Driving over lemons – An Optimist in Andalucia –

“Meet Chris Stewart, the eternal optimist.

At age 17 Chris retired as the drummer of Genesis and launched a career as a sheep shearer and travel writer. He has no regrets about this. Had he become a big-time rock star he might never have moved with his wife Ana to a remote mountain farm in Andalucia. Nor forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful peasant neighbour Domingo … nor watched his baby daughter Chloe grow and thrive there … nor written this book.

Fate does sometimes seem to know what it’s up to. Driving Over Lemons is that rare thing: a funny, insightful book that charms you from the first page to the last … and one that makes running a peasant farm in Spain seem like a distinctly good move. Chris transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. The hero of the piece, however, is the farm that he and Ana bought, El Valero – a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, with no access road, water supply or electricity.

Could life offer much better than that?”