Troglodytes?
**Note: This image is NOT representative of Cave Life in Spain lol**
And so, the die was cast. The game plan of closing down my flat, doing up the crew’s property for sale and relocating to Spain was in place.
As for the costumery business, we gradually filtered in longer lead times to completion, knowing that what we had to do logistically would reduce our available time to complete.
The next 6 to 8 months involved redecorating their house, not that it was in shabby order, but to give it that “key ready” look. Ramp up the look of the massive garden they had and rework their equally massive double garage, which had become more of a place where you “put it there until I find a use for it” location lol. During the latter rework of the garage, I discovered how rubbish I was at maintaining a straight line cut on successive timbers that were required…I blamed the tools, to be fair lol.
We had a short trip out to Spain together to look at Valencia, a beautiful city, I might add and yup, one helluva size beach, and it was a great trip, but the guys had something else in their heads that wasn’t quite Costa…
I kept hearing them talk about caves…caves?!
Now, apparently, they knew a bit about cave living in Spain and had actually bookmarked several areas and even properties they wanted to view with the prospect of buying one…I couldn’t get my head around what cave life would be like. And hey, if you talk to most people (even now, I have lived it for nearly 8 years) it’s hard to perceive what it is… A mate of mine recently thought we were in a dugout cave with a basic fire in the middle…until I sent him pictures ha.
So, the game plan. With the house done up and up for sale. Once a sale was made, the guys would find a rental property in the approximate area they were looking at. Yours truly would be the forward party to be there for the removals and pets prior to the sale of the house going through.
And that is exactly how it all went. I closed my flat down in May and moved into their gaff temporarily until an offer went in, which it did quite quickly. Then, in July 2017, my flights were booked, I sorted a rental car from the airport, and an estate agent’s location in rural Spain was mapped out for me to get to, collect keys…for a cave rental and progress from there.
Exciting? Damn right! Although I did wonder how my muscle memory of driving on the “wrong” side of the road in a car I hadn’t driven would go (having lived in Germany for 7 years, obviously I had a deal of experience, but that had been about 2 decades before).
Anyways, it was like a duck to the water; the journey went well, around 2.5 hr drive and, as you may know if you have driven Spain’s main roadways, good roads and not massively congested.
Finally pulling up in a rural village, hoping I wasn’t too far off the location of the estate agent I was meeting, I messaged him to say I was in the area.
Within minutes, this guy, Sean, wandered around the corner and greeted me.
Just minutes later, I was following his vehicle into the wilderness (about another 30 minutes across more “scenic” roads) to the rental cave that had been arranged for by the crew.
Sean gave me a quick whistle tour of the place and left saying to give him a shout if I needed anything.
And there I was, inside a 3 bedroomed cave property, somewhere in rural Spain…it seemed odd…but not bad odd, exciting odd…like “what now?”.
First things first, let’s see what resources are in the area. On our approach, we came through what looked like a small village, so I took a walk out; it was only a 10-minute walk. However, resource-wise, well, it had a pub, lol, which was closed. Urgh.
I did note it had a WiFi feed in the “square” (the square is about 15m X 15m)…it was a bit shady but enough to get a message out to the crew that I got there (mobile reception didn’t seem to be a thing there…just a wee bit rural).
Thankfully, I had picked up some bottles of water and some snacks from the airport on my way out…that would have to do until I explored further…and when the heat at that time, around 3 pm, was 42c, hell ya need yer liquids.
I was now the first of our crew to be living as a Troglodyte, and noting the harsh heat outside and enjoying the inner cool of a cave gave an immediate positive for me.
Next Time: “Rural Spain Recce”
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