From Our Own Correspondent-style despatches from a former BBC reporter who's now battling to live off the grid in the Alentejo countryside. Selected audio recordings of his weekly blog which began in 2020.
Surprised, interested, shocked, concerned and intrigued all sum up our reaction to the massive power cuts across Portugal and Spain, but perhaps the most appropriate description of our mood was: smug.
When the traffic lights went dark, petrol stations closed and panic struck the ice cream shops of the nearby tourist towns on our southwestern coast of Alentejo, we could rest easy.
Our freezer-load of wild boar (wild boar) wasn’t defrosting, our water pumps were working well and our wine remained nicely chilled.
While the lights went off across the Iberian peninsula, a healthy hum was heard from our control centre as our 84 solar panels were piling power into our batteries as usual.
We have the storage capacity of a large electric vehicle – a BMW or a Porsche Taycan – and yesterday when the lights went out we felt very much at the luxury end of the market.
We were buying fruit trees when the plant nursery billing system went down.
People in Vila Nova de Milfontes were standing in shop doors and milling around street corners burning through the last of the mobile phone tower batteries for online information and updates to understand why the “apagão” or power cut, had happened.
There was much speculation at the coffee-less cafés over what, or whom, might have been responsible for the outage.
The explanation as to why the whole of Portugal and Spain lost electricity for many hours has to get a lot better for people to stop thinking it was Mr Putin, Mr Trump or a cabal of satanic paedophiles.
I do tend to lean heavily into cock-up over conspiracy, but I’ll admit my work countering Russian disinformation led my first suspicions towards a Russian cyber-attack.
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But we were fine.
After years of learning to live off the grid, the thousands of euros of investment, power cuts and teething troubles, our system finally came into its own.
From the early days when we moved into our new off-grid home in the Portuguese countryside in the middle of the COVID pandemic we’ve been playing catch up with power.
We have learned the hard way what a lot of people realised yesterday – just how much power we consume every day and how dependent we are on electricity
The off-grid system which came with our house provided a lot less energy than we were used to – even moving from Kenya where power cuts were common, but we had a generator in the garden.
Toasters and ovens are the biggest culprits – and I’ll never use my hairdryer while ironing ever again!
After failing to keep the giant Tamagotchi of a lead-acid battery system alive we installed new panels and lithium batteries for us...and then for the 20 plus people we can cater for at the eco-luxe lodge we’ve just opened.
Three phases, hundreds of meters of buried cables, a lot of maths and fuse boxes later and we are...smug.
Last week my mornings had begun with a nervous eye on the app, as 17 Easter guests and some pretty rainy and cloudy weather tested the system, which happily passed with flying colours.
But while the rest of the region was powerless to do anything, our batteries were at 100%, our satellite connection kept the communications going and we were one of the few restaurants still open.
We hadn’t planned on making a fish braai for our guests Robert and Kim – and we’re not even a restaurant – but in the absence of a mobile phone signal to even ask the best seafood places if they were open, we confidently offered a three course meal complete with electric light.
The candles were merely for effect.
And the country-wide shortage of internet connectivity led a BBC producer back to my WhatsApp and the offer of a chance to play at my old job for an afternoon.
Our local Intermarché supermarket boss was almost as smug as we were – because their massive generator was keeping the meat and fish cold, the freezers below zero and the ATM cash machine running.
There was a touch of the early COVID days about it – even if the toilet roll stocks remained largely undisturbed.
We bumped into our friend Francisco from the A Terra glamping lodge – everything had gone off at his place and so he was at the ATM paying for 20 new solar panels.
“Because tomorrow the price is going to be crazy,” he told me.
“I should have bought them a long time ago, but now it needs to be done.”
Glenn Cullen who with his wife Berny runs a beautiful tourism lodge called Paraiso Escondido was also at the supermarket stocking up on water to help guests flush.
“The power cut’s a bit inconvenient...to say the least,” he told me.
“We rely on pumps for the water, electricity as we’d expect for the power, so cooking – breakfast, lunch, dinners. We do have gas in one of our kitchens, so we have got a standby.
“It’s a bit of a worry and something we have to think about for the future. Already we’re talking about getting generators to have backup. We have solar for hot water, but all the other things we take for granted: every day you turn the tap on, you flick a switch and communication – the WiFi is down. We rely on it so much.”
