We stumbled across La Corolla in September 2005 at the end of a particularly long, hot summer in Spain. We’d already spent a few months travelling around the country looking for somewhere to settle and embark on a new adventure in our lives.
Guaranteed sunshine. No rain. Lounging by the pool with a drink in our hands. None of that appealed much after the first week or so. Perhaps we were too young, incapable of relaxing or unwinding after a hectic few years in London.
Or perhaps the sere landscape, the dusty earth, the unforgiving heat of the south had left us looking for something else, something visually more familiar. What we craved were green hillsides, lush valleys, rivers that continued to flow through the summer.
And so we turned northwards, heading as far as we could go before reaching the sea. That’s how we discovered Asturias and La Corolla.
A ramshackle 400-year old house, an even more ruinous shed, a wooden granary needing attention. And three acres of south-facing hillside given over to six grazing sheep, a dozen chickens and a couple of decrepit apple trees. We could definitely work with that.
At the time it was probably the small-holding nature of the place that attracted us, the scope to plant fruit trees, keep animals, grow vegetables. We did all that while devoting most of our time to renovating the house, building a guest cottage and repairing everything from the fences to the granary.
Gradually, our plans for the land began to take shape. We were warming to the idea of moving away from the annual rhythm of vegetable growing and animal husbandry. What we fancied was a longer-term project, something that would develop over the next few decades and keep us busy into our dotage. A slower form of gardening.
In 2012, we began the next phase in our lives – creating the garden at La Corolla.
