Stephanie de Leng is a photographer and blogger, and spends more and more of her time off-grid up the Maestrat in Spain. More Info
May 11, 2012
The last time I drove here from Liverpool it cost me 3 nerve-wracking days in driving snow and sleet, and 600€ all in. I don’t know what irked more – the inflated petrol bills and motorway tolls, nasty stopover hotels or the sheer awfulness of the over-priced food in chains like Buffalo Grill. In the old days a drive to… Read more…
April 30, 2012
Ever since my father sent me a postcard from Paris of Claude Monet’s Poppies at Argenteuil I have been in love with poppies. I was five then. Nothing in the world looked as romantic to me and I still feel the same. I think that it is the red in a swirling sea of green, or is it the green… Read more…
April 28, 2012
SCROLL DOWN FOR ALL UPDATES! Along with many other foreigners, the fact that a new airport was being built in the province of Castellon helped persuade me to buy my finca. Would I have bought it without this carrot, I wonder? That is an impossible question to answer. Certainly not everyone was in its favour, least of all the… Read more…
April 19, 2012
Following the success of last year’s exhibition with local iron artist Miguel Belles, we were asked to organise three more exhibitions this year, two of which are up and running already. Unfortunately I have not been around as much as I would like and so had to sort of leave exhibition 1 to Miguel. Sort of totally. Being a control… Read more…
April 9, 2012
I took this photo four years ago with a Nikon D40x, at the time a pretty decent amateur SLR. Nowadays the technology has advanced so much that it would be unusable for me, besides this was just a jpeg. Still, sometimes a photo is powerful enough to excuse technical imperfection, and furthermore, when I look back through my many photo… Read more…
March 18, 2012
El Maestrat is full of characters that have wandered in from somewhere else. There is not only your collection of English, Dutch and German ex-pats, but also a wider collection of Spanish ones. Spanish I hear you say? Yes, Spanish, for Spain, though supposedly united under Franco, in essence is still a collection of countries with a collection of diverse… Read more…
March 7, 2012
Now that the cold spell seems truly over, I remember why I love this time of the year so much. The light is clear and crisp, with that “born again” quality that makes images sharp and colours fresh and vibrant as if in gratitude for the easing of the bitter cold. The almond trees are in full bloom, enchanting with… Read more…
February 27, 2012
Just as things here in Castellon were getting under control and the weather promised to improve, I received an urgent phone call from France where I have a holiday rental property. “Stephanie, Stephanie, you have to come here, you have to come here now!” It was my houseman and the panic in his voice was unmistakable. This is not the… Read more…
February 12, 2012
Last year, no, the year before last, in the summer, no in November, I was asked to take publicity photos at the gallery Col Blanc for the private view of Javier Mariscal’s “etchings”. I had no idea who Mariscal was and I was not too fussed about the sketches. They just seemed a little too simplistic for me, almost… Read more…
February 6, 2012
This weekend I was cold. I am sure everyone was cold, but I was up a mountain with the winds howling around me at 70 miles per hour and wood flying all over the place, banging against the trees and oak shrub land, and occasionally the back of my cabin. I also witnessed a medley of bottles fly past my… Read more…
