Travel: Sun Park, Lanzarote
Communes held a fascination for some of us in the early 1970s. As an idealistic nineteen-year old with A-levels too wretched for me to apply to a decent university, I heard of one in Arizona called The Farm and was on my way there before being detained by journalism.
It was a place where like-minded young people pooled their skills, helped each other out and strived to live happily ever after. So, it’s strangely fitting, more than forty years later, to spend a few days in a community called Sun Park in Lanzarote where like-minded older people (fifty upwards) pool their skills, help each other out and strive to live happily ever after.
Some are here permanently, others for months or weeks on end, and in many cases it’s been the difference between a retirement that marks the beginning of the end and one that, to borrow Deepak Chopra’s phrase, proves how it’s ‘never too late to create a new beginning’.
Sun Park, just outside Playa Blanca in the south of the island, where the brown, lunar landscape gives way to the Atlantic Ocean, is not a care home (although a lot of caring seems to go on) and it’s not a hotel where things get done for you to such an extent that you become a passive observer rather than an active participator.
Rather, it’s a self-governing community that its founders think could be a blueprint for something bigger. ‘Retirement should be a time to take up new interests, make new friends and feel more valued,’ says Gil Summers, who lived in a kibbutz in Israel before moving to London. ‘Instead, the reverse is often the case. For some older people, where they live becomes a prison in retirement rather than a home.’
Summers and his long-term, Tenerifeborn partner, Patricia Dominguez, bought Sun Park in 2011. At the time, it was a rundown, shabby family hotel, with some 200 self-catering apartments built around two large swimming pools and various public spaces that had seen better days.
What’s intriguing is that it is still
‘The Marigold Bar works on an honesty system – £6 for a bottle of decent rioja’
variously rundown and shabby, but what it lacks in luxury (and there are ambitious plans for the future) is made up for by a sense of community and a camaraderie that has inspired some people to cash in their assets back home and live here full-time.
Hugh Thomas, 66, is one of them. Originally from Dublin but later living in the Midlands, where he ran a painter/ decorator business, Hugh came to Sun Park two years ago for what’s called a ‘two-week taster’ (his wife died seven years ago) and, within five days, had decided to sell his Birmingham home and was signing up for a three-year stay.
What’s more, after falling in love with Sun Park, he then fell in love with an Irish woman who was also on a taster – and now they share apartment 301, paying around £250 a week.
‘I go back to see my son and grandchildren but this is my home,’ says Hugh. ‘It’s like being in a working village and it reminds me of growing up in Ireland where people didn’t bother to lock their doors and where everyone talked to each other. We all use our skills to keep the place going, and it seems to work perfectly well. I feel energised by the whole experience.’
So does the writer and former solicitor Adam J Jackson, who was so taken by his experience at Sun Park that he’s written a book about it called The Ethos, which explores how ‘the later years of life can be richer, more fulfilled and more rewarding than any others’.
That’s certainly the case for Marion Ray, 62, who rents her apartment at Sun Park all year round but goes back and forth to her small flat in York. She greets me near the entrance as I arrive (there is no official reception) and gives me a quick tour.
‘It’s all about treating each other with respect and doing what you can to help out,’ says Marion, who used to run her own IT business in Manchester. ‘There’s a barbecue tonight which you might enjoy. It’s ten euros and any profit will go towards some improvements.’
But who decides what those improvements should be? There must, surely, be some basic rules; some hierarchy?
It turns out that, once a month, there’s a community meeting, chaired each time by a different volunteer, during which ideas are discussed and, if necessary, voted on. Beyond that, there is no management to rail against, no committees and no minutes of meetings.
As a result, it seems to be a prime example of less government being far more effective than layers of turgid Eu-type bureaucracy and officious rules and regulations. If there’s painting work to be done, a group of volunteers will do it.
Perhaps it’s a case of people at Sun Park being too busy to quibble. There’s certainly a lot on offer, almost all of it dreamed up by residents. Message boards in the main foyer are divided up into days of the week and hours of the day. There’s everything from t’ai chi and line dancing to Spanish for beginners to mindfulness, art classes and ‘chair yoga’.
‘Katrina – you left your Spanish notebook in the class. Collect from Janet in 354,’ reads a notice on a general noticeboard. ‘Anyone who fancies a game of bridge this evening at 6pm, meet downstairs in the bar,’ says another.
The Marigold Bar (yes, so-named after the Marigold Hotel movies starring Judi Dench et al) works on an honesty system (£6 for a bottle of decent rioja); there are two maintenance men to sort out anything wonky in your flat, and a convenience store is housed in the basement, run independently by an island local.
One married couple tells me how, back home in Bexley, they get on each other’s nerves and feel constantly joined at the hip, whereas here they go off pursuing various activities and meet up as and when. Living collectively has, conversely, given them greater independence.
At the barbecue (‘featuring top-class entertainment by Angie… bring your own plate and cutlery’), I find myself sitting next to a psychologist from Barnes called Dr Bryan Tully, who’s here as part of his research into ageing as a matter not merely of getting old but of consciously growing old.
‘What’s struck me is that, even though the accommodation is far from five-star, it is outweighed by the friendships that are formed and the opportunities to try out new things at a time when people traditionally tend to do less rather than more,’ he says.
The weather helps, of course. Frankly, I would find the Saturday night barbecues wearisome and Angie’s cheesy covers infuriating, but we’ll be seeing far more enterprises such as Sun Park in the future.
Finding yourself in old age clearly has its attractions.
Adam J Jackson’s ‘The Ethos – Because life is better together’ is published by Third Age Publishing (£12.99)