SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 38)

La vida Alardos!

Throughout all of the journey my LDV had needed few repairs. I had lost the brakes on a steep descent from the Sierra de Nevada in Andalucía and sweated for 50 kilometres, driving on gears alone until I reached a garage. I had replaced the gear box when I had been working at the gravel pit on the plains. Other than these, the van was amazingly reliable and still going strong when all the British paperwork expired.

A friend made photocopies of my documents, changed the dates and assured me that policemen and Guardia Civil do not read English, even if they pretend to….. I found this to be true, but was reluctant to push my luck beyond a couple of years. Mind you, I became friendly with a family from Chile and they all drove, but none of them even had a driving licence, let alone insurance! In rural parts of Spain nobody seemed to care much about the law!

All of my encounters with Police and Guardia Civil were very pleasant and helpful to me. They advised me of places I could park up for a few nights, they admired my dogs and one found me deep in the woods at the side of a massive reservoir. He arrived on a motorbike, checking the smoke he had seen from my small cooking fire and stayed for a coffee! That was when I discovered that these Guardia Civil were not a type of Forest Ranger, as I originally presumed. They wear closely fitted dark green uniforms and they are military grade fit. They carry guns. My guest sat on a log with me and cracked up when I apologised for not knowing what a Guardia Civil actually was….. I can’t say that I fully understand why the Spanish have two law enforcement systems but it works so I had no complaints.

In fact, when a huge British removal truck arrived in Madrigal de la Vera asking how to get to the Finca Avalon, our local policeman got on his motorbike and escorted my furniture to my door. He said that he couldn’t understand a thing the driver was saying, but he saw the English sign-writing on the truck and guessed that it was for me, the token Brit in the whole district. Then he helped us unload it, shared a well earned coffee and finally, guided the driver reversing all the way to the main road, because we had no turning points big enough for him in our narrow rocky lane. How fortunate was I to have so much help? I often look back on these happy memories in wonder.

All through the summer months various friends from my travels, particularly from Madrid, would come and stay for weekends. I had also become good friends with an Argentinian guy who had grown up in Miami. He lived in his family country estate on the other side of the river from my farm. His name was Hernan and he had a servant called Halid. They both spoke great English and visited often. Hernan’s home was a stunning mansion built into the steep rock face above the Roman Bridge. It had everything that a rich family might want at their holiday home. Swimming pool, tennis courts, gym, security fencing and an art collection in the living quarters that revealed an aristocratic heritage going back centuries. Hernan was very young, maybe around twenty-one years of age. He was extremely popular with the village girls but didn’t show any interest in them at all. Hernan confessed to being ‘banished’ from Madrid by his parents due to drug addiction. Basically they were keeping him out of the way.

Halid was an illegal immigrant from Morocco and he had capabilities galore. There was nothing that Halid could not do. He did everything for Hernan, including teaching him to split granite boulders and create beautiful smooth pathways between the various levels of the mansion grounds. Halid seemed to be the maintenance man, the cook and the carer. He told me that he was waiting for Hernan’s parents, who lived in Madrid, to provide him with the documents needed to nationalise, but he was getting worried because he had already waited more than a year when I met him. He didn’t seem to be paid very much either. He was very tight lipped about his circumstances.

One Friday early evening, I had driven the van up to the big mansion gates with Rasta and Ben sitting in the passenger seats. I intended to invite Hernan and Halid to a party at my place that weekend. I got out of the van and began walking towards the intercom on the wall. Suddenly one of Hernan’s American Pitbull guard dogs, Morris, appeared right ahead of me, loose and angry. It all happened so quick. I heard the van window slide back and a blur of black fur flew past at my shoulder height. Rasta landed directly on top of Morris and a terrible fight began. Hernan and Halid came running and somehow managed to separate the two dogs. It was over in less than a minute, thank goodness, but it shook me. Rasta calmly returned to his seat in the van and Ben, who had stayed in his seat, watched the whole thing, thumping his tail in approval. I was glad to see that Morris was unharmed.

Later, that evening Pablo, an artist friend from Madrid, arrived on his motorbike and the dogs ran to greet him when they heard the familiar slow chug of Pablo negotiating the rough and rocky lane leading to my farm. The first thing Pablo did after removing his helmet was to affectionately grab Rasta around the face. Rasta let out a sharp yelp which made Pablo part his fur and examine his neck. We were horrified to see a wide gaping wound from just behind his ear almost to his shoulder. The skin was torn open and we could see the muscles underneath. I spoke to Marta, the vet, who advised me to bathe the wound with iodine and let it heal naturally. She promised to take a look at it during the party the following day. It took a lot of care and time for that scar to knit up. It became a wide, bluey white battle medal that Rasta wore for the rest of his life, buried deep under his thick mane.

