Guy Hunter Watts: A tribute

'He loved the villages and the villages loved him back'

Guy settled in Andalusia over 30 years ago and became one of its leading students and exponents. Already a man of the mountains, he explored the Sierras and villages, the restaurants and hotels. He wrote visiting guides for Sawdays and online for iEscape as well as local press. His walking guides, initially published by Santana in Spain came to Cicerone over the last 10-12 years and were able to achieve a much wider audience.

Guy ran walking and other tours throughout the region and was known to many as their first introduction to Andalusia. He ‘collected’ people and had a vast network of contacts, friends and admirers throughout the region and further afield.

Before settling in Spain Guy travelled the world extensively, including South America, Nepal and Central Asia, and after completing a languages degree, relocated to the Spain he had come to love.

Jonathan Williams, Cicerone director, said that ‘Guy was a highly professional author. He knew his subject and - the mountains and trails of Andalusia - intimately. He wrote beautifully, his map making was outstanding, and he was a fine photographer. We could debate plans and agree on what needed to be done and Guy would execute things wonderfully. We greatly admired his knowledge and his ability to communicate his grand passion’.

‘We walked with Guy for several days on his Andalusian Coast to Coast route from Nerva, to Ronda and then Tarifa. His love for and deep knowledge of the land and its people shone through in everything he said and did.’

His old friend Andy Waterer reflected that, ‘he loved the villages and the villages loved him back. He was a gifted storyteller and natural leader with a spiritual reverence for the mountains’

Guy died in May after a cycling accident on the mountain roads near his home in Montecorto near Ronda. He will be greatly missed by his many friends, colleagues and lovers of Andalusia, but his spirit lives on in the mountains he loved.