The last few weeks in Matarranya have seen the Shrine Room shoot up from its foundations where the vajra we planted lies within a metre of concrete. Vijayasri and Isla cleared the pathway between the retreat centre and the shrine room so now you can walk the 150 metres or so along the goat track on the side of the hill and through a little crop of pine trees without stumbling on loose rocks and ducking under branches.

Through the pines you see the first views of the shrine room. It is a large rectangular building, raised a metre off the ground to protect it from damp. It has been built from scratch with red brick faced with stone or sand coloured render. Discussions about the size and placement of the windows in the shrine room occupied the ‘Aranya group’ for many a month, along with debates about where we would place the shrine. Now seeing the building with its walls built the large windows look great and where we place the shrine seems obvious. It’s hard to take in sometimes that the building will be a shrine room. When we walk around it our thoughts are in building site mode and we’re full of questions and anxieties. Do the builders really intend giving us a lintel above the door made out of a bit of old pallet? And why is one window lower than the other and just a bit crooked? We ask our questions and of course the builders have noticed and they are both just temporary things!

Apart from enormous beams crossing from wall to wall the roof is still open to the views. The ridge behind the shrine room rises to 1200 metres and even with all the banging and clattering of building noise, on one visit I watched two wild goats climb a hill a hundred metres away. It almost seems a shame to put the roof on but I think once the building is enclosed with a wooden ceiling and floor it will really start to become our shrine room.

The retreat centre work has slowed down a lot whilst different scenarios are mooted for our services. Water is fairly clear; we’ll have a large tank near the spring below the house and pump it up to another tank above the house and gravity feed it into the retreat centre. Lighting is also becoming clear and with the high ridge behind the retreat centre it’s important to place the solar panels where they’ll get maximum sun particularly for the shorter winter days. We’ve decided on a position that’s not visible from the house but we need to build a small ‘casita’ to house the solar batteries. Santi the carpenter is away making our doors and windows to fit the frames already in place. Many of the doors will be part glass to let more light into the rooms.

Our discussions turn more regularly to kitting out the retreat centre. What sort of kitchen will we have, and who will make it? How many beds do we want in this room and when do we need to put in an order to ensure we have them in place by spring? It is still a way off and much needs to be finished off in the retreat centre by then but it’s exciting to have got to this point. We are still hoping the builders will have finished their work before winter really sets in – by late November.

July in Matarranya has been hot and work outside has been put off in favour of mortaring walls and scrubbing beams inside. The community house is really starting to show the results of the hard work put in by volunteers over the first half of this year under the guidance of Bianca. Bianca has extremely high standards and it shows in the quality of the finish of the whitewashed walls which contrast beautifully with the beams protected and stained with linseed oil. It is a very simple house and we’ve managed to maintain that quality of simplity - it’s like being in a white cave in places - but combine it with comfort. It’s an easy house to be in particularly in that the thick walls keep the temperature 10 degrees lower than outside.

Up at the retreat centre the work continues to go well. Door and window frames are mostly in place and the concrete floors are laid throughout. All the external pointing has been done which shows off the old local stone perfectly. There have been a few surprises along the way. The dining room is practically a cathedral due to another part of the building needing to have the roof raised slightly and this impacting on other rooms. This gives us the option of creating second floor above the dining area in future. The bathroom is taking shape with individual stalls for the showers and toilets. I’ve found it an interesting that building work doesn’t appear to be a very exact science. We have all these incredibly detailed plans laying out materials and how many square metres of this and that - but then a wall that you expect to be stone turns out to be made of mud and there are consequences to this! Another example is the bedrock in the downstairs bathroom and storage area turned out to be much harder to remove than expected so we’ve made a feature of it and it’s now supporting the washbasins. We were due to have a false ceiling in the bathroom but have decided to keep the enormous beams showing. They are of various types, some round and some rectangular and not very symmetrical but they have character! Wherever possible we want to keep the original features.

