Exploring Portugal north to south – part 2

Gateway to the Serra da Estrela (mountain range of the stars)

Day 5: After the cultural delights of Lamego, it was time to head into the Serra da Estrela natural park, a mountain range with the highest peak in Portugal at 1991m (compared to Snowdon at 1090m and Monchique in the Algarve at 902m) which gets some snow in winter. There are roads criss-crossing the range so is fairly accessible and I believe you can drive to the highest point.

Dartmoor tor on steroids

Town of Manteigas

Poço do inferno

My route took me up past the hillside town of Gouveia and over the flatter top of the mountain with its massive boulder outcrops like the tors of Dartmoor. Then the road twisted steeply down through woodland to Manteigas on the best switch-backs yet – at one point I met a coach which must have taken up the whole road on the bends – not a pleasurable journey for the travel-sick!

My walk for the day was a tourist hotspot above Manteigas called Poço do Inferno, where a stream falls steeply through a series of gullies and pools, much like Devils Bridge in mid Wales (but free). The road up there was barely wide enough for cars to pass with steep drops and no crash barriers (and I’m not really spooked by this normally) but considering it’s a destination for visitors, I was glad not to meet many cars on the way back, though at least being a right-hand drive you can see the edge!

The walk was enjoyable but started as a scramble around the crags – which is not how it was described and I met one terrified pair of elderly people creeping back. That day it was also part of the route for an adventure trekking competition which seemed to be called the ‘Manteigas 15000’ (according to their t-shirts) so possibly they were doing 15000m of climb which would be quite feasible if you started at the valley bottom.

Last year (2022) the Serra da Estrela suffered huge summer fires and driving through, the extent of the damage became clear. This photo shows just one of many hillsides where pine trunks stood blackened on bare slopes. If you look at the photo above of Manteigas you can see the hillside up the valley is devastated as well. That valley was the route I was planning to drive south through but it was closed for some reason (a jaunty electronic sign board with a casual barrier) so instead I headed out on the north road, looking for somewhere to sleep. I tried Belmonte, which was traditionally known as a Jewish enclave but Park4night let me down and the motorhome stop literally was a car park and didn’t feel right, so I resisted the urge to drive on and actually did the sensible thing and turned around to find a proper campsite.

Vast areas of hillside burnt out

Day 6: and on to Fundão – cherry country and luckily for me it was full-on cherry season. As I drove through Alcongosta (which seems to be cherry central) I passed umpteen homes with ‘Cereja’ signs and ladies sitting in garages with boxes of cherries to sell. The walk of the day was on Gardunha mountain, one side of which was full of cherry groves with the Estrella backdrop and the other more Mediterranean arid vegetation and views over the plains. Despite being labelled a biodiversity hotspot it was a disappointing walk on hot tracks but not a bad place for lunch along with the hang gliders, fire watch tower and swallowtails.

Hillside filled with cherry trees

Gardunha mountain

Sustained by the cherries, I headed east towards the hill village of Monsanto, labelled the most Portuguese village and featured in the latest House of Dragons series (apparently). I’ve seen a few fortified villages but had always avoided Monsanto, partly because it’s name is associated in my head with nasty chemicals but also because it’s a tourist hotspot. However my Portuguese neighbours had visited recently and I thought it could be a topic of conversation (ha ha). Although it was a quick visit I can see why people go there – it’s quaint, but the houses all have the slightly incongruous mod cons. It wasn’t as quick a visit as I’d planned because someone parked so I couldn’t extract myself, though luckily I had a wood-fired pizza to eat to pass the time.

The campsite for the night was by a lake near Idanha-a-nova, an area I’d been curious to see as there is a major music festival there in the summer. From the top of Monsanto, the lake and its surrounds looked quite arid (especially with the current drought) but I found it to be the most magical place: a basin with open woodland, scrub and vegetated shores surrounding the water.

Monsanto

Yes those are pigs!

Day 7: the campsite was a huge municipal affair with tennis courts, bar, swimming pool and room for 2000 people but out of season it was fairly empty. Several of the pitches were established summer homes with caravans, makeshift awnings, washing lines and even plants. It reminded me of the campsite where my parents used to ‘live’ before their house was built, which was full of Europeans who’d come to spend the autumn, winter and spring in warmer climes. They became my parents friends and when we were clearing out my Dad’s cellar I’m sure a lot of the junk stored was theirs.

