Journey to the past

My mind has been on such a roller coaster of late that there's only one thing for it – my mate Mac and I must press on with our blueprint for a wooden, steam-powered time machine. In a warped and wonderful way, it's already working. Key elements of the construction are the sturdy planks of friendship, mirth and imagination.

That's me and Mac on the next page, during one of our detailed technical time travel discussions, held, as it happens, at altitude. Mac and Conxita (Concheeta) were, you may recall, the catalysts for our transplanting from England to Iberia a decade ago. Ten years ago we came to southern Catalonia to stay with them and they took us to see a farm for sale, called Mother's Garden. If, as once planned, Mac and Conxita had gone to live in the high Pyrenees, we would have visited them there and that could have become our home.

Conxita's 81-year-old mother, Noela, who has lived close to Barcelona all her adult life, grew up in a tiny Pyrenean village called Aristot which clings to a rocky outcrop just south of the Andorran border. Mac and Conxita were taking her back to her childhood home for fiesta weekend, and we were invited to join them.

Noela has poise, elegance of spirit, a worker's steady heartbeat, a ceaseless eye for labour, a thirst to communicate, open arms, deep eyes, a ready smile, and wisdom of a world long gone. We have known her for almost as long as we have been here, but only from her visits to her daughter and Mac, across the valley from Mother's Garden.

After a three-and-a-half hour drive north, from parched corn prairies where storks spiralled on a thermal, to verdant river valleys and precipitous existence, we saw her in her element in Aristot. It's so beguiling, but not as Noela knew it.

It is a permanent home to but a few now, and a breath-restoring retreat for more, with houses renovated with great care and beauty; while to the sides the abandoned terraces fall away, telling of a lost remoteness and unimaginable toil.

There are no finer journeys than in the company of someone who knows every stone and can bring the past to life. Noela's face shone all the brighter for the two days we were with her, talking about her young life, introducing her brother Ton and her equally welcoming nieces and their families, leading us to the house and the room where she was born.

To the east of the village the high air was crowded with house martins. To the west, beyond a line defined by the tiny church bell tower, crag martins chattered and whirled.

After Joe Joe had dished out the delicious dessert he had made, Noela stood on the balcony of our accommodation (see footnote) and traced with her finger the steep path down to the faint line of the N260 highway in the valley base, where she had to take the milk every day. Then her gaze moved across to the impossibly distant village of Toloriu (unless you have wings), where her grandmother was born and where young people would walk to and from to attend dances.

That Saturday night we danced into the early hours. Or rather we watched for the most part as Aristot's little square swirled with people of all ages doing the paso doble, with panache. The rumour circulated that two of them were Spanish dance champions.

And we witnessed Noela's euphoria at greeting a friend she had not seen since she was sent away to work in Barcelona aged 18. These treasures followed two others. The first was a rather rich, but free, open-air fiesta feast of butifarra (black pudding sausage). The second was sitting in the tiny bar, about the size of our farmhouse kitchen, and hearing Noela's recollections of when dances were held there – women sitting on one side, boys and bachelors lined up on the other, barely five yards away, while an accordion player rattled off some tunes.

No electricity, remember.

It had been a long day for we were already weak before the paso doble polished us off. Aristot hosts an annual mountain race, ranging from a startling number of grimly-serious athletes covering 10 or, if completely bonkers, 15 kilometres, to scores of hands-in-pockets strollers like us completing a five kilometre circuit, which was quite far enough, thank you.

I wheezed in last, accompanied by Mac and Joe, because there were several distractions along the way, not least some enormous pumpkins in a garden on the fringe of the village, wild blackberries, and the wonder of how it must have been to be utterly self-sufficient in such a place. I dithered to look again through my binoculars at the cave in the cliff face where Franco's fascists could not reach Catalan resistance fighters. We veered off to peer into the little farm building where little Noela had spent a long, lonely night caring for an injured cow. Then, half way round, we couldn't resist drifting around an abandoned farmstead while discussing its undeniable commune qualities. Was this where we might have settled?

It was a deeply emotional visit and we knew full well the significance for our dear, gentle friend Conxita. Her rural childhood home near Barcelona was erased long ago by industrial sprawl, her father's family farmhouse and lands bulldozed to make way for factories and roads. So her Aristot roots are all the more vital. Back in the village, I sagged over a railing and looked down on hummingbird hawk-moths, swallowtails and an assortment of other butterflies and promised myself we would plant a buddleia at Mother's Garden come the autumn.

The next day Ton invited us to see the old family house, locked and virtually untouched for a lifetime. It was crowded with a palpable sense of the density of such a mountain life, a lost life of closeness, with low ceilings, a long table and blackened fireplace.

There were hooks for spring-water buckets above the sink, a side-table drawer with a great notch out of the top of it. "That is where we kept the bread," said Ton. "And the notch is because we cut the bread on the open drawer."

Outside on the narrow street, before joining Ton and his family for a paella, we walked a short way towards the spring, and I asked Noela what she felt about her childhood.

"Wonderful," she said softly, eyes shining in thought. Back at Mother's Garden, as if to remind me about the buddleia, Maggie sighted our first swallowtail caterpillar of the year, right in front of the house, on fennel sprouting from the base of the old wall where our sunflower seeds were drying. It was a reassurance. Aristot was exceptional, but I couldn't imagine living there. Mother's Garden is flush with its own histories and mysteries, and has other things in common with the village of Noela's youth.

I cleaned out the hen house and, fortified by Noela's stories of Aristot self-reliance and home-reared goodness, resolved to prepare another couple of cockerels for the pot. Maggie came with me to help empty the ash, straw and chicken poo out of the wheelbarrow and into my homemade compost bin. We lifted off the pallet lid and I pulled out the square of carpet that keeps the heat in. Instead of several mice bolting in all directions lay a very plump black and grey viper. We were able to study it for several moments, then it slid down one of the mouse holes. We went online to look it up, and clicked on one image of an identical serpent. Ping. It took us to the host website – of a village in the Pyrenees, called Aristot.

It looks like being an exceptionally full week. We are late with the almond gathering, the grape harvest looks like it may be early, but first we have to bottle 450 litres of wine and clean the equipment and clear the barn.

On top of all that, we must get to the olive oil mill to taste and label because, come the first week of October, we aim to be delivering to customers in Yorkshire and all over England. Maggie is now posting regular recipes on our website and you can subscribe for free.

And there is something else that is weighing on us.

We are doing final proof checks on my new book, Shaking The Tree, to be published on December 1, when all four of us intend to embark in a van full of new harvest olive oil, our wine and nuts, to attend bookshop signings including, hopefully, in Yorkshire. More on this next month.

For our Aristot accommodation, see www.pallercalcintet.es

www.mothersgarden.org.

YP MAG 9/10/10