Hats off!

IT has to be admired, the fact that people pick up and go, without blinking an eyelid. Decide they want to come down to the sun and start afresh. What makes us do it is a combination of things and yet individual to each one of us.

Admirable, because it takes a lot of audacity to go to a foreign place to live where you haven’t been before or speak the language; except maybe in your dreams or when you get sucked in by one of those –very popular- TV programmes. These show you the ideal, derelict, used-to-be-house now ruin, in the middle-of-nowhere with breathtaking vistas over spectacular mountains and deep blue sea, that idealise a lifestyle of setting up your own ‘B&B’ or ‘yoga retreat’ growing your own, far from your regular two-up and two-down terrace/semi and takeaways.

More so because it is actually true that not only Brits but other Europeans choose to live in these remote and isolated areas. Places where they can’t be ‘overlooked’ and most probably involve driving through a dry river bed (“rambla”), or praying all the way up what was once a cattle track now a long and narrow dirt road up a side of a mountain and where the nearest neighbour is miles away. Not to mention water mains, electricity or much else for that matter. How on earth they even manage to get building materials to reconstruct these dilapidated abodes there is in itself short of a miracle! God forbid if it rains, because even though there isn’t much of it round this area (in this case – thank goodness), when it rains it pours and you could be left isolated for a while if the rambla or the mountain road was washed out. I can’t even begin to imagine what I would do in case of an emergency (medical, fire, etc.) or simpler still, if I ran out of petrol or needed a pint of milk for my cuppa!

No, not for me thank you very much! I am too much of a big city rat trying to manage being a town cat at the moment.

I can also appreciate the fact that many of these people are successful in their endeavour to building a life for themselves here. Making friends, joining existing or establishing clubs and associations, starting a business to serve their fellows, helping each other with whatever is needed in their community, well even creating suburbs of their own countries. Have you noticed that there are even towns around here where the Spaniards look out of place!

In all, though much can be said about foreigners (such as me) I feel that this is certainly something to be commended: staying true to where they come from.