My morning walk took me along the peaceful shores of the lake. Further round I came upon a rocky inlet shrouded in bushes with some stones dotted in otter spraint. I could hear frogs churring and saw two terrapins hauled out onto flat boulders…and then I saw a trail of bubbles in the pool. As I watched the bubbles go around the boulders I suddenly saw an otter’s head peering round a rock at me before dropping back into the water. Magical. I imagine it was planning to leave another spraint if I hadn’t have been in the way. I headed back along the lake and sat on another spraint-studded rock with my binoculars, watching the bubbles circle round, probably two youngsters.

Dianthus

Otter pool

Red striped oil beetle

Finally it was time to head for the Algarve, having already been away longer than I planned (but did it matter? No!). Rather than take the winding N2 again down to Sao Bras (leaving the bends to the motorbikes this time) I took the slightly straighter route down the Spanish border towards Mertola and the Guadiana river. On the way I spotted the best sign of the holiday – I was passing through Iberian lynx country! This is a reintroduction location and their biggest enemy now is traffic. I thought my luck might be in having seen an otter earlier, but no. I’ll save that experience for the next trip.

Fencing against traffic-vulnerable lynx

Exploring Portugal north to south (part 1)

Serra da Estrela from the south

Day 1 of the return

It was raining when I left Cognac so I took the back roads down towards the Spanish border, through the Bordeaux wine region with its picturesque villages and vineyards and then Les Landes with its timber framed houses and hectares of pine plantations. Interspersed with the plantations were vast, open and flat irrigated fields with what looked like maize just beginning to grow.

I reached the south-west coast of France north of Biarrritz, at Mimizan, and was first confronted by a paper mill (I thought at first glance that the big piles were sand) but eventually found my way through a maze of suburban beach houses to the long sandy beach and turbulent sea. After enjoying the salty air and a brief paddle, I carried on down the coast and slept at a leafy farm campsite, fully appreciating the luxury of so much more space in the car!

Paper mill

Day 2: After wandering around the harbour at Cap Breton it was time to hit the motorway across northern Spain. The drive down through the long tunnels, steep hillsides and rocky outcrops of the Basque was more enjoyable the second time (yet already familiar) but before long it was time to cross the plains to Vitoria, Burgos, Valladolid, and Zamora – already too familiar and more tedious.

I was planning to cross the border further north at the Portuguese town of Bragança but it was getting late so I turned off aiming again for Miranda do Douro. Unfortunately it was the wrong junction but it did signpost a miradouro over a beautiful reservoir and an ideal place to spend the night. Really peaceful with birds and butterflies and just what I needed to find after the tedious drive.

Duero (Douro) reservoir

Day 3: across the Douro river again into Portugal and then north towards Bragança where I drove round and round trying to find a non-motorway route out and into the Montesinho natural park. Tolls in Portugal are tricky for non-Portuguese registered cars as some are electronic and you have to go to a post office to pay the toll five days later unless you have linked your bank account. I have now discovered other ways to pre-pay but they are still hassle I’m keen to avoid…

It was spring and beautiful in the Montesinho with wooded hills, deep river valleys and winding roads. I chose to do the Ornal walking trail near the traditional village of Vilarinho. It was the loveliest of walks along woodland tracks with little clearings, streams and meadows and lots of butterflies flitting around. It had a feeling of Wales with its slow-growing oaks covered in lichen beards – yet I must have seen ten or more species of butterfly; and although the scattered bluebells and primroses were familiar, some of the woodland flora was more Mediterranean.

Spring flowers

Like Wales

but not quite

Luckily I had my binoculars with me to see the butterflies more closely – but not my butterfly ID book or decent camera! The species I think I’ve identified include clouded yellow, brimstone, small copper, wall brown, orange tip, Spanish festoon, Queen of Spain fritillary, Provencal fritillary, a blue, marbled white of some kind, large and small whites, and a black-veined white (I turned around from trying to photograph another butterfly and it was basking at eye level right next to me – though not long enough for a photo).

