We had a visit recently from David Illsley who, with his wife Emma, owns Casa Las Chimeneas our Families Worldwide base in La Mairena in Southern Spain. It is always great to hear about this "balcony of the Alpujarras" with its gorgeous views and enviable sunshine record however this time David had some other news for us. He was over in the UK to make the first delivery of his home-made olive oil to Moro Restaurant where he dropped off over 200 litres of the golden nectar. Their link with this famous restaurant and food emporium goes further than that as David explained;

"The deal we have with them is that more a dozen of their chefs and staff spend a week with us in February learning about olive oil production and indeed getting stuck in and bashing the olives off the trees. This is part educational, part reward for them after a hectic spell over Christmas, and part commitment by the Moro owners to the general concept of slow cooking and being in proper, earthy contact with food production from first stage to last. It is, of course, great fun too and any of our guests from Families Worldwide are always very welcome if they fancy lending a hand. The other thing we do with Moro, by the way, is cookery classes, and Sam, the owner is planning the next one for October 2010. One of his assistants, as it were, is in fact Chris Stewart, the celebrated ex-Genesis member and best-selling author of Driving over Lemons".

The olive oil is, by all accounts, pretty damned good, and they offer visitors the option of a free trip around the village mill, one of very few remaining traditional mills that still preserves the old chemical-free techniques using fibre filters and some beautiful vintage engines.

This village and indeed the whole of this part of Andalucia sounds gorgeous and as if any other excuse to visit was needed David and Emma have offered all Families Worldwide clients a 15% discount for any 1 week bookings made before the end of March 2010!