Every morning I stand at the kitchen window waiting to hear the whistle of the kettle and the buzzing of the mechanical tree-shaker, and then I look out across a sea of olive trees to see if I can spot the one that is shaking. It's great being here during the harvest, and sometimes we have passed the harvesters whilst out on a hike and watched the olives come rolling down the hillside into the nets. It's mostly been hiking this week, across the vast green mead...

The photo is of Helen approaching the summit of Mulhacén. This is the highest peak in Spain at 3,478.6 m (11,413 ft). It was quite a high one by our standards, and took all of our skills and energy to get to the top. We drove our hire car as high as possible the day before, but couldn't get to the absolute top of the road because it disappeared under deep snow. Left in the afternoon but didn't reach the mountain refuge until after dark. We had been able to se...