Queen of Spain

Q of S Issoria lathonia

Mellicta deione? Provencal Fritillary

In 2019, Vilarinho had a visit from a brown bear from the Cantabrian mountains in Spain. The apiculturist was making the most of it in his honey branding!

Brown bear visit to Vilarinho

Interesting line in honey advertising – and also bus stop painting

The night was spent at the pretty Cepe Verde campsite, one of only a few and nearly full – I was lucky to get one of the last pitches. Portugal has recently banned wild camping, partly because of the number of European campervans that parked up for the season along beach fronts but possibly also because of the fire risk and associated complications. As a result there now seems to be a shortage of campsites to stay at and it’s wise to arrive early (a lesson not learnt!).

Day 4 saw me heading out for a new walk in much wilder upland habitat in the eastern Montesinho park. The Tresmonte trail from Gestosa was more arid with yellow broom and lavender in flower along the old trackways. Although it was windy there were stonechats and corn buntings singing and plenty of the striped Scarce Swallowtails ducking down between shrubs and the fritillaries and other butterflies marking territories along the track lower down.

This walk was cut short by a scary encounter. I spotted a guardian dog with some sheep in a meadow and took a photo but when I got to the corner there were three very large guardian dogs with big pointed teeth barking at me and determined not to let me past – or back. I had to exit quickly up the side of the hill, picking up a sheep path which took me out onto a track again. So much for admiring the guardian dogs but it did show me the positive effect of these wandering flocks on the habitat! And a vulnerability walking on my own.

Upland arid terrain

Guardian dog with sheep

Exiting rapidly up the hillside

After the walk I started on my journey south, picking up the infamous N2 at Chaves and following it down to Viseu in my attempt to avoid toll roads. The N2 runs the length of Portugal from Chaves down to Faro and is beloved by motorcyclists for its bendy route – I saw a gang of 16 and then another gang of 26 going the other way, as well as regular ones and twos. It is apparently one of only three roads globally that run the whole length of a country.

I hit Vila Real at rush hour which meant jam-packed streets but I felt pretty cool taking junctions that headed in the general direction I needed and not panicking at all. Then I was into the Douro valley which is Port wine land in a serious way, and not too far from Porto itself (via the motorway). At the bottom of the valley was the quay for river cruises on the Douro and if it hadn’t been so busy I would have stopped for a wander along the river which was huge by now. At dusk I was aiming for a campsite at Lamego which turned out to be the parking area of a grand house and was jam packed with campervans – luckily the owner took pity on me and allowed me to park my little car by her front door and duly provided some food and wine from the cafe she had opened out front. A bizarre but much appreciated experience!

Douro valley

Lamego campsite

Day 5 began with a visit to the ancient town of Lamego as recommended by the campsite host. As I walked down towards the town I came across an extraordinary historical monument stepping down the wooded hillside towards the main town. I walked up the levels towards the church at the top (the Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios) seeing only a few people who looked as if they were taking some morning exercise. Then when I reached the top I realised this was a major tourist attraction and there were coaches and tour guides everywhere! Having bought some new-season cherries from a stall and read a poem on an ancient chestnut, I soon departed.

Travelling to back to France

With the decision made to sell-up it was time for some drastic de-cluttering and downsizing! I had been gathering things for years, from furniture left at the bins to charity shop gems from the UK and additionally all the useful kitchen and workshop paraphernalia from my Dad’s house. So with the camper-car’s furniture removed I began transferring things back to the charity shops and the bins.

The decision also demanded a trip to my sister’s house in France to take personal items for safekeeping, things like battery-powered tools, favourite china and books, and a pair of ercol chairs that came from my Dad’s house and bought back memories of my temporary office during the summer of covid. Initially I was preparing to abandon Portugal entirely so the culling of junk was quite drastic, but then with the residency process seeming to progress favourably, it seemed wise to make the most of the opportunity to be in Europe for a while and perhaps buy a little place further north where it rains more and is a day closer to my sister in France. So my resolve to downsize weakened quite a lot!