When Hernan and Halid arrived at the party they solemnly announced that Morris had been poisoned and had died. I was very shocked. Everyone was reluctant to discuss it at the time but the gossip later, in the village, suggested that some poisoned meat had been thrown into the mansion grounds. Nobody seemed to know who had done it, but the consensus of opinion was that it was in revenge for Rasta’s injury. Everyone adored Rasta. Especially the children. I wasn’t so sure and suspected that Hernan had poisoned (or possibly shot) his own dog because he knew he could not control him - he was too cool about it for my liking.

It was not long after that when I tried to legalise the van but, because the driver’s seat was on the right of the vehicle, it was not considered safe due to limited visibility. I decided to sell it for spare parts to a local mechanic who towed it away while I stood and cried, grounded again. I always get far too attached to my vehicles.

Waking at dawn, with the cockerel giving us the benefit of his raucousness, was the only thing that was strictly routine on the farm. Feeding everyone their breakfasts was usually done before I was fully awake.

In summers I would dress in a tatty, paint spattered swimming costume and dive into my pool to wake myself up. Then I would float about, engage the brain and decide what jobs I was going to tackle. Once a week, I went to the village for shopping, spring water or bottles of gas. I would dress properly, walk there with my wheelbarrow as early as possible and take my time depositing my recyclable rubbish, visiting the post office to collect my mail, the tobacconist, the grocery store and the butcher for essentials. Then I would treat us to churros and hot choc sauce at a popular café where I would hang out chatting with the local people until the village went silent for the early afternoon siesta. Rasta, Ben and I would shadow hop, pushing the heavy wheelbarrow home to rest. Shopping was more about socialising in each of the shops rather than actually buying much, which was why it took four or five hours!

Soldato had a way of telling me when he was hankering for his high mountain trails. He would hold his head high and flare his nostrils in the direction of the peaks, as if he was smelling his favourite herbs blooming in the heat up there. Whenever we could, especially in scorching August, I rode him up to the goat trails, far beyond where the tourists liked to roam. From there he was free to choose his path, leading Rasta and Ben up the abandoned terraces beyond occupied land and stopping occasionally to savour nature’s gifts. These long slow journeys invariably ended with him leading the dogs into the high waterfalls and small clear basins of chilly snow melt at the source of the Garganta de Alardos. Wise to his moves, I learned to jump down, taking my backpack and riding blanket with me.
I wanted to swim too, but preferred not to soak my stuff and my mobile phone!

It was on one of these excursions that Rasta got infested with thousands of ticks. Ben, Pearlie and Soldato never seemed to have a problem with ticks but Rasta, with his thick long and silky coat was like a magnet for them. We had arrived home, just as it got dark, when Rasta collapsed as he crossed the threshold of the house. He was suddenly unconscious! I called Marta, the local vet who, luckily for me, lived in Madrigal. She arrived with everything she needed to revive him and prevent me from having a nervous breakdown! My goodness, I was in a state! I had never seen so many ticks before and I was stunned and revolted at the huge number of tiny black juveniles I pulled off poor Rasta.

I had a friend, Cecelia, visiting from Toledo at the time and between us, we worked all evening going through Rasta’s thick black coat with fine toothed combs and drowning endless tiny black ticks in a jar of water. Marta put Rasta on a drip, and applied a strong medication between his shoulder blades to protect him in future. Thankfully, Rasta recovered, groggily confused, after a few hours. I had no idea that ticks could do that to a dog.

In summer the temperature would soar between midday and 2pm. We would hog the shade in the canopied patio between the house and the swimming pool. The chickens shared their cool spot, under the privet hedge beside an irrigation trench, with Pearlie and I would cool off in the pool at least once an hour if I was still working on the land. The dogs either stayed flat out on the ceramic tiled floor of the house or stood in their pond and panted. Soldato liked to sleep in the carport under the grapevines and laburnum trees during those long hot spells.

When it rained I would be the only one getting wet. I never forget having to race to the top of my property, run up the waterfall and close off the entrance pipe with a huge granite boulder to prevent a flood. When I got back to the house in the streaming, battering rain, all my animals were settled comfortably together in the covered patio, dry and bemused. I could almost hear them thinking that I, like most humans, was absolutely crazy - but they loved me anyway. Wagging tails and occasional licks say so much, don’t they?

I had a carefully shaded rose bed against the house wall, facing the lane and I kept the lounge window open to allow the scent from it to come in. I had a lovely collection of rose bushes which had been planted years before by the previous owner. The colours were amazing. All this was constantly enriched by bird chatter and gentle rustling leaves in the barest of breezes. Thousands of feet above us, eagles glided in circles, waiting to spot their next meal. Sometimes the peace would take my breath away. I got so used to it that I never wanted to play music, even though I had solar power.
Life itself was an ever-changing natural symphony and I didn’t want to miss a single moment of it.

I remember that I was working among the young fruit trees, in a grassy area quite close to the house. Both dogs and all the chickens were around me. We had two chicks, who had hatched only a few weeks before, running around between us all. Very suddenly I felt the air move behind me and an eagle zoomed down, diving between us all to snatch the bright yellow female chick. As it struggled to take off again my cockerel, Monty, latched his beak onto the eagle’s throat and began clawing at its underbelly frantically.

