

A trespassing chameleon. We’ve given him squatters’ rights.

We never knock on the door of a former house and introduce ourselves. Yes, we lived there once but those days have gone. Gone for ever.

Bygones. It’s my favourite word. Move on to the next adventure.

Tonight we’re parked on a glorious stretch of white sand. The sea is rolling in, waves tipped with foam, for this is the Atlantic and we’re in one of our favourite places: Tarifa. It’s laidback, Bohemian, packed with fresh-faced young surfers with bleached hair and can-do attitudes. I’ve arranged to borrow a board tomorrow. Surfing? Just like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it, do you? Well, tomorrow will tell. When I was a regular surfer I had perfect knees; not the wretched appendages held together with string and rubber bands I have now!

Here’s where we’re parked up in Tarifa. Just a few other vans; all good people.

Just after sunrise. The best time to walk a beach like this one. In a few hours it will be crammed with surfers, windsurfers, kite-surfers and a few beach bums who camp out here year-round. Not the best time to take perfect photographs, but that’s nothing new. Obviously. I’ll blame my equipment.

Ruined Roman temple, just up the road from Tarifa. Fabulous setting and not another soul in sight when we were there yesterday.

Here’s an old relic we found in the ruins. I have no idea why I’m wearing that hat. Didn’t realise it was on my head until we got back. A legacy of our departure, travelling through the icy wastes of Northern Europe in early January. Note my pale, wan complexion. That’s what an English winter does for you!

Next stop, Africa. I climbed the hill last night to take a view across the Straits of Gibraltar. That’s the start of the Rif Mountains in Morocco just across the way and the beginning of the next stage of this trip. 

Next, we’re heading back to Morocco. The ancient cities, Fez and Marrakesh, ageless and magnificent; still largely unchanged over a thousand years. The Rif Mountains where young boys flash cars with broken shards of mirror and call out  ‘Keef, keef.’ Kif, the local term for hashish, is both cheap and plentiful. I’m never a customer. Seen the ravages of drugs at first hand over too many years to even smoke a little dope.

One of the highlights of our trip is returning to the High Atlas and the fascinating Berber villages. After that, it’s the Sahara; that vast and timeless region where modern life scarcely ever intrudes. We have a vague idea about reaching the fabled city of Timbuktou, but that’s as far as our plans go. Planning removes spontaneity and without scope for acting on impulse nobody never achieved anything of note.

We’ve owned many houses in our time. Bought, sold, moved on. Some are more memorable than others, but all have their tales to tell. Do we miss any of them? Not for a moment.

Wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home. I heard the song on the radio the other day. That’s about right. For the last week we’ve woken to the sound of the waves on the shore. Last night it was the mountains, tipped with crimson as the sun rose. Soon it will be the utter tranquillity of a desert landscape. Each day is memorable. I’m determined to wring every drop of joy from life. After all, we pass this way but once.