I set off from the Algarve on a Friday evening hoping to get a few hours into Spain. I didn’t look at the map thinking I knew where to go, but immediately got distracted driving round an industrial estate just over the border in Spain looking for cheap petrol. Once topped up on fuel, I then did a last minute swerve off the motorway and onto a national road heading for Badajoz. Having a dislike for turning around and thinking it would be easier to find somewhere to sleep, I just kept going on the winding road amongst hill after hill of cork trees. As usual the unplanned deviation turned out to be a wonderful diversion!

I spent a bit of an uncomfortable night in a car park on the edge of a small town in Extremadura (I was still able to lie flat on the bed though – the joys of being short) and moved on early the next morning. Driving along a quiet road I suddenly saw an enormous bird of prey ahead of me so immediately pulled onto the roadside to get my binoculars out. Yes, this time I had my binoculars with me for such an occasion and I think they were Egyptian vultures hunting around the olives. There were also hoopoes, nightingales, corn buntings and warblers all singing so it was a lovely place to have a breakfast coffee. Having torn myself away to continue the journey, around the corner loomed a spectacular castle!

The rest of the journey to France was on motorways and went well so I kept on driving though it turned into a 14 hour trip with the stops. The most tiring part was traversing the lanes at dusk to the destination village near Cognac which was not uneventful. I tried my best to obey the SatNav even when the road signs said differently and it took me through narrow villages streets and along small lanes. Seconds after I passed a deer warning sign and realised it was that time of night, one jumped out from the vines and I came the closest EVER to hitting it. And then to cap it off, only 2km from home I was pulled over by the police who were breathalysing drivers. My sister tells me that in 27 years of living in the area, she has never been breathalysed and only stopped twice. All was well of course, and with a car stuffed with chairs, I hardly looked as though I was heading back from the bar though a drink was exactly what was needed on arrival!

Change of plan…

I’ve had a major change of plan…I’m selling up!

This holiday was always going to be about testing the water for living in the Eastern Algarve and my intention when I arrived was to join some clubs, get a dog, and see if Portugal would reinstate my pre-brexit residency.

Quite a lot has changed since 2015 when I bought the property. Brexit has bought big changes with additional restrictions for residency, driving, working, phones, healthcare, insurance etc. The Portuguese government has also bought in tighter rules for tourism accommodation involving more regulation – in fact they have recently decided to crack down even more, stopping new local accommodation being licensed for tourism (like AirBNB) because of the impact it is having on housing for local people.

My original plan was to split the house and run a small eco-tourism/walking business and we chose a house that would enable that to happen. I personally could live quite happily in the bit we have already renovated but I would be floating around in the completed house if I couldn’t rent part out. Plus building materials costs have gone up massively here as well as the UK, so I’m not sure I could even afford to finish it properly.

On top of that is climate change and the need to stop flying out to Algarve. I talked in the previous blog about it costing about £800 and 3-4 days to drive down – fine occasionally but most of my friends won’t have time to drive down to see me. It also struck me how dry it was when I got here compared to further north in Portugal – the flowers had mostly already dried out and it was only mid April – and too hot to walk during the day. I very soon ran out of my stored water and started using the well to water my trees. Last year my neighbours had to get connected to mains water to save their well water for their market garden – and this year looks like being another drought year.

The other headache is not being able to manage the land easily myself and needing outside assistance. Although I’d scythed most of the vegetation without too much effort, it was still a fire hazard and I was very relieved when the man came to disc the land even though I hate it being done! It also loosens up the clay soil allowing rain to permeate more easily and reduces evaporation, so there are plenty of reasons why the locals do it. I wish the man who does the work (arranged by my neighbour) had the more traditional fixed harrows which break up the surface as opposed to the discs which turn the soil (and everything in it) into a fine powder.

Scythed…

And disc-harrowed…

I came to the conclusion that it was time to sell up. The planning permission is due to come any day (how many times have I heard that?!) so it’s an ideal time for someone else to take on the project and make their mark on the interiors – you have a year in which to start the work once the license is released. I feel quite happy about the decision and the house has already had viewings though it won’t be sold until the building license comes through – I could still be here in a years time…

With the house on the market it was time to tidy up, enjoy the sunshine and wildlife – and take another trip to France with a car load to store at my sister’s house! Great to have a camper-car here!

