A Spanish Tapestry

Escape to Spain with this memoir and travel book full of the history, culture and passion of the beautiful country.

In 1962 twenty-year-old Jill received a small inheritance that frees her from her dank London flat. She set out on a Spanish adventure with romantic notions of horse riding through Andalusia, encountering irresistible bandits and following in the footsteps of the great adventurers that she had read about in her father’s books.

But she arrived in a heavily catholic macho country that the swinging sixties seems to have forgotten. The black-clad widows eyed her suspiciously as a single woman and the locals thought she was a whore. Undeterred, she relished her freedom and immersed herself in exotic Spanish culture: learning the language, trying the food and joining a riding party that weaves its way through the vibrant countryside, studded with white villages.

Jill still lives there now where she helps to run a charity for abandoned and mistreated horses.