CELEBRATING her 15th birthday at her Co Kilkenny home, Karen Considine’s mother presented her with a book which had already become something of a classic. Penelope Chetwode’s account of her ride around a remote part of southern Spain in 1961, Two Middle-Aged Ladies in Andalusia, made an indelible impression on the teenager who vowed one day to repeat it herself.

Penelope, in her fifties when she set off, was married to the British poet laureate John Betjeman. She rode her borrowed mare for over a month through a Spanish countryside virtually untouched by the 20th century, seeing only one tractor – which she resented! Here mules were the cargo-carriers and horses worked the land. Fascinated by Penelope’s adventure, Karen vowed she would follow in her footsteps and over half a century later, achieved just that.

In fact, Karen had to wait 52 years before she had the opportunity to retrace Penelope’s journey. A life working with high-goal polo all over the world, and then running a horse trekking business in Andalusia, gave Considine no opportunity to follow this dream until, in 2018, she sold her business and retired. Almost immediately, Karen drove the four hours from her home, near Ronda, to investigate the area that Penelope had ridden.

Bleak weather

“I decided I had better go and inspect the lands across which I was considering riding alone for a month. My Uruguayan friend, Marcela, and I set off in bleak winter rain. As the sleet lashed down, the wind whined across the flat land and the olive trees sat sullenly with their feet in the water. We drove around the villages Penelope visited during the first week of her trip and looked at each other in horror,” Karen recalled.

Then, as was to happen to Karen so many times during her travels, she and Marcela met a helpful local who was excited about the proposed adventure and offered her and her horses accommodation.

“After we had spent another day cruising the countryside in the driving rain, and my dog had eaten every seatbelt in the car and Marcela’s terrier had had a bilious attack from the stress of it all, I had decided to go ahead with the ‘plan’.”

Her plan relied on taking a packhorse along. Whereas, in Penelope’s time, every village had accommodation for pack and riding animals, with rooms above for the owners, these ‘posadas’ are no more and supplies for both Karen and her horses had to be carried with them.

Finding a pack saddle she could easily load and unload on her own was her first concern, while practising this and her rather dodgy skills with an iPhone and Wikiloc also took up a fair amount of preparation time.

On April 1st last year Karen finally set off to follow, as accurately as possible, the same paths that Penelope had taken nearly 60 years ago, and to stay in the same little villages. Making up the team of three were Luqa, a shiny bay Hispano Arab (“a true gentleman”), and Bruma, “a bold little dun mare, no better than she should be!” Their antics and steadfast friendship became very much part of this tale.

With Penelope Chetwode’s book tucked in the saddlebag, they crossed the endless plains of olive trees, descended into an extraordinary gorge where the cave dwellers live, climbed two remote mountain ranges and returned full circle. The terrible weather in April 2019 actually mirrored Penelope’s experience in November 1961.

“I was fed up altogether with the vile weather that had been dogging my enterprise for a dozen of the 22 days I had been on my ride – yes I counted them as I stumbled along. Why bother to cross southern Spain in spring when you’d get better weather in Connemara in November? I was fed up with never having a dry garment to put on in the morning, fed up with slippery reins and miserable horses and fecking mud!”

Journey recalled

However, all along the way Karen met and spoke to people who remembered Penelope’s arrival in their tiny hamlets. Most were children then and the arrival of a foreign person, the first they had ever seen, and a woman travelling alone, is indelibly etched in their minds.

“Next I was invited to see Manolo…and his family. There I found Doña Encarna. Tiny and enchanting with sparkling brown eyes and the bright expectancy of a character from Wind in the Willows, in spite of being nearly 95, her memories of Penelope were crystal clear. She told me: “I remember her arriving, stopping at the posada and dismounting from her horse. She had a hat like yours and enormous saddle bags and she was a tall woman. Nothing ever happened here and her arrival made a huge impression on us all. I was in my thirties then. I remember how we all gathered round to welcome her. She liked it here and wherever she went she had her court of children following her’.”

Birthday celebrations

“Feeling like a spring chicken beside Doña Encarna’s 95-year-old youthful twinkle, I mentioned that it was my 67th birthday and it was decided that a photograph was essential. Encarna insisted I kept my hat on because I reminded her of Penelope in it. Then the family (seven grandchildren and their offspring) started to arrive for Sunday lunch and she leapt to her feet and trotted off to greet them. Meanwhile I started the difficult task of extricating myself from Andalusian hospitality.”

Karen brought along translations of the pages from Penelope’s book, relevant to particular villages. These were often immediately photocopied by the mayor and shared out to the locals, all keen to see if there was a mention of their parents or grandparents.

In this personal journey, Karen recounts the enormous changes that have been wrought in a relatively short time in what was once a backward and forgotten part of Europe. The thirsty olives that replaced the arable crops of 60 years ago means the troughs along the old bridle paths are often empty of water. There are virtually no farm animals, so hay and fodder was hard to come by and somewhere to leave the horses overnight was tricky.

The population is smaller because of emigration to cities for work in the 1960s and 70s and Penelope would be horrified at some of the modern buildings and the proliferation of motorised farm vehicles. However, the very real poverty of 1961 has been replaced by a tentative prosperity and Karen’s heart is warmed by the welcome she and her horses received along the way.

Penelope’s Route is published by Matador and is available to purchase on Amazon or ordered through your local bookshop