The Hillside
Greener. For now.
Escape the bustle of the towns for the open countryside, where the air is clear, the rubble walls run for miles, and the hillside is still, reassuringly, mostly green.
For now.
Savour it while it lasts. Up here you can still find the things the brochures used to promise: a field of wild thyme, a stone farmhouse with its roof intact, a view uninterrupted by a single jib. Sit on a dry-stone wall and watch the light move across the valley, undisturbed but for the distant, hopeful hum of a generator one ridge over.
The hillside is in great demand. A “rural” permit here, an “agricultural store” the size of a villa there, a track widened just enough for a cement truck, and the green retreats a little further up the slope each season, like a tide that only goes out. The estate agents call it potential. The goats call it home, currently.
Visit soon. Bring a picnic, a wide-angle lens, and a healthy sense of urgency. The hillside is one of the last genuinely unspoilt corners of the islands, an honour it holds, as ever, provisionally.
