Words by Emma Latham Phillips & Photographs by Daisy Wingate-Saul
Exploring Andalucía on horseback with George Scott.
First published in our Spain magazine
From the balcony, I look out across a landscape lit by stars. A waxing moon illuminates the curves of olive tree-lined hills, while scattered farmhouses emit faint glows. There’s so much silence outside, nothing but the night, the smell of the earth and the sharp November air. Yet behind me, in a room awash with candlelight, people have begun to dance. Their voices rise and fall to the soft strikes of a piano and the strumming of a guitar as they swap stories like old friends. I stare back in a dream; it’s as if I’m watching a sequence from an old movie detailing a life that couldn’t possibly be mine. The scene is too Technicolour, too full of laughter, too utterly devoid of worries.
We met just a day ago, seven strangers and a team of carefree ‘cowboys’, and today we’re letting go of secrets as fast as our cocktails are being poured. “It’s just like the beginning of a murder mystery,” Kerry had mused as we introduced ourselves that first evening. Over the next few days, we’re to witness what happens when you put a group of unfamiliar faces together in a beautiful place, give them incredible wine, food and conversation, and set them upon horses. The result is transformative - we re-learn how to live.
We’re joining George Scott for a three-day ride through Andalucía’s Sierra Norte de Sevilla, embracing the aching limbs and clear minds that come with spending 14 hours a day in the saddle. The trip starts and finishes at George’s family home, Trasierra, stopping halfway at Taramona, a part-ruined, part- everything-you-could-ever-need traditional Andalucían cortijo. During the day, we ride the cattle trails of George’s childhood, exploring a landscape that, while located only two hours from Seville, transports me into the pages of a Hemingway novel. George has spent the past few years poring over maps and pulling these forgotten routes out from beneath the brambles, persuading landowners to return them to their former purpose.
Like the farmers, merchants and bandoleros that have gone before us, our merry band of outliers traverse the trails that tie together the Sierra Norte National Park. We wind between olive and almond groves, our horses’ hooves leaving clouds of pink dust in their wake. Below us, rounded hills lie like a fistful of fallen marbles. We push gnarled branches away from our faces as we descend into emerald valleys scissored into segments by the Huéznar River. Here, we find whitewashed farmhouses ensconced like opals amongst quaking aspen leaves. Pocket-sized vineyards slip into the grips of late autumn, a mass of red and orange made more vibrant by the bright blue sky.
Even in November the trees are still heavy with fruit, and in front of me, George picks walnuts and figs as he rides. “Wine?” he asks, throwing me a traditional bota de vino (wineskin). This is a phrase he repeats warmly over the next three days. I accept and squeeze the liquid into my mouth while trying not to lose control of the horse. George canters ahead, a cigarette in his mouth, riding up to chat with his friend Jaime Guerra. Jaime is head of horses and has grown up alongside George. He rides a palomino the colour of a winter sunrise, with a bottle of sherry in his saddlebag and Mafalda, the Spanish terrier, at his heels. I watch the two of them talk and laugh, as comfortable on their horses as if they’d been born on them.
I am quick to fall in love with the rhythm of the days. Get up, ride, eat lunch, drink wine, ride, eat dinner, drink wine, dance. The ride becomes an hours-long meditation, my mind falling in time with the gentle clip-clopping of hooves and chime of nearby sheep bells. I don’t think or see anything beyond the moment and the thyme-scented hills ahead. Our horses do not falter as they move through difficult terrain, and they break into exhilarating canters upon reaching holm oak meadows and dusty roads. You need to be completely at ease on a horse to travel like this.
“I really believe the pace of these rides is natural to the pace of life we are designed for as human beings,” George explains. “Guests leave technology aside for a moment and let go.” Brought up in these surroundings, and by a passionate mother, George knows that wealth doesn’t mean money - and his trips reveal the true definition of luxury. Here, you’re left with the absolute best of everything you need: good company, the trust of your horse, fine local ingredients, the scents of the land and the openness of the sky. This is a chance to escape the madness of the modern world.
George’s mother, Charlotte, dreamt of a life that was a little different, and that’s exactly what she created. She and her husband left London in 1978 to return to the country of her youth, buying Trasierra and saving it from disrepair. They lived in the only room still standing and built the home around them, suite by suite. Charlotte pieced together the interiors like a collage, combining antiques, repurposed relics and furnishings of her own design to create an intoxicating mix of English cosiness and Spanish sensuality.
The first six years at Trasierra were spent without electricity, and Charlotte’s four children were brought up on books, flamenco and the chatter of guests. To keep her dream alive when her husband left for London, Charlotte turned Trasierra into a “hotel for those that don’t like hotels”, and today the house can only be rented as a whole.
George shares his mother’s desire to live life like a poem, revelling in the beauty found in simplicity, and making the little moments spectacular. Lunches appear in the landscape as if a curtain has been pulled back. We find our table silhouetted in the sun beside a shimmering reservoir, beneath the bowing leaves of willows. On the patterned tablecloth, Ezequiel Bressia, a Mallmann protégé, lays out the traditional Andalucían fare. There’s lentil stew, white-garlic gazpacho, potato tortilla, cheeses and acorn-fed black Iberian pork. We sip wine and then sherry as Ezequiel moves off into the meadow to find more field mushrooms to grill. And we finish our lunch with alfajores, shortbread sandwiched between sweet dulce de leche.
But it’s at Taramona that the theatre reaches its climax. “I’ve created different stages in the different parts of the building,” muses George. His part-time home sits high above the surrounding olive groves. There’s a ruin on one side that’s deliberately been left unsalvaged, and an open room with an altar. As night falls, candles and torches are lit and their flames illuminate the crumbling stone, leading us to the dining table upstairs. There’s an air of romance to the whole affair, and after dinner, as George sits down at the piano, I realise that he is the circus master and this is his great show. His wit, charm and enthusiasm flood the experience with an endless energy.
It’s hard to return to normal life after witnessing a world like this. Though the days feel extraordinary, they’re somehow more real than anything I’ve ever experienced. For too long I’ve kidded myself that technological progress and convenience is freedom. But here I was learning what true adventure feels like, and embracing the addictive joy that comes with riding free-spirited horses through tree-spattered meadows.