I do care a lot about ice cream – and was keen to volunteer my services to stop large amounts of it going to waste, so next stop was beach-front Zambujeira-do-Mar and Rita’s Restaurant.
Nuno Rita explained the gelato was straight into the freezer as soon as the lights went out and the door would remain shut until it came back on again.
“It will be fine as long as the power comes back within a day,” he explained, as much to my disappointment I realised my ice cream eating sacrifice was not going to be immediately required.
The Sunset Café was packed – André had his sleeves rolled up and was washing dishes while hikers on the long-distance walking trail Rota Vicentina were fuelling up on lunch.
“Traditional work – no lights, washing glasses with my hands, salads, sandwiches and Portuguese bifanas,” he said, talking about the traditional bread rolls filled with thin pork steaks he was dishing out to walkers.
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I’m pleased to say it was a mere 17 hours that our region was without electricity.
Our neighbour Daniel was up before dawn as usual and spotted a distant glow from the nearby town at around 5.15am.
Now is a great time to talk about community micro-grids rather than national grids, and how renewable energy can be better managed at a local level...however much the giant power providers may protest.
Solar panels have never been cheaper, but integrating small systems into national grids are not as easy as the “sell your renewable power back” offers suggest.
Our friend Niels discovered it was costing him money to sell his excess power to the grid and so invested in large water tanks and heaters to create different types of “battery” instead.
And our neighbour Jeff in Lisbon had taken steps towards energy independence by installing panels, but because he is connected to the grid he couldn’t use them when the blackout happened.
While conservative newspapers say the Iberian power cuts prove renewable energy can’t work at scale - because of the huge steps Spain and Portugal has made towards running on green energy - we have to remember that it must.
It’s perhaps more down to the traditional systems and the big, rich power companies which need to change and adapt.
And it’s also a good reminder that come the next zombie apocalypse we should be fine – all we need is a couple of extra shovels to hit them with and maybe a shotgun.
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Opening Time
dimanche 20 avril 2025 • Durée 09:15
For more than three years now there’s been a loop of thinking, building, pushing and waiting...but we’ve finally opened our doors to a flurry of guests.
With thanks to friends – and friends of friends – for booking in advance and betting we’d be ready, we had our biggest test so far this Easter holiday week, with six of our seven units filled and a peak of 17 people staying.
Despite all the fears of the whole thing descending into a terrible Fawlty Towers epsiode – particularly when two of the visitors were German – I think we managed pretty well.
We barbequed porco preto black pork, served Portuguese arroz de pato duck rice, braai-d some sea bass alongside Ana’s amazing moules and introduced our guests to some top Alentejo wines.
If only the weather had stepped up and given us a helping hand.
It’s the one thing we can usually rely on, but the glimmer of Spring which followed the reservoir-filling deluge of March evaporated into more heavy rain.
Whether it’s meteorologically correct or not, I am convinced that in these epoch-changing times of isolationism and authoritarianism...that Britain stole our sunshine.
It’s not the kind of behaviour Portugal should expect from the world’s oldest alliance.
As far as I can see, the weather doesn’t feature in the 1386 Treaty of Windsor, but in an age of re-interpreting old documents...things like the American constitution for example...I wouldn’t rule anything out.
It’s what I believe and therefore it’s true – it’s my truth and you just try to prove me wrong! Opá. As they say around here: oh boy.
Truth or not, it was certainly a reality for our guests from London who gave up an unseasonably warm Britain for an unreasonably chilly and disappointingly damp Alentejo Easter.
I’m very pleased to report a typically stiff-upper-lip keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude from guests and proprietors alike took us all through.
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Clearing Skies
dimanche 8 septembre 2024 • Durée 09:28
Today I’d like to start with an apology.
You’ve been very patient with me as I’ve bumbled and grumbled my way through the past few months, mostly moaning about DIY, crossing the Valley of Death, Losing Perspective and treating my despatches more like therapy sessions.
You didn’t sign up to be armchair psychiatrists, so I’m sorry...but thank you.
After a bit of self-reflection and a little “enough already” advice from people whose opinions I trust, I would like to announce the official end to my searing negativity.
I’ve been leaning this way for a little while, but a piece of important news this week has lifted a heavy weight from our shoulders.
Like the magical morning mists that sometimes shroud our valley, the doom and gloom has been steadily lifting – burning off to reveal the blue skies.
And of course they were always there – I just couldn’t see them.
