Catalonia, Northern Spain: Building a dream

By Jane Slade
Posted: 2010/04/28

JANE SLADE visits a novelist's private estate in forested Catalonia

Northern Spain is another country compared to the congested Costa del Sol. In Catalonia you can breathe. the scenery  is lush and undulating and speckled with medieval villages and the  peaks of the Pyrenees. It is hardly surprising that artist Salvador Dali was inspired by the area.

Can Jan is the 12-bedroomed home of novelist Guy Kennaway. Dali lived in Cadaques, just an hour away. Guy bought the property 10 years ago when it was a leaky, four-bedroomed hunting lodge with a cesspit in the 500-acre grounds. he paid E400,000 (£346,000) and spent E1.6million (£1.4million) restoring it and then unveiled the finished article a few months ago.

"It was more of a radical rebuild," he says. he raised the roof by  four feet to add another floor, built a huge outdoor pool, added a sauna and steam room, two kitchens (one for entertaining)  and an upstairs sitting room with one end open to the elements.

"I've always loved doing up houses. My mother was one of the first to do a barn conversion in the Sixties.  It is in the english genes to give houses another 200 years of life."

Guy, 52, has written four comic novels and is married to Littlewoods Pools heiress Portia Moores. he once shared a flat with up and coming artist Jay Jopling so he is plugged into the Brit Art scene. he counts tracey emin among his close friends. Indeed she has stayed at Can Jan. Posters of her exhibitions are displayed on the walls as are photographic works by artist Marc Quinn, most famous for his disabled woman sculpture, Alison Lapper Pregnant, on the fourth plinth in London's trafalgar Square.

"As soon as ryan Air announced  in 2000 they were going to fly into Girona, an opportunity beckoned," Guy says. "there is not a tradition of the english invading northern Spain as much as the south so there is no rapacious development. It is more rural with fewer new builds."

There are sandy beaches and pebbly coves within an hour's drive  as well as Barcelona two hours away by train and the charming village  of Besalu with its sausage museum a short drive away.

Can Jan (it means house of Jan in Catalan) sits in a forested valley with a waterfall and river running by at the end of a one-mile driveway.

"It is very different when you do up a house to rent out," says Guy. "For instance, to access one bedroom you have to walk through the bathroom first, which may be a problem in your own house but not in one you are offering as a holiday villa."

Guy oversaw the build and decided against typical curly, wrought iron balustrades or incorporating any  of the hunting horns, manacles, old firearms and stuffed boar heads he found on the site. he wanted a simple, clean, farmhouse-style design. Portia designed the interior, which is more rustic and comfortable than opulent.

"You can make as much noise as you like here and no one will hear you," he says. "I have terraced some of the garden but kept it rural." rentals tend to come from large families or new Age-types who run courses (it can sleep 24). "We even had some Arabs from Qatar recently who rather alarmed the locals when they descended on the village café in their flowing robes."

Can Jan costs E40,000 (£35,000)  a year to run, which includes the salaries of a couple who manage the property and live in a three-bedroomed cottage in the grounds but Guy looks likely to make a good profit from his weekly rent of E5,000 (£4,300), which rises to E8,000 (£7,000) in high season.

"Can Jan is the house in the clearing in the forest," he declares. "It is worth about E4million but its value is its location. I'm not trying to hack out a new tourist frontier but just have a property where there is plenty for people to  do, is not overcrowded and would  also be a great place to entertain  my friends."
 
• MORE INFORMATION:  canjan.co.uk