Settling in for the holiday

Did I say that I arrived at the hovel and all was well? How soon we forget, because actually I could hardly open the door as some plaster had fallen off the ceiling…not ideal when you’re exhausted from driving down windy roads with a rapidly dropping fuel gauge. It’s not unusual for cracks or bits of coving to fall off because the house is still moving (there is a plan to address this with underpinning on the west wall but it’s waiting for the interminable planning permission to come through). But this was some of the original lime plaster that had fallen off and I have no idea what caused it! But it was soon cleared away, and life resumed.

This is where the plaster fell from – and the flower is also original.

The neighbours bought round the electricity cable and also offered me drinking water. What did strike me was how dried up the vegetation was – more so than central Portugal. Although there had been a good amount of winter rain, it had mostly fallen before Christmas and very little since. In February I’d emptied all the buckets with the expectation that they would fill again from the roof, but there was a couple of inches and no more. (A month later as I write this we are still waiting for rain.) The land hadn’t been harrowed so in the cool of a few mornings, I set about scything the grass while trying to avoid the flowers, weeding my flower beds and watering the trees with well water. I was very pleased to see that the persimmon and pomegranates had flowers on for the first time – I look forward to the fruit! The apricot disappointed as it only had one fruit again.

The neighbours had brought in a digger to remove the root plate of the oak tree so there is now space to rebuild the wall and a bit more security from fire. Another job was to sort out the wood shed so that the new logs could go inside (well those that I’d managed to split or chainsaw apart). Another pleasurable thing was putting up the old swing seat which we’d brought over from our father’s house – nice memories of swinging next to the swimming pool with him.

Also ongoing was the paperwork for my Residency application. I had got Residency before Brexit while I stayed with my father during Covid because I was living with him for more than three months. But as I’d not quite been in the country for the regulatory 6 months (my holiday flights got cancelled because of Covid) or again the following two years because of work, I wasn’t expecting that it would still be valid. I agonised a lot but felt a pre-Brexit residency was worth pursuing because of the additional freedoms it offered, plus it was unlikely that I would get the D7 (non-EU visa) because of additional post Brexit requirements, for example, needing an income.

My lawyer filled in the online form for me and sent it off and in due course an appointment came through for an immigration meeting to take my biometric data. I duly got my bank statement/proof of address/house paperwork lined up to show them and asked my neighbours to sign an ‘atestado’ to say I lived there (rather than my father’s house) which the local parish formalised with a certificate (I felt inordinately proud of it!). I found the office in Faro in good time and it’s fair to say that finding the office and then finding the right desk was the hardest part of the process. The lady checked my passport and wrote in my new address, took my photo and finger prints and told me to wait 4 days, pay the fee and then wait 2 weeks for the card to arrive in the post! No need to justify it at all!

I can’t quite finish this story because the two weeks is just up and I haven’t yet received my ID card… but I did email the Immigration department and confess that I hadn’t been in Portugal for the necessary time. They replied that they’d assessed this information and decided it was acceptable. So, we’ll see!

I worked out the rough costs of driving down to Southern Portugal.

Ferry one way – Poole to Cherbourg: £145
Tolls across France and Spain: 52 euros
Fuel from Dorset: £32 and 152 euros = approx £185
Total approximately = £375 plus going back = £751.

From Wales to Cognac was 633 miles. I failed to record the mileage when I arrived (the shock of the ceiling probably!) but approximately 1800 miles to get from Mid Wales to Espartosa. A scenic route of course.

We’d estimated that it would cost £800 to drive there and back and so it will prove to be. And that was without any accommodation costs. A lot more expensive than flying but it was always a wish to try it and I think the experience and sight-seeing was well worth it!

Heading for a new life in Portugal

Travelling down was great: the freedom, the countryside. As I headed towards the north eastern Portuguese border it was like being back in wintery Wales as the trees were still without leaves and the grass barely growing. On this plateau, cattle and sheep were grazing in a traditional pastural system amongst the trees, heathland and shallow pools, bells ringing, and I was barked at by a guardian dog when I stopped to take a picture. I also saw the biggest stork nest ever.

