THE joys of spring 2007 go on and on.

I WAS obliged to leave our perch in the Sierra Nevada in south-east Spain and return to Ireland again for the pleasure of family celebration and the onus of family business.

THIS MORNING I woke to find light filtering into the bedroom and when I opened the shutters, I did so cautiously. Outside, the sunlight was almost blinding.

RAIN in the mountains of Andalucia while it was glorious weather in Ireland.

THE DARK figure trudging along the river bed straight into the dust storm turned out to be a woman, bent almost double against the wind, barely staying on her feet.

MUCH AS I appreciated the weather on our first weekend back in Ireland — the biting wind, the driving rain, the boggy fields — I would have to recommend to my compatriots and contemporaries a few winter months in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountains, if only for the increased lung capacity that walking the local high altitude paths endows.

THE other afternoon, we drove to Trevélez, the highest village in Spain, and then walked higher still.

IT seems to be the search for communion with nature that brings foreigners to remote Ireland, similarly to remote areas of Spain.

TODAY, the hills and mountains are white and the tall, leafless poplar trees are beautiful, all dressed in snow.

IN THE MORNING sunshine, carpenter bees buzz around the facade of our rented house in the Sierra Nevada and find their way into niches between stones.