SPAIN

I have just come back from a 9-day holiday in Spain. The traditional holiday view of the country is either big city break (Barcelona/Madrid) or sand, sea and sun (Costa Brava, Costa del Sol etc). But we were in a house up in the mountains north east of Malaga, about halfway between Motril and Granada.

The southern part of Andalucia is rugged indeed. The coastal strip is very thin, and the mountains - which, in the Sierra Nevada a bit further east, are quite high, 3,000 metres plus - almost fall into the sea. Small rivers have over time cut huge valleys in the limestone rock, so the villages have to cling to the steep hillsides. It's very, very dry, perhaps the driest place I have ever been, and hot, so it's amazing that anything can grow in the dusty, stony soil. One of the things that can is the olive tree; they are everywhere.

Our house was up a steep valley that had three villages in it; bottom, middle and top. The road got progressively twistier and narrower as you went up; after "top" it turned into a gravity defying dirt road through a forest reserve until it reached the house 4km away. An offtake from the local stream for water, solar power for the electricity, olive and fruit trees fed by drip irrigation, a swimming pool with a 30 kilometer view down the valley. And tranquility, the silence broken only by the sound of a noisy cicada. I loved it.

We had one day down on the coast, a day trip to Granada, and one day in the Alpujarra (the slopes of the Sierra Nevada). Otherwise, it was walking in the forest reserve, cooling off in the pool, and reading a lot of books. Driving down to the village to get supplies was a major endeavour. All in all, I haven't been so lazy for decades.

Andalucia is the poorest part of Spain, but it didn't seem to be doing too badly. True, there are only 16 trains a day out of Granada, a city of almost 250,000 people. But the rural roads look in good shape, and there are lots of blue EU signs around, highlighting money from the regional fund (including the reforestation programme going on above our house). The new motorways from Motril up to Granada, and west from Motril to Malaga, are spectacular, with tunnels through the rock and viaducts across the valleys.

All in all, I was favourably impressed. My only regret is that after a lifetime of dithering and dathering, I took the opportunity to definitively decide whether I like olives or not. The answer is; chopped and on a pizza, OK, whole and on their own, no. A pity, since there were an awful lot of them around to be eaten.

Walter Blotscher