I lived off grid from 2004 to 2008, halfway up a mountain called Almanzor in Spain. I had a small traditional single storey house, solar power & natural spring water. My irrigation system was hand built & created a heaven on earth out of a previously dry & desolate space. I occasionally watched Spanish TV which was free & I had my animals & music to entertain me. If I wanted tobacco I could only buy it from official Estancos (state run shops) & I needed Euros there, they didn't like bartered oranges or peaches, which I had in abundance.
I needed Euros for the mobile phone connection to keep my family in touch with me & I needed them to get the internet connection.
I started a small village evening school teaching English & that brought in a few of the necessary but much resented Euros.
When my clothes wore out I couldn't replace them because the Spanish think it is shameful to buy or sell 2nd hand goods in charity shops. When I needed fuel for my water pump I would cycle up to the garage & wash up in their cafe for a few hours.
I swapped eggs for honey & fruit for meat from the butcher. I grew my veg which was carefully stacked & stored to last through the winter.
I gave my produce as gifts for birthdays & weddings & I collected asparagus & herbs from the mountain to augment my credit at the local greengrocers. With that I could buy essentials like coffee, toiletries & cleaning products.
It worked.
I was totally poverty stricken in terms of cash but richer than most in terms of quality of life.
However, I couldn't be really happy knowing that my family & friends back home in England were struggling in Rip-Off Britain & they were starting to get sick. My heart was torn but I had to go.
I felt like I was walking away from Valhalla when I sold up & left.
I now wish that I had been a lot more selfish & continued with my hermitage. But my nature is too caring for that.
Now I am flat broke, living in a tiny flat so that I can be near my grandchildren & all my animals have died of old age.
I miss the off-grid life.
It was very hard, physical work & sometimes I was lonely for human company but now, looking back, it was the best time of my life & I highly recommend it to anyone young & fit enough to do it.
I had a natural swimpool with which I flooded my land once every three weeks when the water was looking a bit green & then I would scrub it down & refill it from my pond which collected the water from the irrigation channels I had dug. My statue of Buddha sat under a gorgeous magical orange tree! It was magical because I would pick a wheelbarrow full of fruit in December, to take to the grocers for trading, & when I got home later in the day I never seemed to have less oranges on the tree! It was spooky!
It was something I had been working towards all my life. It gave my dogs & cat the natural life that couldn't happen in Essex UK.
In these pix you see the LDV hitop van in which we travelled around Spain searching for the right spot. It is parked in the shade of a beautiful Laburnum tree which gave bright yellow flowers all through the summer. It inspired the colour that I eventually painted the house exterior.The pond which overflowed back to the river alongside the land, Rasta my Groenendahl Belgian Shepherd best mate & the thick dark green vines which covered my high fences & provided me with 5 types of grapes. They were really delicious & the local birds adored them as much as I did! I had two very mature cherry trees but ate very few cherries because my collection of resident birds would always beat me to them, being nested handily in the boughs! Cheeky little wotsits were far from silly. I had woodpeckers & pale blue magpies too.
There were always eagles circling overhead & when my hens had chicks one vast eagle came down between me & my dogs to steal a little yellow chick that was running around. My cockerel, Monty attached himself to the eagle's throat & kicked it frantically but had to let go as the huge predator rose too high for him. He moved his hens to roost in the protection of the cherry tree after that experience.
Pearlie, the tortoiseshell Essex cat, went totally feral in Spain. She preferred to eat only what she hunted & her favourite food was lizards. She would eat their heads, legs & tails but leave the torsos in the dogs bowls. Which baffled them! She cleared my land of scorpions, chased off black mink & captured moles, mice & voles.
She explored far & wide & sometimes would follow me & the dogs when we walked the couple of kilometres to the village. She would stop when we reached the main road & wait for us there, all day sometimes.
She tried to fish in the river but in the winter the storms would cause raging torrents which tumbled down stream at such a pace that the big granite boulders could be heard rumbling along in the force of it.
