About us...

Spanish Hills

...Well... about me really; I work by myself, covering all aspects of buying & selling land and houses in one small rural area of Almeria. I operate using an excellent web-site built for me by Dezert Dezine, a lap-top computer, a mobile phone and a digital camera, from the side of a mountain, miles from a phone line. So it can be done (it wasn't easy and I still can't find the phone I threw down the garden), but please be patient when waiting for a reply as the phone signal still goes tetas'p'arriba sometimes!

I operate in and around an area called Oria, 80 km NNE from the city of Almeria. It is a rural area encompassing the beautiful "Sierra de las Estancias" mountains & foothills. The majority of the area is still very Spanish, though once you begin to look around you will find a surprising number of ex-pats secreted in farmhouses and villages throughout the vicinity. Most are here for the sun and mild winters away from the coastal chaos, many can be found at the Tuesday morning market in the town of Albox, the main social event of the area!

Sunflowers

The scenery of Oria is dominated by the rugged mountains always in the background, but softened by the fields of almond trees, the main local produce. At different altitudes, the scenery can change dramatically; you can be in a desert canyon expecting "Clint" to step out from behind a boulder, within fifteen minutes, you can be lost in the middle of a grove of orange trees and fifteen minutes later still, you can find yourself in an area that looks just like Wales with pine & oak forests AND SUN!

The local history is rich and varied; many Moorish buildings dating from the eleventh century are dotted around as well as some earlier Roman ruins. Much of the terrace walling and the miles of irrigation channels still used today were originally installed by the Moors between the eleventh & thirteenth centuries, an incredible feat of engineering!

On the costas

The weather...Aaah...the weather, you can usually add at least 10°C to whatever you've got in England; winter barely lasts for three months; for six months, it's an occasion if a cloud is spotted in the clear blue sky; then there's the summer nights (excuse me if this sounds like something from 'Grease'!), 30ºC...watching the stars in a pair of shorts and sandals...G&T by your hand...towel nearby to mop it up when you spill it all over yourself... Suffice to say that in the UK, I took at least two painkillers every day, ten months of the year, to enable myself to continue working; in the two years since I moved here permanently, I have taken about half-a-dozen, usually after a particularly strenuous days work on my house...It's a good life...

As far as access is concerned, we are 1 hour from Almeria airport, 2 hours from Alicante & Murcia airports, 40 minutes from the beaches of Mojacar and Garrucha, 50 minutes from 'Cabo de Gata' national park and 1 hour 45 minutes away from the beautiful city & skiing of Granada.