This idyllic olive farm, Los Piedaos lies in the heart of the valley of Las Alpujarras in Andalusia . The architect owner and his wife have created four beautiful self-catering holiday cottages ("Casas rurales", "casitas" or "gites") out of the thick stone walls of ancient Andalucia farm buildings.

Charming, peaceful and romantic, each vacation house is spacious and well planned with all the practical facilities that you could desire for a relaxing holiday away from it all in sunny Andalucia.

Swim in the beautiful pools under the azure sky, with swallows skimming the water, jasmine scenting the air, amidst terraces of olive, orange and lemon trees. Children have their own play area.

This eco-friendly estate or "finca", the Cortijo de Los Piedaos, with its beautiful farmhouse and lovely rental cottages, is uniquely situated on a tree covered ridge in the centre of the stunning valley of Las Alpujarras , real Andalucia.

Just outside Orgiva, off the road to Lanjaron, there are 360-degree panoramic mountain views. The ancient city of Granada lies to the north beyond the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada, to the south is the majestic Sierra de Lujar, and beyond the sparkling Mediterranean. Beaches, white mountain villages, and Granada are all easy drives from the cottages.

With sheltered patios, each of the holiday homes is quiet and private, but also close enough together to be perfect for groups and large family holidays. The cottages can be rented singly, or in any combination up to all four cottages (2 to 14 people).

Each villa has all modern comforts and convenience with satellite TV (LCD screen), DVD and high speed free internet access. Unlike most vacation villas, these are air-conditioned and centrally heated with energy saving heat pumps. The ecological philosophy runs
through the designs, with hot water from solar panels and chemical free pools.

The farm is completely organic, producing olives, oranges, lemons and much more in season. was selected for Alistair Sawday's new book "Green Travel", published in the autumn of 2006. We are also in their 2007 edition of Special Places to Stay in Spain. Jon Clarke, writing for Green Travel, says about us:
"They are passionate about the environment and closely involved in the growth of organic horticulture in the Orgiva area. Their own business is as green as possible. Grey water, drip irrigation, and the ancient acequia system are used to water the gardens and land. They recycle as much as they can and only use organic pesticides and fertilizer on the farm. They use a copper/silver "aquatronic" system for the pools that avoids the use of chlorine. Hot water comes from solar panels; air conditioning/heating and lighting is low energy."




Walk from the door of your apartment through the ecological olive, orange and lemon groves, and beyond to the mountains or the Guadalfeo river. Swim in the pretty, chemical-free pools, picnic in the shade of an olive tree, or just lie in the sun and read a holiday book from the well-stocked bookshelves. From walking and bird watching to the thrills of rock climbing, horse tracking and paragliding, there is an enormous variety of holiday activities.



This sketch map shows where we are in this enchanting part of andalucia. There are many cheap flights, not only to Malaga and Almeria, but also direct to Granada International Airport, which is only 45 minutes away, most of this on motorway. See information on alternative ways of getting here.

This area is the setting of Chris Stewart's books "Driving over Lemons", "Parrot in the Pepper Tree" and his latest book "The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society". Reproduced at the foot of this page is an article by Chris, who lives just up the valley from us, which he describes as a "love letter to his adopted country".





The weather here at the Cortijo de los Piedaos is as perfect a microclimate as you will find, cool nights in summer and warm days in winter. In May-June and September-October the weather can be the very best of all.



There are some good restaurants in the area, described in detail in each cottage's information pack and this area produces some good wines .
There are also many alternative therapists in the area from acupuncture, various forms of massage, to reflexology. They will come to your holiday home to give you a treatment.


If you went to see only one place during your stay here, it has to be the magical Alhambra Palace in Granada, only 40 minutes from Los Piedaos. It's worth getting your tickets in advance because there can be long queues and it may even be impossible to get a ticket if you just turn up on the day. Click here for all the information that you will need to buy tickets in advance.


We have another glowing review in the website of Responsible Travel

OUR WEBSITE IS PACKED WITH INFORMATION TO HELP YOU MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR STAY IN ANDALUSIA. YOU MAY LIKE TO DIP INTO IT AND THE VARIOUS LINKS BEFORE YOUR HOLIDAYS. (For those not used to negotiating a web site, you can go to each of the main pages by clicking on the yellow buttons in the navigation bar above left. Within these pages there are links to additional web pages of ours shown by underlined yellow words. You return from these by clicking the top left-hand "back" arrow. There are also underlined orange words that are links to other web sites. You close these to return to Los Piedaos.)

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OR READ THIS ABBREVIATED VERSION OF AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS STEWART, FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE SECTION, WHICH HE DESCRIBED AS "A LOVE LETTER TO HIS ADOPTED COUNTRY".

