The best snow in Europe just now..?

Well, that might be pushing it, but while the Alps are suffering with a lack of the white stuff, our own Sierra Nevada opened this weekend with more piste (40kms) than ever before at this time of year. The season's been getting steadily longer and better since we've been coming to the Alpujarra - about eight years - during which global warming has wreaked havoc with the ski industry hundreds of miles north. Here, where you can see Africa on a clear day, no operator is going to give you a guarantee of great snow, but it's getting more dependable every year. Here's a shot from local paper Ideal, showing the first skiers to venture out this year. (They're not going to win awards for photography at Ideal, I'm afraid.) Our house is not for a single-minded skiing holiday, as it's an hour's drive to the slopes, but for a mixed trip which combines winter sports with, say, walking, visiting the Alhambra and a day on the beach, it would be perfect.

This is one of the few places in the world where you really can ski in the morning and swim (comfortably) in the sea in the afternoon of the same day. If you're at our place, you're about half way between the two, as well as close to Granada and surrounded by great scenery in every direction.

Welcome Huelvans

We won't be in our lovely house in Juviles for Christmas this year, as we're going to Mexico instead. (I know it sounds extravagant, but it will be the first long-haul we've done since we embarked on restoring the house back in 2006. And we booked it months ago, when I was getting loads of work...) So we're delighted to have accepted a booking from a family from Huelva, who are arriving Christmas eve (Nochebuena) and staying till after New Year's Eve (Nochevieja). I just hope they have some idea of just how cold it can be between the Noches at an altitude of 1,250m.

Huelva is the Andalucian province - the capital city has the same name - that butts onto Portugal, in the far West of the community. It's quite a long way for our guests to come, despite being still in the same general region - probably a six hour drive or more. An interesting city little visited by foreign tourists, Huelva was heavily influenced by the British industrialists of the Rio Tinto mining concern in the late 19th century. Amongst other achievement, the Brits founded the first football club in Spain here - Recreativo de Huelva is still the oldest professional team in the country - and built a remarkable garden suburb reminiscent of Port Sunlight or Letchworth. Here's a shot of a typical street in Barrio Reina Victoria - or Queen Victoria District - it's only the Spanish street lights that give it away. What was home-from-home for British mining engineers in the 1890s is now a predictably gentrified corner of a modern Spanish city.

Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.

I'm linking here to a blog entry about being a vegetarian in Andalusia. There's no disguising the fact that it's tough. I eat meat, and love it, but even I find the ubiquity of pig flesh round these parts a bit much at times. There's no problem if you're self-catering in a lovely property like ours, with a nice big fridge, excellent cooking facilities and some decent chef's knives (not something you can bet on in the average holiday rental). The availability of wonderful fruit and veg, delicious fresh eggs and an excellent variety of pulses, nuts and dairy make meat-free cooking easier even than in Northern Europe. The problems start when you eat out, and for most visitors, eating out is a major element of a holiday.

The problem is that barring a few classic dishes like pisto (something like ratatouille) and pimientos de padrón (fried baby peppers, above), Spaniards assume that the addition of a little meat or fish is necessarily an improvement to anything, for everyone. So although soups, tortillas and salads may look harmless and veggie-friendly on paper, there's always a high likelihood that some ham or tuna will be strewn over the top, or some meat-and-bone-based stock will have made its way in at an early stage of preparation. It doesn't even always help if you say you don't eat meat: "no como carne" means "I don't eat meat", but to an Andalusian it kind of means "I don't want a rare steak right this moment". They won't think you mean ham, or black pudding, or pork fat.

Then there are tapas, without which a visit to Spain would be unthinkable to many, including those who reject animal flesh. In most provinces of the country, you pay for and specify what you want when you get tapas. Not in these parts. Here in Granada they're free with your drink, and you get what you're given. It might be snails, it could be cod, but the chances are it'll be something that used to be part of a pig.

All is not lost, though, meat-dodgers. Every bar will have some cheese, olives, eggs. And they'll be happy to give you a tapa without meat. I suggest you learn how to say you'd like a cheese or egg tapa - la tapilla ¿puede ser de queso? should do it - and remember that you have to specify it as you order your beer or wine. Otherwise it'll be too late, and it'll be black pudding.

Pure dead brilliant?

Just renewed our listing on PURE Holiday Homes' website. The house has been there for a year and we haven't had so much as a single enquiry from it, but they dropped the price to about £30 in a desperate attempt to get us to stay on. The site looks great and I think it's potentially useful, but like all the rest it's aimed squarely at mainstream resort-style holiday homes rather than places like ours - a proper house in a real community. There's no means on the site to search for the Alpujarra or Granada, for example. Just 'Rural Andalucia'... which hardly narrows it down.

Anybody know of a website for people who are looking for a genuine unspoilt rural experience, rather than a kiddy-on resort holiday? Let me know.