Snowball Oranges: One Mallorcan Winter (Peter Kerr) Book

Like so many other Scottish farmers, Peter Kerr and his partner Ellie had passed many a bleak winter's evening "indulging in dreams of someday swapping the rigours of growing crops and raising cattle in the harsh Scottish climate" for the more idyllic option of a small farm in Spain. On the day their dream came true, when they finally moved into their Mallorcan farmhouse, 1500 miles southwards of Scotland, it snowed. But they were lucky to be there at all: Peter and Ellie discovered their new home after taking a wrong turning while on a summer holiday, instantly falling for its "white walls, faded wooden shutters and terracotta tiled roof" which "peeped sleepily over the deep green domes of orange trees, while the mountains looked benignly on". With prose as elegant as this, Snowball Oranges is one travel book that needs no illustrations. In fact it reads more like a novel, brimming with charming characters and good humour. "My drenched trousers clung uncomfortably to my legs," the author tells us following a mishap with a hose, "dredging up sorry memories of a once-familiar sensation that I hadn't experienced since my early days at infant school." By the time you reach the last page, you feel as though you are in the Mediterranean with them, and you don't want to go home.--Daren KingRead More