Last week we met to talk with Luis, our architect and Jose, the builder. It was nice to sit down with them in the local hotel in the village. Usually our meetings are two or three hours of standing in the sun or walking around the building site with at least 3 conversations going on in spanish at the same time. We were meeting to talk about the next payment that was due and to finalise plans for our Shrine Room before the work starts on it. But somehow we got on to talking about other holy places and San Benito who started the Benedictine Order of Monks. Luis is particularly interested in our spiritual tradition and what do Buddhists do? Vijayasri manfully articulated our practice as Buddhists as being more to do with a commitment rather than a particular life-style. “So you’re not ‘monkas’ (literally female monks) then?” Luis asked. There was a sort of amused snort and shake of the head from Jose. “Oh no, they’re not monkas” Vijayasri and I looked at each other and we all laughed. I guess our shorts and steel toe capped boots are just 2 of the reasons we seem quite far removed from the grey clad nuns seen all over Catholic Spain.

We missed our chance with the ‘buena luna’ (the good moon!) to get the large machine needed to clear out the ancient water deposit around the spring up the mountains. Another building crew is working in Penarroya and the road up is blocked until they move their crane and vast amounts of sand and gravel. So we’re waiting on the next month to start sorting out our water system. The digger will also dig an access track to the terrace where the Shrine Room will be built.

In the next few weeks we will disperse over summer. Bianca and Vijayasri will be in Holland and Wales respectively for retreats. Jose is going on holiday to his daughters on the spanish coast. Luis will be at home in Alcaniz but ‘taking it easy’. I will be attending a family reunion in France. The work at the retreat centre will continue in the capable hands of Alexis and his team.

Living in rural Spain, speaking the language as a 5 year old child might, not knowing how a range of things are done – from de-registering a car after you’ve rolled it down a 20 foot bank and written it off to figuring out how to book a train ticket from Bordeaux to Barcelona – it’s important to get used to the fact that things often don’t go as you think they should. Expectations are frequently confounded and Spanish people generally seem helpfully relaxed about this, shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘no pasa nada’, a sort of ‘oh well, never mind’. Having tried – until now unsuccessfully – to get email at home in the mountains for 9 months, involving at least 10 visits to the Vodafone shop alone, I am very familiar with ‘no pasa nada’ and its sister phrase ‘no te preocupas’ (as Vijayasri’s Scottish Granny used to say “dinnae fash yoursel’”). One starts to relax with the unexpected and surprising.

But even so these surprises still come on a regular basis and as I was driving back slowly back along the 25 minutes of our dirt track at 11 o’clock at night – following an enjoyable 2 hours watching England play Sweden to a fairly satisfying draw – I had a minor ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience. I was keeping my eyes peeled to the road partly because I was still regaining confidence driving after our car accident the month before and partly because, with an average of 3 vehicles a day passing, interesting animals such as genet cats, red squirrels, badgers and wild boar can sometimes be seen on the track.

But this time sitting completely still on the side of the track at its narrowest point was a large white rabbit. It sat under the light from my headlamps. I got out of the vehicle thinking the rabbit would move as I got closer but it just shook a little and eyed me timidly. With a steep drop on the far side of the road I didn’t know if I could get the vehicle past it. Also, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave it there. Something wasn’t right. We were in the middle of nowhere and here was a large, distinctly domesticated-looking rabbit trembling and peering up at me. I gently picked it up thinking it would resist but it lay shaking in my arms. As I held it I thought about what to do and where it might have come from.

It could have been a child’s pet living in the local village but that seemed unlikely. There are a few households with cats in Peñarroya and that is fairly unusual. Spanish people are not big on pets, with the exception being dogs and even then you’re more likely to see them abandoned on the roadside. On the other hand the vultures feeding ground was about a mile further up the track. Perhaps they transported the rabbits live and killed them at the in situ. Had Bunny somehow escaped or fallen off the lorry? He seemed strangely docile as if he was a bit stunned. The third alternative was that he might have escaped from one of the local rabbit farms – but it seemed a long way to come especially for such an inert being. He didn’t look like he was up to hopping through at least a mile of steep mountainside.

So – what to do? I put him in the car, again expecting him to come to and start scrambling to get free and I would happily watch him revert to normal rabbit behaviour and wave goodbye as he disappeared into the undergrowth. He didn’t. He cowered on the seat and wee’d on my handbag as I drove the remaining 6 kilometres extremely slowly so as not to bump him around too much. It was after midnight when I got home and the house was completely dark. For some reason I felt vaguely naughty tiptoeing through the house with him. I put him on my bed while I worked out what to do with him and he promptly wee’d again and shook more violently. He obviously wasn’t happy inside and seemed frightened and in shock. So even though I knew he was at risk from the foxes outside I put him in a more natural environment with a couple of carrots and a lettuce leaf and went to bed.