Pearlie fell in one stormy day & Rasta ran along the river bank for miles until she finally fought her way out of the water. She was HIS cat, not mine. I bought her for his 3rd birthday present after he had admired her in a pet shop we frequented.
In Madrid she fell out of a fifth floor window & landed in a tree below, breaking several ribs & smashing her pelvis. Rasta & Ben kept a vigil at her side for 5 weeks when she couldn't move her rear end at all. They even cleaned her when she was incontinent. I swear it was their love that gave her the will to recover & when we finally went home to Avalon, our small-holding on the mountain, she worked hard to bring those back legs back to full form. Jumping halfway up the house walls to snatch her lizard lunches was an essential part of her little life.
Living real is not for everyone but I have found that once you have tried it, your soul forever hankers for it, even though it can be tough going & full of hazards. I am really glad I was brave enough to go for it when I did.... I had no idea I was that strong until I pushed myself out of my comfort zone!
In the autumn I would take my chainsaw & wheelbarrow into the woods first thing every morning to collect fallen branches & sometimes whole trees which had long since been blown over. I created logs in preparation for the cold winter nights. There was tons of it & I cleared a lot of space which filled with wild flowers the following spring. In the really bad storms whole trees would wash up on the river banks & I would spend a lot of time sawing it up & stacking it in a tepee shaped shelter that I built on my land. I quickly learned which wood was best for my huge fireplace & a good sized piece of old oak always provided the best heat with the least smoke.
I cooked on that fire - making stews & soups for myself & the dogs- They would last for days & fried fresh eggs on toast over smouldering oak logs was always the tastiest of breakfasts!
The chainsaw flipped back on me once & dislocated my left thumb, I was deep in the woods & there was nobody for miles so I shoved the thumb back into place & swore for about an hour, like the true East London chick that I am at heart! The joint was shattered & I had to do a 100 kilometre round trip to get it plastered up at the hospital in Caceres. What a bloomin fix I was in while I had that thing limiting everything I needed to do. The cast was absolutely black with soil by the time they cut it off me! lol The nurse was quite disgusted!
I did all my washing by stomping it in the bath but I had to carry many pails of water from the pond to fill it three times per wash load.. Once for the wash stomp & two rinses! I had spectacularly clean feet one day every week..... the rest of the time they were black from the intensely rich soil & my bad habit of failing to wear shoes!
I got to know a lot of lovely people in the nearby village because of shopping & trading there. My school introduced me to many of the local kids & thereby, their parents. It was a medieval village in a string of villages that runs around the foothills of the mountain.
At night, when we drove towards it from the plains below, the lights of the tiny villages looked like a string of pearls gleaming on the neck of a beautiful woman & from the moment they saw it the dogs would be yapping with excitement - for the last 30 kilometres of any journey we made my ears would be stressed to the max!
When we turned into our lane, which had to be negotiated at no more than 10 miles per hour, being rocky & pitted & even flooded at times, I would stop & let the dogs run ahead just to get some peace from their constant joyful squeals & yapping! What a din they used to make! In all their lives they never reacted like that for any other home we had.... Avalon was THAT special, that magical & that perfect from their point of view.
It had something about it, something wild & simultaneously peaceful. It was always a joy to come home to & still is the love of my life.
I drove round Spain 3 times visiting lakes, mountains & rivers - this took me 6 months in all. For climate & value for money I chose the south face of the Sierra de Gredos but it was quite a struggle to find a place that ticked all my boxes. I recommend that you start your search online checking out the "inmobiliarias" which is estate agents in Spanish. You can get a good idea of the standards of property available & prices nowadays.
The mountain ranges across two communities: Castilla y Leon & Extremadura. The latter is cheaper because it's name actually means "extremely hard" which refers to the pure white heavy granite of the glacial deposits that make up the foothills. You will need to speak Spanish in that area though. It is not an area catering for British tourists & in fact, discourages the very idea to preserve it's character & avoid the invasion of "lager louts" & "ravers".
Sound's like a peice of heaven!