Every day - unless you happen to live in mist-shrouded Galicia - the sun shines in Spain. Tobacco and beer are cheap, and the optic, that Pecksniffian contrivance that ensures you get not a drop more than your one-sixth of a jill, is quite unknown. In this country, you actually have to tell the bartender when to stop pouring spirits into your glass. These are the things that attract the majority of visitors and residents to Spain. If though, they possess the merest shadow of a soul, they soon become captivated by the deeper qualities that the country has to offer, whether it be the awesome savagery of the landscape, or the glory of the architecture - that fabulous hybrid created by the Moors and the Jews, and latterly by the Catholics, with the silver and gold they stole from the Americas. Or it might be the beauty of the language, which can lend a poetic lilt to the most banal utterance. Or the music, the customs, perhaps the food and wine ... the list goes on. After many years in Andalucia, I have been seduced by all these qualities, but perhaps most of all by the people themselves and their attitude to life. I cannot do better than George Borrow, who wrote in The Bible in Spain: "...in their social intercourse, no people in the world exhibit a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature, or better understand the behaviour which it behoves a man to adopt towards his fellow human beings. It is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is not treated with contempt, and, I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolised". There's a much loved story that, whether it's true or not, goes some way to illustrate his point: Late one night on a lonely road on the the island of Mallorca, a young man riding a moped ran out of fuel. He cursed, kicked his machine and looked up and down the road for some sign of assistance. But he was way out in the middle of nowhere and there was nobody about. So, with another oath he turned and trudged back the way he had come. He had barely walked five paces when a monstrous bike pulled up beside him, straddled by a sinister-looking figure in black. "Oh, Lord," he thought, "now I'm for it; in the morning, my battered body will be discovered in the ditch". The intimidating figure heaved the great beast onto its stand and strode towards him. "So, what's the problem?" it growled. "Er, run out of fuel," mumbled the terrified youth. "Hop on the back, kid," said the dark biker. The kid timidly did as he was bade and soon they were bowling through the black night. On they raced until they came to a petrol station, where the thug, finding that our hero had no money on him, paid for a can and some fuel. Then, together, they raced back to the moped. The kid, a little unsure what to make of it all, dismounted and stammered: "H-how can I thank you? I d-don't even know who you are". The big biker raised the visor of his helmet. "At your service," he intoned, offering his hand. "Juan Carlos". It was, of course, the king, who has a house on Mallorca and a fondness for big bikes. So what is it that shapes a people, that makes them what they are? I have read that the citizens of an ancient city may accumulate the eccentricities of its past inhabitants. It's an appealing notion, and certainly true of the Spaniards, who have clearly absorbed their qualities from the ancient land in which they live. Britain is a green and pleasant land, of rolling hills and gently flowing rivers, and that inevitably has an effect on our national character. Spain is a country of awesome landscapes, tending more to the sublime than the cosy. The mountains are colossal, cut by the deepest gorges and drained by steep, rushing rivers in chaotic beds of boulders. The roads go on for ever, cutting like arrows across the immensity of the central meseta, and the whole is scourged for much of the year by cruel sunshine or lashed in winter by icy winds. It is not a landscape for the faint-hearted, and if, as most do, you were to stay on that thin coastal strip, the only part of the country that stands less than 700 metres above sea level, you'd have no idea of what was going on above and behind you. Within this landscape of primordial savagery there are patches of gentle beauty. Vergeles are what the Moors called them - well-tended gardens with just a hint of the notion of paradise. This is where the incomparably beautiful orange tree grows, the silver-leafed olive, or the lovely almond with its luminous blossom shining against the burnt black of its trunk. The air is sweet with azahar orange blossom and the scent of jasmine and the voluptuous gulan de noche. If this is what makes the people, I find myself thinking, then they must be pretty good. Once, with the need came upon me to do something a little out of the ordinary, I walked from Cordoba to Granada. People were hard enough put to fathom why I wanted to spend six days walking from one city to another when the bus did the trip in just four hours. When I announced that I was doing it in the heat of summer, they dismissed me as insane. But I experienced Andalusia at her most authentic: the summer light on distant hills, the hot dust around my ankles, the gold of fields of newly harvested corn, siestas in the shade of the pines and, most of all, the onset of the blessed coolness. On the last day, as I trudged through an olive grove above Granada, I came upon a man tending his vines. He invited me to sit in the shade and take a pull at his leather wine bottle, while he regaled me with his observations on his native land. "There is nowhere like Granada," he sighed. "It is without question the most beautiful city in the world; its women are the most graceful and voluptuous to be found anywhere on earth. Do you not see the beauty of its mountains and hills?" And he indicated with his arms the dazzling view all around us. "Its water is the finest, its wines the sweetest; and what could bear comparison to the quality of its produce?" "You have travelled much in the world, perhaps?" I asked. It's easy in Spanish to fall into this bombastic mode of address. Everybody does it. "The Host, no!" he spluttered. "I was fortunate enough to be born in the province of Granada; why would I ever want to leave it?" And he embarked upon yet another list of the delights of his beloved province. I used to think that Spanish food in general was second rate, but I find this is far from the case. Food, too, like the people, is shaped by the landscape. Take pata negra, black-foot ham, produced in the ilex woods of the Sierra de Aracena to the north of Sevilla.The half-wild Iberico pigs graze among the forests and hills of sierra upon the acorns that drop from the ilexes, and the cured ham, lightly marbled with the most mouth-wateringly sweet pig fat, melts in your mouth in the most delightful way. Aracena is also the place to eat mushrooms in the autumn. Perhaps because of the relative moistness of the climate - it has the same rainfall as East Anglia - the woods of Aracena push up more than 80 varieties of edible fungus. Local people are passionate about fungus-gathering, and there are restaurants where Jamon Iberico and locally gathered fungus are all you can get. If it's fish you're after, then Cadiz has much to recommend it, for it's just round the corner from where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. The movement of immense masses of water to and fro through the Staits of Gibraltar makes muscular fish, and the Gaditanos are masters at the art of its preparation. Not far inland from Cadiz is Jerez de la Frontera, where the thin chalky soil and blistering sunshine produce the glorious sherries that are unique to Spain. And take it from me that manzanilla and oloroso, palomino and amontillado and the sweet, sweet Pedro Ximenez taste much the fresher and lighter for drinking on their home ground. But there, too, is one of the pleasures: that the gastronomy is regional. You have to travel to root out what you're looking for, and travel in search of gastronomic delights lends a fine purpose to your peregrinations. Chris Stewart wrote Driving over Lemons, A Parrot in the Pepper Tree, and his latest book The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society, published in May 2006.

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