In the morning I looked for him before morning meditation but I couldn’t see him anywhere around the house. I assumed he had hopped off. But then Vijayasri rushed around the corner “guess what I’ve seen” – and I did!

Over the next few days he settled in, we made him a cage for overnight and he hopped a few paces to the nearest bit of shade during the day. He stayed close to the house sometimes going back to his cage after only being out for half an hour. He became ‘Moksabunny’ (or Bun most of the time) Moksa meaning freedom, to celebrate his breaking out from wherever he’d come from. He moved slowly and in an ungainly way with a hint of a limp. His bottom was big and square as if he sat on it too much and we joked about his unatheleticism until we started to put together the most likely scenario of his previous home.

The local rabbit farms are huge. Up to twenty thousand rabbits in each farm and conditions are often extremely cramped and poor. Rabbits will tear out their own fur to try and create a nest for the young that are born after they have been artificially inseminated. We were told that if an animal escapes it is unlikely to survive for very long as its body has got so dependent on the high levels of antibiotics and hormones put in its feed. Plain grass could give it diarrhoea. They are transported live in tiny cages to the local abattoirs.

Certainly Moksabunny’s appetite was small though he seemed fond of carrots and the dried food I bought for him. Gradually we watched him emerge from shell-shock into a more dynamic being with a distinctive personality. His limp turned into a more rabbity lollop. He took to grunting and stamping his back legs in something approximating a temper tantrum when I tried to pick him up. I’m familiar with rabbits from having kept them as a child and I took a lot of pleasure in looking after him and his big fluffiness. I felt moved by contemplating the suffering that had been his lot and was still the lot of thousands of others like him. As many times before I reflected how glad I am to be a vegetarian and not contributing to an industry that cages and kills animals to feed me.

After his early life I was very keen that we let him have his freedom. But as he roamed further and became increasingly adventurous in exploring holes in tree trunks, groves of trees and the rocky mountainside he was at more at risk of becoming a foxes dinner. It was clear he needed a more permanent home. Jokingly I mentioned our dilemma to some friends recently moved to Valencia province from the UK. “Oh yes, we’ll have him” they responded immediately. Followed by “the cats won’t eat him will they?” Two English moggies? I was confident Moksabunny could hold his own.

On the morning we left for Valencia I looked out of my bedroom window and saw a pale, slightly scraggy fox on the terrace 3 metres away. He looked from Moksabunny’s cage into my window and then slunk off as I pursued him with my camera. Bun was leaving just in time.

He didn’t enjoy the journey that turned out to be a six-hour scenic route through stunning parts of almost deserted Teruel. He cowered and grunted as I tried to reassure him by stroking him or offering some water. But the next day on a shady terrace full of potted marigolds and carnations he found some nice things to eat and perked up a bit.

Two weeks later I hear Moksabunny is doing fine. His lives in a large fenced orchard with olive and fruit trees. There is grass and shade with an enclosure for overnight. He is becoming more lively and increasingly hard to catch to put away in the evenings. He may not have a long life ahead of him but I am very glad he has had a taste of a better life and a bit of bunny freedom!

The retreat centre has a roof! Amazing the difference a roof can make, transforming a building site into a viable building, with outdoors and indoors. And it has guttering! I never dreamed how excited I could get about guttering, but ours is special guttering, made of softly gleaming copper.

All the exterior stonework is pointed now, so that old blends into new, and at our request the builders left some of the old blue colouring on the wall. The pigment is called azulete, in fact the same thing as used to be used in Britain for whitening the wash - ‘washing blue’. The Matarraña traditional was to mix azulete with cal (lime whitewash) and paint the walls an intense sky blue. It was often painted around exterior doors and windows, we’re told, to keep the evil spirits away. We found an old sack of azulete from the previous owners in the house - it had been there since the1960’s but still looked usable, so we will be experimenting with our own spirit protection. I especially like the casual way this was done, just slapped around a window, no particular worries about neat edges.

