Wealden Times | WT177 | November 2016 | Christmas Gifts supplement inside

Above: All the walls in the house are lime plastered, so the paint used had to be ‘breathable’. The colour in the bathroom is Chappell
Green by Farrow & Ball. The cream paint used throughout the house is Marbles by Earthborn. The plant is a peace lily
work up the courage, that’s exactly what she did.
“I sold everything I owned and moved to Greece for six
months. I then visited a friend in Marbella, but there was
too much concrete... So I followed her advice and headed
to Tarifa on the Costa de la Luz, Spain’s Atlantic coast.”
As soon as she saw the vast and virtually empty beaches
of Andalucia, she knew this was going to be her home.
Having worked hard for many years and then selling
everything she owned, Christine was able to do “not
very much”, as she puts it. In fact, she studied Spanish
and Arabic and organic gardening, as well as starting
to write with the encouragement of a friend. It was this
friend who not only encouraged her to follow her creative
side through writing but also to try interior design.
“James’s family owned various hotels,
including the Hurricane Hotel in Tarifa,
where I stayed for a couple of months.”
In 2007 James first asked Christine to redo the restaurant
and lounge in another hotel, the Punta Sur, and the family
were so pleased with her work that they then asked her
to transform the hotel’s stable block into luxury suites.
“Once we agreed basic plans they headed off to Val d’Isere
and left me to it,” laughs Christine. To her genuine surprise,
the project was a huge success: “I shocked the pants off
myself!” she says, with a Londoner’s lack of pretence.
After doing a host of other projects for the
family, and after more than 10 years in Spain,
Christine decided it was time to return home.
“There were three reasons really,” she says. “I needed to
work again, I missed trees and I missed speaking my own
language. My colloquialisms were lost on the Spanish!”
It was a month-long visit with another of her friends, this
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