But now it’s time to stop looking down at overwhelming to-do lists and obsessing with the small things, and to look up and see the big picture – the picture we fell in love with when we first came to this valley.
And it’s also time to stop looking backwards, but looking forwards to the next step in our career transition through builders to proprietors.
Our friends and VIPs (Very Inspiring Proprietors) Vera and Cam went through a similar construction project and have quickly grown a really successful tourism and retreat business up the road at Quinta Camarena in nearby Cercal.
“Oh, the building work,” Vera told us, “I remember that – it sucked,” she said...just six months after their hugely stressful race to get everything finished.
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Identity Crisis
samedi 17 août 2024 • Durée 09:30
With all the talk about gender at the Olympics I’ve been reassessing how I identify.
I’ve spent the last few years trying to move towards something approaching the Oxford English dictionary’s definition of handyman: “a person able or employed to do occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations.”
I’ve slowly being moving towards the “Mr Fixit” label my mum used to have for my dad when I was growing up – I’m actually still using some of his tools from the 1950s box with his initials on it.
But my attitude towards our project recently is making me reconsider.
Now I think I identify as “unhandy man” or a “Mr Fixit-NOT”
I am so totally done with D-I-Why. I’m so over it. I don’t want to Do It Myself anymore. I’d like someone else to do it.
Hours spent trying to work out how to do stuff has allowed me to ponder the alternative meanings of this TLA (Three Letter Acronym):
* Died Inside Yesterday
* Dammit. Idiot. You!
* Done? Isn’t Yet.
* Drilling Incomplete. Yawn.
* Daily Incompetence? Yes.
* Don’t I Yearn...to do something else? Darn It, Yes.
Hopefully this is just a passing phase...given the amount of tinkering time, drill-skills and general knowledge about our solar and water systems I am going to need to keep this show on the road.
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But right now I really can’t face putting up any more lights, filling the remaining gaps between the skirting boards and the wall, or faffing about with wood and hinges.
I’ve thrown everything at a long running battle with the kitchen sink, hopefully have found the final solution to a leaking industrial dishwasher, and we have secured all the headboards.
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The Valley of Death
dimanche 21 juillet 2024 • Durée 09:43
“Well, now you just need to get through the valley of death, don’t you?” was the unexpected message of encouragement from one of our recent guests.
I met Professor Eric Lambin at Stanford University in northern California where Ana and I spent a fabulous (albeit COVID-interrupted) back-to-school journalism fellowship year.
All of us wanted to learn European Portuguese, but with more than 200 million Brazilians out there, that wasn’t an option and so we were learning to say the word city (cidade) with a swagger as “sid-AD-gee” rather than “sid-ad” and speaking virtually “shush”-free.
There’s quite a difference between the two versions of Portuguese and every evening Ana would make me rewrite all the verb tables adding the “tu” form (second person pronoun) which is largely ignored in Brazil, where você is favoured for everything.
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And the letter S is often pronounced as a “shh” in Portugal at the end of a word or before a consonant – it’s why it sometimes sounds like Russian...and while the Portuguese can understand spoken Spanish it doesn’t work the other way around.
You’ll get a better idea if you listen to the audio version of this despatch, but here’s an attempt to explain what I mean through a few words and a Portuguese tongue-twister:
Three plates of wheat for three sad tigers (Três pratos de trigo para três tristes tigres) is pronounced Tresh prAT-osh duh TREE-go pah-ra tresh trish-tesh tig-resh)
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Losing Perspective
dimanche 30 juin 2024 • Durée 07:32
I’m sitting on a plane in the skies over Africa trying to put everything we’re doing into perspective.
It’s silly o’clock in the morning here, but recently we’ve been no strangers to sleepless nights, recurring dreams about buried pipes bursting and cold sweats over finances and licencing.
Big things are happening in the valley, but they’ve been wearing us down.
I lost perspective last week on one of the most difficult days on this crazy journey so far.
Another no-show from our architect and another week-long delay was the final shove towards the realisation we weren’t going to be fully open this year.
There have been many challenges, pressured decisions and self-reflections on whether we would ever have started this madcap scheme if we knew how it would unfold.
Now there are even deeper doubts about what we can do before the debts are called in and expenditure starts to spiral above the lower autumn and winter income.