Downstairs the workmen have been digging out bedrock with pneumatic drills. All the dormitory rooms now have been dug out, taking down the floor level so that you don’t bump your head on the ceiling beams any longer. But in the storeroom area they seem to have hit a particularly hard part and José our builder was clearly reluctant to keep expending effort on what was only to be a storage area. It’s too hard, demasiado fuerte, he complained. Vajradevi kicked it and some crumbled away. ‘OK, you keep kicking it, Vajradevi,’ I suggested.

Now the hot weather has really set in, and working outdoors can become intolerable in the middle of the day. The Brazilian workmen drive from Morella, a town 50km away to come to work, so no chance to go home for the afternoon siesta. Fortunately there is plenty of work indoors, preparing the walls for plastering, concreting the floors downstairs. Thick stone walls keep the interior of these old houses pleasantly cool in the fiery heat of summer - another reminder of how well suited the traditional building methods are to the climate.

So, all goes well, and our main discussions with the architect and builders now centre around the services - water, electricity, heating. The man with the maquina (digger) will be coming up this week to dig out the spring, now that the moon is full - the ‘buena luna’ that draws out the water, according to local tradition.

I arrived back in Spain after a 2 week absence from the mountains on June 9th. The World Cup was starting and I was retreating into the mountains! It had taken 2 days to return as my train in Tortosa missed the last possible bus back to Valderrobres where Bianca was picking me up from. I sat in a mosquito filled park at dusk in Tortosa as the text messages went back and forth. Eventually it was decided - I would stay in a hotel overnight and get the lunchtime bus the next day.

What had changed in two weeks?

The growth spurt on every single tree in the mountains seemed to have slowed down. Before I had left each tree had a good few inches of paler green growth at its tips. I had never realised quite how much growth happened in springtime. The new shoots on the pine and carrasco were now blending in. I noticed for the first time another type of tree; Guhyavajra who came from Guhyaloka, our mens ordination retreat centre, to visit, thought it was some sort of maple. It’s lovely to see a few deciduous trees amongst all the evergreens.

The weather has been quite erratic with violent thunderstorms and sweltering humidity. I went exploring down a beautiful dry river gorge at the weekend and was accompanied by loud rumbles and cracks of thunder the whole way. It felt like I was being accompanied on my walk by my Yidam (meditation deity) Wrathful Vajrapani. Eventually torrential rain came and with it hailstones the size of chick peas. I hid under a bush as they have been known to fall the size of golf balls. I chided the sky. “Come on, it’s June. In fact it’s nearer July than May. What’s this all about?” The reply was more thunder and lightning flashes.

For the second time in a week lightning struck the highest ridge we can see from the support community. The hail instantly extinguished the smoke that came from the strike. However the first time it happened there was little rain and a fire started. Vijayasri saw the flames start to spread and tried to phone the fire service (the ‘bomberos’) but our usually poor mobile reception was even worse that day. Eventually she called our builder Jose at home in the village and he phoned the firemen. They came in a fire engine with special tyres for off road driving accompanied by landrovers with the ‘guardia civil’ (local police) and guardia forestal (forest police). However most of the work was done by a helicopter that sprayed water on the fire returning a few minutes later having picked up more water from the resevoir an hours drive away. After about ten trips the patch of ground was left smouldering and then the fire was out. It was scary to see how easily forest fires can happen but reassuring to see how quickly the fire service responded with very effective means of putting the fire out.

In the yurt our first solitary dweller has finished her 7 week long retreat and at our invitation was able to feed back how the facility had worked for her. She had got to know the surrounding areas well through some long walks which we’ve been trying out. We’ve been getting used to being able to make lots of banging and other building sounds once more, and calling out to each other outside without a sudden “whoops” and muffled giggle and retreat into whispers.

Today we picked up our official planning permission for the retreat centre. It’s taken almost 6 months to come through and even though we were able to start the work without it it feels a very significant step to now have it in our possession. Another milestone (knowing that we finally had the ‘permiso’) was showing 2 local journalists the retreat centre building. They had both been interested in our project for several months - particularly in why we had chosen the region of Teruel to have our Ordination retreat centre. Having managed to pick up more Spanish vocabulary for building terms than we were ever able to in English we realised we need quite a different language to express the Dharma in Spanish…