Huge stork nest

Extensive cattle grazing

Village cemetery

I crossed into Portugal at the town of Miranda do Douro which was perched on the edge of a steep gorge of the Douro river. Large birds of prey were circling the cliffs but unfortunately I didn’t have binoculars for a better look. From the town I followed the river south through the Douro/Duero international park which covers both Portugal and Spain. Twisting roads took me down into the deep valley and out again, seeing hillsides of scrub, vines and terraces which initially looked like natural forest. The Duero/Douro which rises in northern Spain and wanders through northern Portugal is dammed in many places for hydro and irrigation.

https://natural.pt/protected-areas/parque-natural-douro-internacional?locale=en

I was heading down the Portuguese/Spanish border towards another designated natural park, the Serra da Malcatta, which lies within a Rewilding Europe project area. On the way, driving again in boulder-filled upland scrub, I saw a flock of huge raptors wheeling up on thermals. I slammed on my brakes and had a go at photographing them – I presume they are vultures as I know they are found in this area.

https://rewildingeurope.com/landscapes/greater-coa-valley/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmZejBhC_ARIsAGhCqnedsm0fg5pSjHhbE7KOLhNlmVcAb9VF2FkDO2tQIo-VyDrB_dAcTdgaAlkvEALw_wcB

Almeida, a fortified border village

Egyptian vultures?

Following an unplanned stop at an amazing fortified town and some shopping, I finally reached the Serra da Malcata and found a motorhome area to sleep in. The next day I headed out for a walk in the winter landscape which felt a lot like Wales. I learnt that the oaks were Pyrenean or Black Oaks (Quercus pyrenaica) and they must have been the same leafless species I’d been seeing on the Spanish plateau. There were sheets of white broom in flower, as if it had grown where a fire had been in the past, a bit like gorse would do in the UK. And, also like Wales, some little pansies!

https://www.centerofportugal.com/poi/serra-da-malcata-natural-reserve#article-content

After the walk, and having extracted myself from several small village centres with cobbles and narrow streets where you had to guess which was the through road, I continued my journey south. Passing roadsides where wild lupins grew, through regenerating eucalyptus plantations (and a paper mill), across the Alentejan plains of cork oak wood pasture, down through the very winding wooded Algarvian hills on the N2 and home to my little hovel, where all was well.

Narrow streets – at least this one was one-way

The Malcata area was still very traditional

Lupins on the verge, near Penamacor

Cork oak fringing a eucalyptus plantation

Cork oak wood pasture

Travelling down through Europe – a new adventure begins Apr 2023

Building the structures

Ready to leave home

Fully packed with extras for France

A new stage of life: at the end of March 2023 my work contract finished and I was free to go! So without undue hanging around, I left Wales in my converted mini-camper car (project of the winter) and headed south. First to Dorset to catch up with one sister and friends and then onto the ferry to France. A slight hiccup at the first stage – liquid dripping from the engine area: but having established it was just puddle water and/or air con liquid and definitely not oil, onwards I drove, not without trepidation.

I am a novice at ferries and foreign motorways in a UK car (just the one earlier 2 CV trip) but actually it was fine and my head slotted straight back into it. Tolls – well, I got out the car and waved my card in the general direction of the machine. Generally I think it was OK although my bank statement shows the same toll cost twice which makes me wonder if I managed to pay twice!

Petanque with refreshments

Local river fun

Shopping on the cargo bike

First stop in France (apart from heavy traffic around Nantes) was at my other sister’s home in Cognac and I spent several enjoyable days with the family sharing their lives. This included pastis at the petanque pitch, shopping by electric bike (how it flew back up the hill), canoeing in the nearby river and an Easter egg hunt by riddles (in English though that didn’t seem to hinder the creativity of the French speakers!). Spring was in full bloom there complete with swallowtails in the garden.

Then it was time to really start the adventure heading south. I sped down through France and northern Spain, slowing up between Zamora and Salamanca where I missed a turning, and then heading off-piste in the general direction of Portugal. It was a fortuitous mistake because I really felt the frisson of excitement of ‘travelling’ again – different landscapes and the freedom of having no fixed destination – the only important thing was finding somewhere to park up and sleep before dark.

