Laura explains that she and Peter moved up to their current base in Extremadura’s Herrera del Duque after her bar in Benalmadena — on the Costa del Sol — was robbed twice within a few months, the first time by two men armed with guns and the second time by a man with an axe. But she sometimes finds the area too quiet, and the dyed-pink ends of her hair attract stares. She adds: “When I walked into a bar on my own, the other women in the village would not look at me for two weeks.”

At the other end of the scale from the Jasmines is the Lamps, on one of Esparragosa de Lares’ side streets, at £36,000. It is a rickety hovel over two storeys, with three very small bedrooms. Opening directly on to the street, its floors slope sharply, there are large holes in the roof and a stone outdoor lavatory is parked bang in the middle of the overgrown garden. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but it could work for the budget buyer happy to renovate.

Driving west from Guadalupe through rolling hills and dehesa — the grassland dotted with oaks that is characteristic of the local scenery — takes you to the stunning walled cities of Trujillo and Caceres, where many of the iron-willed conquistadors grew up before launching themselves across the Atlantic and at the Indians and jungles of central and south America.

Further west, just short of the border with Portugal, I find Gill O’Brien, a 43-year-old from Croydon. She has swapped life as an accounts executive for a rustic existence in the rocky hills outside the small town of Valencia de Alcantara.

After putting their seven-bedroom house in Croydon on the market for £700,000, Gill and her husband, Chris, a 42-year-old builder, paid £107,000 for a four-bedroom house on a six-acre plot, with potential for developing unrenovated sections of the house into bedrooms or a restaurant. The surrounding landscape is like a hotter, and emptier, version of North Yorkshire.

“It’s beautiful,” says O’Brien. “Our nearest neighbours are 300 metres away: they are Spanish — old Jose and young Jose — and I think we are the first English people to have moved round here. We love walking in the peace and quiet ... I’ve lived in Croydon all my life. All day long you’ve got sirens, and we were sick of it. Here, it’s like going back 40 years.”

Not far from her house, up a forbidding hill strewn with giant boulders, there is a tumbledown, three-bedroom stone cottage, with only the remnants of a roof, on 12 acres. It’s completely cut off from civilisation — electricity only arrived in the vicinity in the last three months — and the cork oaks in the overgrown garden are charred from a forest fire.

You’d need a lot of energy and self-reliance to make a home of the old cottage, but if you truly want to get away from it all, are on a tight budget and made of tough stuff, this is the place. A local agent tells me that a folk violinist from London recently paid £40,000 for it. A similar property in Devon, if renovated, could cost £250,000.

For those without the appetite for a serious renovation, it’s worth nosing out the homes of professionals for sale. In the nearby village of Las Casinas, a smart house, belonging to a doctor, on 30,000sq m with four bedrooms — plus potential for three more — a well-kept garden and a pool, has been marketed at £157,000.

Over in the northeast of Extremadura are the lush wooded valleys around Jaraiz de la Vera. The climate is cooler here — and with a whole empire to choose from, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor who died in 1558, chose to retire to a palace in the area. John Major is also fond of it.

Known as “La Vera”, it has more infrastructure than many other parts of Extremadura and is closer to Madrid airport, making it ideal for those wanting a less frontiersman existence. It is here, on the outskirts of Losar de la Vera, that Charles Barker, a 72-year-old retired executive with a shoe-making company, and Celia Molina are selling their five-bedroom home.

Built in 1981, with a pool and barbecue terrace, it would probably cost nearly £700,000 on one of the Costas, but they are planning to put it on the market for about £225,000.

The pair, who have lived for many years in Spain, largely on the Costas, are moving for family reasons, but sum up the attractions of Losar de la Vera compared to, say, Marbella. Barker says: “It’s much better — there’s no crime, there’s no parking problems or pollution.”

One of the principal problems with Extremadura is airport access, as the regional airport, Badajoz, does not take flights from Britain, so a car journey of two-and-a-half to three hours from Madrid, Seville or Lisbon is the norm. But the area has been a significant beneficiary of EU development money, meaning that fast new motorways are springing up.

There are certainly fewer English-speaking estate agents here than on the Costas. However, if the pattern of other inland areas of Spain is any guide, unqualified and unscrupulous British and northern European “estate agents” have a tendency to pop up in rural Spain as soon as interested buyers appear. So it’s important to proceed with caution and proper legal advice — especially as title deeds and land registry in rural areas can be anything but straightforward.

It’s possible to live much more cheaply than in more developed parts of Spain, and there are myriad other benefits. It is an area renowned throughout Europe for its birdlife, where storks live in huge nests on chimneys and medieval towers. The stars shine more brightly, too. Sandra Haynes, with her telescope, gets to see more stars than she ever did in Leeds or Castell del Ferro: there’s a lot less light pollution than on the coast. The night skies of the Costas may be illuminated by neon, but in Extremadura, Spain’s Wild West, they are still clear.

For more information about the region, visit www.extremaduravista.com/ingles/menu.htm

ON THE MARKET

Near Herrera del Duque, a 146-acre estate with a three-bed house and a two-bed one, with pool and stables. For sale at £910,000 with Country Estate Spain, 00 34 924 642 222, www.countryestatespain.com

This six-bedroom house, near Villafranca de los Barros, has a pool and a garden with a stream running through it. It is for sale at £125,000 with Kay Continental, 00 34 924 551 166, www.kaycontinental.com

In El Raposo, two miles from Zafra, this house has three double bedrooms (with potential for more upstairs) and a terraced patio with a pool for £109,000. With Kay Continental, 00 34 924 551 166, www.kaycontinental.com

This house in Herrera del Duque, close to a lake, needs a new kitchen and bathroom. It also has a large garden. For £43,000 with Country Estate Spain, 00 34 924 642 222, www.countryestatespain.com

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