The Good,The Bad and The Ugly

A week ago we were sitting outside the El Paso bar in a wee village called Bedar, in south-east Spain. We'd just been asked for seven euros for our lunch of two espressos, two soft drinks, tortilla, tuna salad, aubergine fritters, pickled anchovies and newly-baked bread. Things seemed OK

Instead of the economy car we'd ordered, Europcar had given us a BMW. Although negotiating it along cliff edges, and twisting single-track paths not much wider than the car was worrying at first, I found I was soon adjusting to a mode of travel quite different from that experienced in our rain-rinsed Nissan Micra at home. I suspect I was really meant to be very rich - but, then, I discovered poetry.

Anyway, we sank into the BMW and, in first and second gears, followed the tortuous route back to Casa Azucena, which is dramatically situated on a hilltop (around 1300 feet) to the north of Bedar. In the distance, from one of the terraces, we could see the old Moorish town of Mojacar and the Mediterranean beyond. I've never used the word 'Sybaritic' before, but here it had a definite appropriateness.

Apart from in January and February, Bedar has very little rain. On our arrival, I drove from Alicante airport as the temperature touched 35 C. This made a fine change from summer in East Lothian where attempting to sunbathe was likely to get you a coating of mildew. The Bedar pool, however, was a little cooler than I'd hoped - probably due to the altitude. I was prompted into haiku mode:

The Spanish pool
starting to feel
like Scotland.

Bedar is not far from an area referred to on some maps as El Desierto. Here you will find the landscapes featured in spaghetti westerns - and Lawrence of Arabia. This should have warned us that a house on a hill, no matter how luxurious, just might have some problems with water. Despite the sparkling presence of our pool, we soon became aware that something wasn't quite right with the showers. Then the taps. Then on our last night, everything went dry. It's at times like these you realise that Scottish rain is rather good for washing in, doing the dishes in and, well, it's damn useful in the toilet cistern.

With a plane to catch, some 200 kilometres away, Saturday morning at 5.30 saw us filling plastic bottles at a garden tap, boiling the water in a kettle, and having a good old-fashioned rinse down at the kitchen sink. Sybaritic? We were beginning to have doubts.

Spain is a country of huge contrasts. As we drove north up the motorway, a deep-red sunrise edged its way dramatically over the mountains. Then, suddenly, we were engulfed in a hellish smell from the miles of chemical works, with their backdrops of dusty quarries.

We entered a tunnel. It ran under a 13th-century castle in the middle of the town of Lorca. That made me think of the beauty of Granada and the Alhambra - and of the poet.

1936

Oh Lorca, did skeletons show
gold teeth to you

when men held you down
in their terrible passion,

thrust the rifle deep in your bowels,
fired into your intestines?

Or did you recall the balcony
opening to the summer mountains,

and see the boy suck oranges
as the harvester cut down the corn?

And could you taste a sailor's kiss
in that black grove of olives?

Before the last explosion of blood,
did you remember love?

(poem from issue 70 of CENCRASTUS magazine.)

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