Thanks to Park4night, my first ever night in the camper was on a village motorhome stop in Bermillo do Sayago near the Portuguese border where I was the only visitor. The parking lay within an open strip of land between the village and their recreation area and had a water tap and a grey water dumping tank, all free to use. A peaceful spot with frogs croaking in the pools and the distant sound of a football being kicked around. I learnt immediately that it was too breezy to light up the stove outside (this happened several times on the trip south) so I was glad to have tested it inside before I left home. I duly put up my window shades and settled down for a reasonably comfortable night and the knowledge that my camper car worked!

Cooking inside

Camper van spot

2022 – brief but lovely visits – Autumn, Christmas and then February 2023

I returned in Autumn 2022 for a new way of living in the hovel: no more visits to my father’s house for drinking water, hot showers and washing! I was glad that we’d left the house ‘habitable’ despite the influx of additional furniture and boxes of china and tools. In fact the holiday was spent doing more sorting, and with some time having passed, I found that more could be thrown or given away to charity. Quite a therapeutic task and left no room for worrying about work in Wales.

Water came from purchased bottles and a spring-fed well up the hill that the neighbours traditionally used (there seems to be a series of them around the hill on the same contour), showers were outside with a newly-purchased mini submersible pump and shower head (one of the things I love about living at the hovel is outdoor bathing) and washing was done at the laundrette at Intermarche.

The planning license was thought to be close to being released: however new rules meant a seismic survey needed to be completed. A suitable engineer in Lisbon was identified and paid and a series of photos of the house emailed so that he could write a report from a distance….!

Christmas was a social time as my French sister and family drove down to spend a week with me and Christmas dinner was pizza in the old bread oven. We also enjoyed a variety of traditional puddings supplied by our lovely neighbours!

Having visitors meant that we did interesting things like going down a lift shaft into a working rock salt mine that was underneath the town of Loule. Unlike other caves I’ve been in, it was dry and pleasant and warm which makes for a better quality of rock salt.

We saw the excavating machine, which looked like a fist of teeth, grinding away at the sides of the caverns and the rock salt falling onto an elevator which dumped it in a trailer, to be driven away by a tractor to a processing cavern. All the machinery was bought down in pieces and reassembled in the mine, while the graded rock salt goes up to the surface in bags in a lift. The only clues in the town of the work going on 200m under your feet are two elevator shafts a kilometre apart.

A rather sad job that needed doing both for wildfire safety and for building work was taking down the holm oak tree on the north side. All cork oaks and holm oaks are protected (even the burnt ones) and any felling (or pruning, we learnt after we’d done some) needs to be licensed by the ICNF – the nature organisation. An application had been made, the tree marked and an official had visited to check and approve the felling.

The neighbour had agreed to do the felling in return for half the wood, so in February, I was out again with a friend to help with the work, which had to be done before the bird breeding season. It was done in true neighbourly fashion with little safety gear but a range of chainsaws and a lifetime of experience – and plenty of trepidation.

The first job was extracting the phone line which was running through one side of the canopy, so with Mel on the roof terrace pushing the line up, me pulling a rope that we’d attached to it and some precarious trimming of branches, it finally freed itself. Then branch by branch the tree was taken down. The final cuts on the trunk were carefully considered so that it fell perfectly between the old wall and the olive tree! Great relief for us all and no dogs squashed!

My lovely neighbours and their pack of dogs

Moving forward…March 2022

With a buyer lined up for our parents’ house, the clearance process began in earnest. Treasured furniture, photos and mementos went to France on a Xmas whistle-stop van visit and it was followed in March 2022 by a sister-hit for the last clear-out and clean. We spent the first half of the holiday camping out there with ever-reducing amenities: good furniture went to the auction house, more furniture and household items went to a charity shop and remaining items, including lots of [potentially] very useful tools and bits of wood went to the hovel.

We tucked things like the washing machine, cooker, swing seat and spare crockery into spaces where they were relatively out of the way, sorted the remaining workshop tools into the always-useful post office boxes (at least 25 years old and still going strong), swapped scavenged furniture for better furniture and generally tidied things away.

