About Us | Our vision | How it all began
About Us |
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STUART ROBERT KENNEDY – a Scot, Edinburgh born and bred. My background is legal and my passions are Annette, history, food, wine, music, cycling and football. |
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ANNETTE FRIZZELL – a Dane, but a citizen of the world having lived in Newcastle, Hong Kong and Istanbul. My background was originally in arts and crafts but latterly managed a travel agency. My passions are Stuart, food, drink, cats and horticulture. |
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Our vision |
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| It's all about Spain. We had been travelling here for 12 years before we moved here and ever since that first night in Ronda we have become bigger and more committed hispano-holics. Over the period of our visits we covered a lot of the country, from the frozen-in-time beauty of Santillana del Mar on the Cantabrian coast, to the impressive walled cities of Leon, Benevento, Zamora and Avila, the magnificence of Roman Segovia and Merida, the sophisticated cool of Salamanca, the beaches, wine, art and culture of Dali and Gaudi's Catalunya, the hidden secret that is Soria, the castled splendour of the Levante and the ancient glories of Jativa and Orihuela, but our passion has always been Andalucia. | ||
It is a rich and varied place of which Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada are all well known to everybody, but just go sideways off the beaten track and you stumble over gems everywhere. |
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This then has been our experience and our only complaint would be that unless, like us, you have been lucky enough to have been befriended by native Andalucians, it can be difficult to immerse oneself in the place to the extent one would like. |
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Our hope for Casa Annette is that we can give our visitors, from whichever part of the world they come, that opportunity. We aim primarily to provide bed and breakfast accommodation in a breathtakingly beautiful part of Andalucia, which may be new to many people. We hope, however, to be able to customise your visit to your requirements and shall be happy to provide dining facilities for evening meals, packed lunches for days out walking, cycling or investigating the manifold possibilities of our rich locality. |
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If anyone wants further information about us, our bed & breakfast or the area please drop us a line. |
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How it all began |
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| ...well it started with a broken car window. In 2000 we were on a driving holiday through western Europe, literally, we took the ferry to Belgium, drove to Stuttgart to visit Annette’s daughter, then on through France and Spain for the purpose of meeting up with friends celebrating a 50th birthday on the Algarve. We were on a strict timetable with each overnight stop planned ahead, and as part of this plot we stayed overnight in Cordoba in the gloriously named but poorly appointed Hostal Baghdad in the old City wall next to The Mezquita. It was a great stop except when we awoke the next day our car had disappeared!!!! | ||
As we had parked in front of the main Police Station this was a bit of a surprise, but we ascertained from the Police that the car had been broken into, and had been taken into the Pound by way of protective custody. We retrieved the car from the Pound to find that only the rear quarter-light had been broken, and that the thieves, on getting into the boot through the fold-down rear seat, had opened Stuart’s clothes bag, seen the contents, been overwhelmed by pity, and left the scene without taking anything. |
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Unfortunately our car is a Honda and these are a bit thin on the ground in sunny Spain and so we had to go to Sevilla to get the window replaced. This threw our carefully planned itinerary out of the window and Stuart as navigator was given the task of finding a stop-gap solution for one evening. One blind-fold and a pin later we were navigating to a small town 80 kilometres north-west of Sevilla en route to the Portuguese border, in a national nature reserve, called Aracena. One visit and we were hooked. |
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Over the next four years we revisited the area at least once a year and when two and a half years ago Annette’s employers went bust and she was unable to get another job, we began to speculate idly that a move to Andalucia could, at some point be an attractive option to consider. Due entirely to Annette’s efforts we have over the years been assisted by a number of Estate Agents based in the town. Latterly we have been in the hands of Siobhan and Juan at PROSA We happened to mention our pipedream to them and bewailed the fact that none of the properties which we had looked at seemed to fit our requirements... very small price tag, enough bedrooms to run a business from, and a nice bit of garden to grow our vegetables |
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Apparently if we were prepared to pass on the garden, then they had a place that we just had to see... they were right !! One visit and two months of negotiations later we were the proud (and poverty-stricken) owners of Calle Espana 8, Cortelazor, 21208, Aracena, (Huelva). |
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