Spanish stroll an idyllic interlude

FROM PURPLE woods to purple plains. Last week, I was in a West Cork wood, marvelling at the almost overnight transformation as, suddenly, all together, the bluebells opened in flower.

Today, driving south from Seville to Algeciras in the south of Spain, I can hardly keep my eyes on the road, so captivating are the swathes of colour thrown over the hills, huge carpets of purple, red or gold. The wild flowers of Andalucia are again in bloom and, as always, I cannot help but marvel.

Knee-deep in fields of lavender, between the shady cork oaks and old olive trees, slow, russet-brown cattle graze. They seem unperturbed by the hot sun. It is already hotting up, albeit only early May, and it would be madness to go abroad without a hat — to do so would surely invite madness, as the brains baste in their psychic juices under the Andalucian sun.

Now, writing this in an apartment on the coast above my brother’s latest fine establishment, O’Flaherty’s Pub, Soto Grande, I enjoy shade and a light breeze on the front balcony.

The blue Mediterranean twinkles across the street where a huge, white motor yacht is moored; I could flip a paper clip onto its deck from here.

It is five times the length of my modest rented car, and rises to three storeys, an example of conspicuous seagoing consumption.

I see a Se Vende (for sale) sign on the upper-deck cockpit, a glass-enclosed bubble with plush white leather seats facing the instrument panel and steering wheel. Steering wheel, I think, is right; more like the wheel in an upmarket Mercedes than on a trawler. Readers wishing to view may contact me and I will negotiate on their behalf for a very reasonable 3%, which shouldn’t come to more than €30,000 or €40,000.

However, I must warn those rushing to buy that ownership of such a princess of the sea will not confer any great exclusivity. I can see a hundred such craft, at close quarters, from the balcony; they are as common as pedalloes at Benidorm around here. Like West Cork holiday homes, they seem rarely to be used.

Walking on the brother’s peach farm near Seville the other day — the morning before the baptism of my nephew’s twins, which I was in Spain to attend — I was intrigued by the profusion of azure-winged magpies flitting between the trees and the bee-eaters as glittering as jewellery fashioned by Faberge.

There were stately storks too, and white egrets sitting on the backs of the slow, brown cattle.

The peaches were ripe; the picking gangs had made their first harvesting two days before. They were the first peaches in Spain to go to market this year. While picking has also started in Egypt and Israel, the Palmar Gordo crop beat them into the shops in Italy and France purely because of proximity. The foreman, squeezing fruits on their branches with the tenderness of a parent caressing an infant’s downy pronounced another cropping the following day; happily, not all ripen at once, but over some ten days all will mature. Then come the nectarines, now swelling by the day, but still not sweet. The Spanish especially favour these because, while they peel peaches, nectarines, essentially the same fruit but without the down, are deemed not to need peeling. Thus, little Jose or Maria can be sent off to school with a nectarine in their lunch box rather than a peach and a possibly dangerous knife.

We explored the countryside far beyond the farm. At one point, we saw a dusty track leading off the road, and decided to walk it. Soon, a large notice board, with map, informed us we were on part of the Ruta de Santiago de Compostella and that we could continue a thousand miles across Spain on this track without confrontation. Paths led off to villages and towns, through farms and plains and forests where the stranger could freely wander.