"Annie has only been stung once by a scorpion, admittedly in bed,” says Chris Stewart, a smidgen defensively, about the home he has shared with his wife, Ana, for the past two decades in the Alpujarran hills of southern Spain. Scorpions might not loom large in most people’s idea of heaven, but they’re a fact of life here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Stewart, 58, isn’t merely living the Spanish dream, he wrote the script. His three books about life as an Englishman in rural Andalusia — Driving Over Lemons, A Parrot in the Pepper Tree, and The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society — have sold more than 1m copies in the UK, inspiring countless Britons to try a new life abroad. He has done for southern Spain what Peter Mayle did before him for Provence.

Head inland towards Granada from the Costa del Sol, leaving behind the coast’s ugly developments and sweaty crowds, and as the snow-capped peaks come into view, you enter a different world of dramatic countryside and empty space. In spring, it is lush with flowers and fragrant bushes, but for the rest of the year it can be quite desolate, which appeals to Stewart. “There is so little wild and savage terrain left in Europe, and here we have it,” he says.

It has little in common with the British ghettos of the Costa del Sol.

“Places like Marbella and Puerto Banus are Sodom and Gomorrah to us,” he says. The area is not entirely devoid of reminders of home, however. One of the neighbours is Margaret “four homes” Moran, the disgraced MP for Luton South, who faced questions earlier this month after it was alleged that she had pinned up notes written on House of Commons notepaper warning neighbours off her land as part of a dispute over access.

The Stewarts’ 70-hectare farm — 68 of which is classified “savage terrain” — is half an hour down a dirt track outside the town of Orgiva, nestled in the fork between two rivers that gush with ice-cold snow melt in the spring. Because of the river, their farm, called El Valero, is inaccessible by car for much of the year, and can be reached only by a rickety old footbridge. “Since we’re on the wrong side of the river, few people come this way,” Stewart says. “It’s what makes this place so special.” He keeps an old jalopy by the house to make life easier.

Here he and Ana, 53, live in their own secret garden, which they share with seven cats, a dog, and a misanthropic bird that inspired his book A Parrot in the Pepper Tree. “The parrot hates everyone except Annie, but especially me,” Stewart says. The couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Chloë, born two years after they arrived, has just left home to go to the University of Granada.

“You need fortitude, and a certain type of woman, to live here,” says Stewart. The pair have slowly been improving the property since they arrived in 1988 as “refugees from Thatcher’s Britain”. The couple bought it off an ill-natured old peasant who stayed on for months, providing rich material for Stewart’s books on life among Alpujarran shepherds and eccentric expats. It is now a model organic farm, specialising in sheep, olive and citrus, and is almost self-sufficient. “Annie grows, I cook. Producing our own food is almost enough reward in itself,” says Stewart, who once did a French cooking course, and who seems to have done everything in life except wear a suit and work in an office.

Their homestead is made up of two buildings built in classic Alpujarran style, where the previous owner used to live in squalid conditions with his livestock. The couple have turned one of the buildings into their living quarters, simple yet comfortable and charming, with a Moroccan touch. The other building contains guest, utility and store rooms, the library and “the erstwhile rat room”. “We didn’t always have seven cats,” says Stewart. “It’s not called the erstwhile rat room for nothing.”

Early on in their time at El Valero, the couple were given planning permission to do whatever they liked, provided they respected local building and architectural traditions. Alpujarran houses are whitewashed affairs, built on one level with thick stone walls and low, flat roofs, using natural, local material like launa mud, esparto grass and roof beams from eucalyptus trees. One feature that isn’t typical is a cupola they have built above the larder, just off the kitchen. “In a way, it is a return to the architectural roots of the region, as domes are part of Islamic architecture, and the Moors ruled here for hundreds of years,” Stewart says. “I can’t explain why, but it keeps the larder very cool.”

The couple, originally from Horsham, West Sussex, have transformed the place from a rough peasant dwelling into a home of character, doing much of the building work themselves. What was a filthy storeroom is now a beautiful library, where a simple desk and chair stand in front of a window with a dramatic view of the valley. It is here that Stewart works on his books.

At the bottom of the lush and exotic garden is an “eco” swimming pool that is his pride and joy. It uses fresh water, filtered by a series of pools containing plants that remove waste naturally. The water is circulated by a huge water wheel driven by solar power. “We used to swim in the river, which was romantic, except for the snakes, wasps and horseflies,” he says. “The pool is less romantic, but more pleasant, and once you have swum in it, you’re done with chlorine pools for ever. It went over budget by €10,000, but it was worth it.”

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