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vantage points: one on the mountain path that leads up to what used to be a threshing floor, the other from the opposite side of the valley where a lone almond tree marks a bend in the track. The latter is the spot that I ask visitors to look out for, because if you honk your horn as you pass this tree the acoustics carry the sound all the way across the valley to the ears of the dogs. The dogs start barking, which wakes me from whatever reverie I am indulging, and leaves me just enough time to hare down the hill and meet the approaching vehicle at our bridge (as I had with David before that first fish lunch).
    From either of these points you can make out the peculiar agglomeration that we call home: a muddle of more or less rectangular stone boxes emerging from a rocky hillside, half hidden by a riot of jacaranda, morning glory, wisteria andjasmine. Below, you can make out a path winding down through terraces of oranges and lemons to the sheep stable and a hillock known as La Haza de la Cruz – ‘the meadow of the cross’ – which presides over the confluence of two rivers, the Cádiar and the Trevélez.
    There’s something deeply gratifying about looking down on a house that you yourself have built, but what makes it even better is the innovation we’ve recently added to our otherwise traditional home and outhouses – the ‘green rooves’ of El Valero. These give the pleasing impression of tiny terraces of grass, hovering beside the outhouses, and after the spring rains have done their best the foliage on the roof becomes so thick that parts of the house seem to disappear entirely.

    I sometimes wonder about our house and the building of it and our offbeat ideas. After all, what initially attracted me to the Alpujarra was the simplicity and honesty of the architecture, the attempts by the rural poor to create a little beauty with whatever lay to hand. The perfect proportions of a handsome hen house; an oil-drum set on a plinth of stone, painted white and planted with yellow and white flowers; a stone wall moulded to fit the leaning trunk of an olive tree: these were the delights that won my heart. From the point of view of authenticity I fear we may be running the risk of killing the thing we love.
    On the other hand, one has to move forward, take advantage of new developments. Had we not done so we might still be living in architecturally honest turf huts, smoked half to death by peat fires. And the changes wewere making, while they gladdened our hearts with their beauty, were fairly unostentatious and, of course, sustainable . Our home is powered entirely by solar panels, which, arrayed upon the rooves, glint royal blue in the sunshine; we keep warm in winter by burning wood that we grow on the farm or gather from the river; kitchen and bathroom water is used for irrigation, and all the leftovers are either composted or made into edible eggs by the hens. All in all, it makes us feel pretty good about our impact on the earth in general and on the Alpujarra in particular.
    The desire to add beauty to building is not universal in the Alpujarra, where function and cost is king. Witness my neighbour, Domingo, a sheep farmer and nurseryman. For the last fifteen years he has been living with Antonia, a Dutch sculptor who moved to the valley in search of inspiration and then found it in … well, him. By some sort of osmosis he developed his own hitherto latent artistic talents to the point that he, too, has become a sculptor of some renown. Yet Domingo thinks nothing of artlessly incorporating rusty old bulldozer parts into his studio, an old car seat for those rare moments of repose, a cracked wing mirror for shaving. And then there’s Bernardo, who seems blissfully unaware of any aesthetic paradox in hanging a dead goat in the shower to keep off the flies.
    However, by odd chance, we happened upon two like-minded souls, a handsome young couple called Simon and Victoria, who not only shared our aesthetic vision of