From April 1st, until October 31st we only accept weekly bookings. If you are coming for a week or more, you will find a welcome pack waiting for you. This will have fruit, salad, cheese, cold meats, pasta, ground coffee, teabags, eggs, bread, butter and jam, olive oil and of course a bottle of wine and beer. You will need to hire a car to get here. A small boxy car with high ground clearance is good, as access is by country dirt road. The house is a small cottage converted from the stable where our donkey, Platero used to live many years ago. There are two bedrooms upstairs, each en suite. One has a queen size bed and the other twin beds. Downstairs you will find a well-equipped kitchen, and a small sitting room with a wood fired stove for winter evenings. The cottage is situated among forests of sweet chestnuts and cork oaks, and there are olive groves and orchards nearby. Sometimes the sheep will be in the field below, with their tinkling bells. The summer is hot, but the house has thick insulated walls and remains cool. There are fans in the bedrooms. At night it is lovely to sit out on the terrace under the stars, by day you can find shade on the terrace or splash about in the small pool (5mx3m).

Sam and Jeannie, Irish and Scottish, married in Scotland, upped roots and came to Spain forty years ago. We wanted to bring our children up in lovely countryside and with a second language. We built our home on the top of a hill surrounded by trees and endless views, and our guest cottage is down the valley below, among orchards. Previously we had worked together running lodges in the wild parts of Scotland, and we felt we would be able to welcome guests here and have fun meeting people from all over the world.

The Sierra de Aracena is one of two areas of Andalusia where, in the heart of the natural park, there are many small villages not too distant from one another and linked by trails. In between you will find smallholdings where local people grow their vegetables, keep their iberian pigs, harvest their olives, stone fruit or sweet chestnuts The cork and chestnut forests are filled with wild mushrooms in autumn and winter. The iberian pigs roam freely in the larger dehesas just a few kilometres to the North, West and South. These form a unique landscape, park-like in appearance with evergreen oaks dropping their acorns in autumn for the pigs, and if the winter has given us rain, there will be pasture for the Retinto cattle and the herds of goats and sheep. In spring, winter and autumn you can walk out onto the trail which leads to Fuenteheridos or Los Marines, both about 35 - 40 minutes away on foot. from either village you catwalk on into the hills. Fuenteheridos is lively on the weekends, and there are plenty of bars and restaurants. Los Marines is quieter but there are good places to eat: Taberna Bretones by the children's playground, and De Capricho in the main square by the church. The latter serves excellent hamburgers at the weekend. Aracena, our local market town is only ten minutes drive away, 8Kms from our main gate. There you will find supermarkets, banks, ATMs, gourmet shops in the Avenida de la Constitucion, and a good selection of restaurants and bars. The famous Aracena Caves are a must, and you can visit the castle and the castle church on top of the hill and enjoy the magnificent views. The whole area is surrounded by walking trails linking the dozen or so villages of the Sierra. We are only 75 minutes by car from Seville.