My Dream of Living (in a Cave) in Rural Spain

In August 2011 my (ex)wife and I rented a villa in Albox, (Almeria Province) for a holiday and were so taken by the area, the landscape, the people, the food and of course the sun that we thought it would be a lovely place to try and buy a property. At this point we were just toying with the idea of being able to getaway on family holidays as and when we fancied it and eventually have the scope to retire to this beautiful part of the world.
The whole idea of a more laid back pace of life (not that I mind working) combined with extra sunshine and nice cold lager had us sold on this idea from the off…
When we returned to England I got on the case figuring out what we wanted from a property, where ideally we would have liked it to be situated and of course how we could possibly afford to purchase one.
Initially we looked at villas and townhouses but villas (British owned ones in particular) seem to mostly be like miniature mansions with delusions of grandeur which didn’t and still don't interest me. We also wanted to get away from the larger towns but be able to pop to a shop or a bar if we fancied it. So we started looking into village properties with at least 3 bedrooms and a little outside space for the possibility of having a splash pool installed in the future. Having rented a villa that had air conditioning we had also decided we would definitely need that on the list. After a few weeks of Googling and trawling Estate Agents websites I found a couple of companies that specialised in Cave Houses and after my initial shock they started looking pretty interesting because although they all have similarities (they are underground etc) no two are identical.
Some of the selling points for me were: Cave Houses generally maintain a temperature of around 16ºC thus eliminating the need for air conditioning although they do want heating in the winter. In the past as families grew they would just dig out another room, I must add that I haven’t tried this. Although they are dug out of the ground caves have electric and running water (well some do as I found out later).
Refurbished caves will often have a fascia at the front that makes them look more like a house than a cave. They vary in style and state from totally refurbished with swimming pools, extensions and more than one floor to a basic “Hole in The Hill”.

A holiday in March 2012 to the Costa Tropical convinced us that although it was lovely we’d rather be in a quieter more rural location. So in August 2012 we rented a Cave House in Feunte Nueva (Granada Province) with the idea of having a look around Cave Country. The cave we rented was lovely but it was a bit of an eye opener sleeping in complete darkness and missing a thunderstorm because we hadn’t heard it.
One day we had a look around in Galera and purely by accident found the office of one of the Estate Agents whose site I had been trawling on and off for the past year Spanish Inland Properties, we popped in, introduced ourselves and arranged to be shown a few caves that were within our budget the following day………….……..