Resolve testing stuff, or have we made a big bloody mistake?

We know about the strong winds in Spain, we have lost palm trees, and roofs in the past! So what the heck made me think that my tent with its 3 metre metal poles will be fine on the side of a flippin hillside?

It started during the night and we kept out eyes on the guide ropes, pulling em in etc. In the morning we decided to have a quick cup of tea and a some chocolate biscuits, the tent was moving around and making us laugh and the noise outside, then before our very eyes the metal poles just bent nearly over in half! (F*"$ing heck!), I quickly jumped up and moved the TV off the stand and onto the floor and made a grab for the pole to stop it bending anymore. Rich just looked at me and said " you better keep hold of that I need to go and buy some strong large pieces of timber to hold the thing up" and off he ran!

So I am stood in a tent in the pissing rain with it bent in half and I have no idea how long Rich will be shopping. This is where I am really glad that I have an ipad with a 3g sim in it. On with Chris Evans Radio Two to keep me company and I am able to use skype to contact The Orange House.

"Ben get your arse up here quick and bring as many blokes as you can find"

20 minutes later Ben, Tony and Niall, wet through and covered in mud appear in the tent door. I can let go! Rich comes 30 mins later and the poles are reinforced with timber and the tent looks like it should again.

Rich then has to head off to get more supplies and I end up stranded, the road is a mud bath and no cars going up or down, what the hell have we gone and done!!!!!

:0)

We move onto the land!

Woke up this morning and decided I had had enough sleeping next to the car park at The Orange House.

Poor Rich, its his only day off this week and all change again. I wanted to be the one to drive our large campervan Eddie (named after Eddie Izzard as the van is a Transit (trannie!) bad joke sorry!). I set off all full of hope that it would climb the steep hill no trouble with me driving, well I was wrong and after many wheel spins, burnt rubber and stalling I gave up and said "Rich you do it". He managed up the first bend and then got very, very stuck on the second, the ground was just too soft and poor Eddie was just slipping back. Time to attach a rope and hope that Nellie the Nissan (no reason for that name!) would be able to tow Eddie up!

Rich didn't think it would work as the clutch has seen better days on Nellie and the ground is very soft, we have not had rain in nearly 3 months, the whole hillside is a dust bowl. However, I had hope and with Rich behind the wheel of Nellie, me driving Eddie again off we went. The boys had ran away up the hillside to get away from me shouting them and watched from above.

How cool are we? With a few spins and a horrible burning smell slowly up we went, next bend was easy and on the last and we though the worst as its tight, Rich stopped Nellie and we realised we could turn Eddie and reverse from here all the way to the top. He was right and cruised up the next bit with me putting Nellie into the only passing spot we have and waiting.

Tonight we will be sleeping on our hillside I cant wait.

Here are a few more photos as the boys then got straight to work finishing off the steps and the platform for the tent to sit on.

Tyres arrive on site!

We now have one large plot around 10ms squared, however a few corners didnt get dug out as we broke Phils machine! So here is me having a go with the pickaxe.

Pretending to help!

Rich made his first trip to the tyre place and came back with a van full. Shame we don't have the sizes that we need sorted yet. I have since found a great website OffthegridBuild with a guy called Dan Richfield (cool name) I might have to head over to Taos, New Mexico to visit him :0).

Here are the steps in progress, very "suck it and see" at this stage. Goats seem to enjoy having us around!

Let the digging begin!

What a find our digger man Phil was! A lovely bloke and one who comes when he says he will and works long hours without a break is my kind of bloke. He looks a bit like the late Jimmy Savile and drives a digger with no fear.

What do we live in?

The first idea was to get a small wooden chalet, but they worked out expensive and as the land is very terraced we would need to make quite a large space to put the house on. Now anyone that knows me knows I like to move (what me!!) so Rich would get pissed off if I decided I didn't like the place we picked. So yurts came to mind, cricky how expensive are they then? 3k for a 5m one, no way Jose!. But when I put yurt into Ebay "bell tent" came up.


What are they then I thought? Dib dib dib, dob dob dob! :0) thats right old Scout tent idea only they have become all trendy and a new word in word is "glamping". They might be just the thing so over to best mate Jenny to find me a good deal. She did just that and a 6x4m bell tent was sent from Holland to Spain.

Now its up at The Orange House as a test, rented house handed back over to the landlord and sleeping in the campervan.

Digger man arrives on the land tomorrow so lets see how quick we can make a space big enough for the tent and van!!!!!!

The idea!

Rich and I moved to Spain nearly 12 years ago now, started The Orange House in 2003 and work our arses off looking after climbers, stags and hens and families of all shapes and sizes! In 2008 we started to rent small houses away from the main house as we needed "our own space". Paying rent gets to me (actually spending any money on anything gets to me!) so a few months ago I decided we needed to do something about that so started to look at what we could afford to buy.

Even though we have a recession here in Spain what we did have wouldn't get us very much, maybe a car park sized house in the village, but with our growing animals (check out the facebook "farm" page) that was not going to work. I made contact with a local Agent the lovely David and he showed me a few houses for sale. I mentioned to him that what I would really like was to buy land and build something.

He mentioned that he knew someone that was about to split a few plots into 3 and that they might not be too expensive. I was interested and went to have a look at the plots. Only 6 mins drive from The Orange House was the only good thing I could see at first glance! Rich came with me on the second visit and we decided to venture onto the scary track and take a look from up high!

I was gobsmacked by the great views the higher we got and the one great bonus I couldn't hear any dogs barking (the bane of my life in Spain). Rich liked it and the price was great,  I can buy this on my credit card I joked! We arranged a meeting with the owners,found a friend to buy the plot next door (great idea dont you think as his wife hates dogs!) and that was it, decision made lets buy a hillside and build some eco pods!

Now what do we build???? I have watched every episode of Grand Designs, some even more than once, although I hate the revisited ones when they show the "whole" of the original show with a tiny new bit added on the end! whats that all about then? One really stuck in my mind from 2007 I think when a family moved to France to build a house with old truck tires.

I loved the shape of the building, all natural and none square. I think I said to myself at the time "I would love to live in a house like that".

This is a Scottish Earthship, nice and small

As you may know already we have "Oranges" that stay with us at The Orange House and work in exchange for board. When I mentioned this to one of them, Niall said that he had made contact with a couple down south from here and gave me a link to their website www.earthship.es and a seed was planted.