The eagle spread its enormous wings, the size of which stunned me, and it took off gripping the chick in its claws with my cockerel firmly attached to its throat. When it reached roof height, Monty let go and fell back down, fluttering clumsily and squawking furiously.

That night he moved his ladies to roost in one of the cherry trees. This meant that they would have to climb up the stairs to my swimming pool and then jump from there into the branches of the mature cherry tree which shaded my two guest bedrooms. It also made their droppings easy for me to sweep up and redistribute around the land as manure. So I appreciated the wisdom of Monty’s decision.

From September onwards, first thing after breakfast every morning, I would put my chainsaw into the wheelbarrow and this action would be a signal to all the animals that I was going to the woods. Before I reached my gate to open it, there would be several chicken hitch-hikers settled in the wheelbarrow, clucking. Soldato, Rasta and Ben would be there eagerly waiting and we would all make our way either up or down the river bank clearing old fallen trees and piles of driftwood which collected where the river swerved between the banks of glittering white granite boulders.

As the years passed I had cleared pathways in the woods and uncovered a natural spring which began as a trickle but became a mossy stream. The clearance of fallen trees also encouraged wild flowers to grow. The woods became lighter and brighter, full of life. The chickens would dive on grubs and insects as they scrabbled through the dry leaf litter and Soldato would solemnly chew his acorns and apples. The dogs would guard us all from intruders…. had there been any…. which there were not!

We had created our own secret wild garden in the woods that nobody knew of or ever visited. When beavers moved in and built a dam between a rocky outcrop and the riverbank I was amused to note that they were brilliant at hiding from the dogs. The only way I could watch them was if I left my team at home, lay down flat at a distance with my binoculars and kept very still for ages. They built a huge lodge which completely covered the rocks, rising well above the water level. When the big storms turned the Alardos into a raging, thundering white water rapid, I went to see if the lodge was damaged. Amazingly, it was cleverly placed and perfectly intact, even though the big round granite boulders could be heard rumbling along in the water.

I loved to sleep with my windows open listening to the sound of the Garganta Alardos. It was something which had thousands of years of history behind it. The rounded pure white granite boulders had arrived maybe fifty thousand years ago, by a glacier which ripped and rolled them from Britain to Spain, where it deposited them as it melted in the foothills of the volcanoes. The Romans had built their roads into the Iberian Celtic homelands and their solid stone bridges still stand, even after 2,000 years of constant use.

After the Empire, the Islamic occupation had named the mountain, Almanzor to respect their warrior hero, Abu Amir Muhammed Al Mansur.

Every day I would chainsaw at least two wheelbarrow loads of logs and stack them on the sun bed frames in the patio. I needed to prepare for winters because, although midday temperatures could go as high as 20 degrees, the nights would be well below freezing and I had to light a large fire…. after smoking the resident bats out of my chimney, of course!

Obviously, I had less energy from my solar panels during the winter months, so I liked to use candles in the evenings or early mornings. I seldom used the fitted lights because they were fluorescent and I always avoid using those, even now.

In the summer, I would make candles infused with citronella essential oil to discourage flies from coming into the patio. I also soaked myself and hair in a formula which repelled insects, protected against sunburn, stopped drying and smelled absolutely gorgeous. I called it The NACC. I took half a litre of Almond Oil and added 10 millilitres of Neroli essential oil from orange blossom, 10 mil of Cedar Oil and 10 mil of Citronella. I used this for all sorts of purposes, including to discourage flies from Soldato’s face, to condition his coarse mane and tail (so that I could get a brush through it!) and for some bizarre reason Rasta used to always want to lick it off my arms and legs. I made many litres of The Nacc and gave them as presents. One of my friends from Madrid, Javier, was able to get me wholesale quantities of the ingredients, making the formula even cheaper to produce and he sold elegant bottles of my formula in his health food shop in Madrid.

I loved it when Javier came to visit. He would always insist on doing all the cooking and his meals were like medieval banquets. His closest friend was a flamboyant gay called Angel who worked as a security guard at the Italian Embassy. Wherever those two went, it was a party! I was always very happy to see them!

When the dry foothills of the mountains were threatened with fire, due to someone’s carelessness or arson, I observed the smoke curling around the high hillsides and considered how I would evacuate all my animals to safety if the fire came too close to my property. I reasoned that I could put the chainsaw in the wheelbarrow and they would all follow me! So I tested my theory and, instead of heading into the woods, on that occasion I followed a goat path down the river bank beyond the woods. I called Pearlie to join us and she came along happily.

The land further down was mostly abandoned fincas with yellowed tall grasses and occasional trees for miles until the Alardos joined the Rio Tietar. Everyone in my team enjoyed exploring this new territory. My household ‘fire drill’ was a success and put my mind at rest. If we got burned out, we would be able to survive, which was all that really mattered.

The Garganta Alardos runs almost dry in August but becomes a thundering roar by Autumn. No two days were ever the same on that river.