But landing on a sunny June evening in Amsterdam after a short hop from Lisbon, traversing the chaotic airport terminals and now sitting here in the dark, wedged between the two other biggest blokes on a flight to Nairobi, I hope some of that perspective is returning.
At the very least it’s giving me some quiet reflective time to think about what we’ve done, how far we’ve come and what we’ve still got left to do.
The workload has been relentless – my precious early morning thinking hours to get podcast episodes published and blogs written have been cut short before 8am when workers and machines arrive and the firefighting begins.
The days are long and we have been using the light and the time; bedtimes are early, but bodies are sore and minds are busy.
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Planning...we try...there are pages of re-written and slightly updated to-do lists in notebooks, but something always comes along like a water leak or an unexpected artisan to throw a spanner in the works.
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Moving Mountains
mercredi 5 juin 2024 • Durée 10:37
In the end they left with a whimper rather than a bang.
Almost un-noticed, things on the building site gradually started disappearing until suddenly there was nothing left – except for a large pile of building rubbish and some unfinished digging work.
We’d agreed to pay for some of Justo’s digger time by the hour, and just as I was stressing about which work we needed him to do in what order he started loading it on the back of the truck.
“Broken” he shrugged and headed off to the mechanic.
He came back with an empty truck and as if by magic the last builders’ cabin disappeared. We haven’t seen them since.
I suppose that’s when we realised it was up to us now, and that all the things that still needed to be done...need to be done by us.
And there’s quite a long list.
The gradual departure of the builders passed us by because we were just so busy.
Cleaning the land with a strimmer within 50m of every building needed to be done by the end of May, and having prioritised other things I found myself facing quite an uphill (and downhill, and uphill, and downhill again) task.
With huge thanks to volunteer helpers John Rourke and Hugh Jennings who took some good chunks out of the work, I have been rising at dawn to get out on the land before the heat really hits.
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(Although I wonder if there’s a connection between John’s Scottish roots and the propensity of remaining thistles? I do hope you’re recovering well John!).
Summer has arrived and strimming after 11am quickly becomes a very energy-sapping endeavour when there’s so much else to do after the work out.
Weed-whacking might be a great weight-loss programme, but it steals my thinking and writing time.
This is the longest I’ve left between delivering despatches from since I began, and the early morning exercise along with the bi-weekly podcast episodes have nipped my creativity.
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Juggling Spinning Plates
dimanche 12 mai 2024 • Durée 09:09
“So when do you open?” is a common question as everything on our hillside starts to look a little more finished.
“Last Saturday” is my current response – because that was the original plan.
Great friends of ours from our Bangkok days...and their friends...had booked last year to come and stay when the finish date on the building contract was optimistically set for the end of February.
“Yes, this February,” was my common response (often to the builders) while we prepared for a group of 28 people – half of them children, but we felt that even if it slipped a month or two we’d be all set by May.
It was a very generous offer to help us with a soft opening – to give us the practical experience of running a retreat for a large group with varying demands – safe in the knowledge they are friends and would understand...and give great feedback.
As the year began, and the combination of heavy rain delaying the construction and the growing realisation that we are not super-human led us to suggest they book the larger and more established Pé no Monte hotel nearby.
We are so pleased they did.
Their slimmed down early-arrival group of 20 came over to see us for a tour, a wine tasting and a sardine supper.
The ratio was the same: ten adults to ten children.
Obviously diggers make great climbing frames, rock dust is perfect for sandcastles and “don’t go close to the precipice by the pool” translates into child as “we must go over there.”
The electricity is now connected to all the buildings and the spaghetti water system is working – including to the toilets and showers – but the sinks aren’t quite there to help the water to its final destination.
All but one of the outside doors and windows are now in, the interior doors are ready to hang and the metal safety railings for the mezzanines will go in this week (they could have plunged off those precipices too).
The wine tasting went well, the sardines feast was saved by our friend Adam Cooper’s quick intervention and we ended the day having learned a lot of lessons about hospitality...and health & safety.
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I love it when a plan comes together
dimanche 28 avril 2024 • Durée 08:46
There have been occasions when I’ve strolled up to our building site expecting a hive of activity, only to discover the Mary Celeste.
Perhaps that’s an apt comparison, given the abandoned ship was found drifting somewhere between the Azores islands and the Portuguese coast in 1872 with no crew – what happened to them remains a mystery to this day.
Tumble weeds don’t even grow here, but I’d swear I’ve seen them in the corner of my eye on those days where a sprinkle of drizzle or an ominous weather forecast has kept everyone away despite a daunting list of deadlines.