In the liveable side of the house we arranged the new furniture including a fridge (but no power), a big larder cupboard, and some chairs. We organised a post box and a new address – a convoluted process marred by mis-translation which eventually seemed quite simple – buy a box, get a number from the local post office and put it up alongside the others. The proof of success will be the arrival of post! We spent the last few days of the holiday living there and it felt good.

From here-on, a new stage begins. The hovel has to be self sufficient and properly home, without our father’s house with its hot showers, running water, and company to fall back on. I still have a car but no garage and I need someone to take it for its IMT/MOT. I have a post box and address but have to rely on someone else to check it and deal with what arrives. I have a job in Wales with limited holidays and Brexit to navigate. And still no planning permission. Yes, now it’s real!

Back after 15 months

The first visit since Aug 2021 – 15 months since the last – following all the covid cancellations. I was on my own, already uncomfortable going to my Dad’s empty house, and I arrived there in the hire car to a set of fairly stressful situations and thunderous rainstorms.

First problem was a water leak which I was warned about before arriving: the water had been turned off because the meter-reader saw the meter whizzing round. Luckily Pauline turned up with the plumber soon after I arrived, but he couldn’t detect the source – he just taped around a joint and left again. So the rest of the holiday was spent turning it on and off at the boundary. We had lost 78 cubic meters over the last month and there wasn’t any sign of where that much water had disappeared to – certainly (luckily) not in the house but there also wasn’t any verdant vegetation or muddy corners either. A bit of a mystery yet to be solved.

It also took me two days to work out how to turn the gas back on to fire up the hot water boiler and the cooker. Our neighbour Clarissa came to help me and in doing so ended up releasing half the hissing bottle of gas to the atmosphere. It was of course quite simple in the end – just a matter of getting the combination of taps turned in the right direction.

The other confounding issue were the two cars, neither of which were usable. Both had been taken to have their IMOs (MOTs) only a couple of months back. The Peugeot took us to the local restaurant but then screamed warning lights on the way back – overheating, no radiator fluid, leaking radiator, so that was that. The Rover started beautifully but without anyone to rescue me if I broke down, I found I was just too scared to use it. So it was lucky I had a hire car to get me about.

It took several days of gardening jobs and meetings at my Dad’s before I moved over to Espartosa and set up house. My neighbours were pleased to see me and immediately rolled out the extension lead so that I could have electricity. Swiftly followed by eggs, olive oil and lemons, such kind people. The lavenders and rosemary bushes had all grown and were flowering, the apricot tree looked well, and the olive trees had been pruned following an abundant harvest. The cracks around the corner that is still subsiding had widened, but generally it looked as I had left it and I was pleased that no rats had moved in.

The main change was a hole in a wall that had partially collapsed on the north side. We had been expecting the corner to go for years because it had been shedding stones but that was still standing, a proud tower. The hole did give me a pleasant preview down the land from a future bedroom window. Which reminds me to mention, still no planning permission.

The holiday was mainly spent sorting, throwing and moving more of my Dad’s old tools over to my house in preparation for the house sale. Moving dirty tools in the hire car was not ideal but each day I arrived ‘home’ loaded up as far as I dared. One day my neighbours took pity on me and brought round some sweet potatoes cooked in their outside oven which were delicious and very welcome. The whole holiday was physically and emotionally exhausting but we did accept an offer on my Dad’s house, so necessary progress was made.

Towards the end the of the holiday I rearranged the kitchen in a completely new way (the camp kitchen has been set up in so many different locations and combinations of makeshift furniture over the years). I also moved the bookcase back into the doorway between the renovated and unrenovated rooms, to give additional security – it’s a pain having to go right around outside to get in there but I like the contained feel of the cottage. And I went to the Santa Catarina sunday market and bought two bougainvilleas to fill some gaps – always pleasing to plant something, though it’s never clear whether it will live or die over summer.

Good to be out there – I walked out on my local paths a few times which always lightens my heart. The stream had just started running again (and had been in flood after the thunderstorms and 50mm of rain – I’d like to have seen that!). Lots of clouded yellows and whites feeding off the rosemary and a Mediterranean green tree frog in the garden, a first for me there. Not unexpectedly, there were deep runnels on a steep hillside where the vegetation had been cleared for fire protection, washing precious soil away. The government needs to refine the land clearance rules so that this doesn’t keep happening.