Inoculated by past disappointments I wandered up the hill this week with low expectations, only to stumble into rush hour at Paddington Station.
I struggled to find a parking space among the various sized white vans, piles of newly delivered limestone cobbles, and rumbling trucks.
There were electricians and carpenters, gutter fitters and pool people, the plumber, the water guy, delivery drivers, and...drumroll please...the door and window installers!
Our hopes and dreams, our wishes and requests, our letters to Santa Claus...had all answered by the arrival of the PVC people and their large truck of fabulous frames and gorgeous glass.
We’re finally getting somewhere after the many months of transforming a scraggy eucalyptus forest into something approaching an off-grid eco-luxe resort.
And as the workers are seemingly focussing on the finishing line we’re hitting the buy button on chairs and tables, lamps and loungers, umbrellas and bedside tables...to get all the finishings – at least – in the post.
I wondered the scene with my mouth open. I love it when a plan comes together.
But what’s truly amazing is all our wonderful friends who have been dropping everything to answer our call for help.
“I’d like to help with some strimming,” John Rourke messaged a few weeks ago.
With the fire regulations deadline fast approaching for clearing land 50m from every building that is not something you say no to.
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The Big Picture
dimanche 14 avril 2024 • Durée 09:50
The first sign of summer is when planting a tree turns from simply picking a spot and digging up a bit of soil...to battering through concrete.
It took just two days of mid-20s Celsius for the ground to turn from being soft and simple to dig, mix in with compost and happily plant, to needing a medieval throwing spear to break the surface and leave us longing for a pneumatic drill to finish the job.
It’s also a sign it’s now probably too late for us to do much of our planned landscaping.
Half the lavender planted in front of our new villa is thriving, while the other half is struggling...the difference being three days and one light shower.
Thankfully our great friends Ed, Rachael and Daisy were visiting – they brought along their great pals Medwin and Emily – and we roped them all into a little plant-off to get in the fruit trees, a few olives, figs and medronhoplants...and even twisted Ed’s arm to design us a new logo.
We have so many more trees and plants to place, but delays to the building work and so much rain lingering in the clay has limited our planting window.
For our first season we will do what we can by laying a lot of gravel and mulch, starting on a cactus garden and mixing in all the cover crops on the vineyard area to improve the soil before we plant next March.
After so much rain we almost got sick of it (we didn’t, of course), but the sudden arrival of ample sunshine and high temperatures also brought a rush of workmen bursting back on site like a field of daisies.
Once the Easter break was out of the way, our hilltop was filled with cars as on one extraordinary day we enjoyed the company of the builders, carpenters, electricians, painters and our water consultant. All on one day.
The pool preparation people even arrived a day early...brilliant, but it created another layer of complication requiring a wild goose chase to track down our plumber whose attendance was courteously requested.
The post-it note wall is back and is as packed and full as ever...but the order of achievement priority has been recalibrated from “quarter one” through “quarter four” to “today”, “tomorrow” and “yesterday”.
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Apologising, however, by suggesting they stay another week as “it’s going to be beautiful from Tuesday” is straight from the Basil Fawlty playbook. (Note to self: don’t ever do that).
Without the lure of constant sunshine, our Clubhouse became the Clubhouse it was meant to be: where people hung out around a roaring fire, chatted around the dinner table, and where younger guests played cards and started learning to play the guitar.
The rainy March didn’t give the pool much of a chance to get up to a good temperature, but that didn’t stop many people from giving it try...some of them every day.
We’re so lucky that cold water swimming is a thing.
But the ocean proved to be surprisingly warm for the surf lessons, and on the occasional beach days the sun forced its way through with enough potency to sizzle unprotected skin (guilty as charged!).
Our neighbour Daniel kindly patched up some of the bigger holes in the road for Ana’s birthday, but the holiday and the continuing rain means it will be next week before the proper repair work begins.
The horse riding was a great success, the secret beaches a big hit, the local restaurants proved popular and most importantly the off-grid power and water systems thrived in their biggest challenge so far: lots of people and lots of weather.
We’re still tweaking our water dilution system for automatically mixing rainwater with mineral-salted borehole water, but it’s got off to a great start.
I’ll be writing more about the long range WiFi / Internet of Things LPWAN technology we’re using soon as I finish editing a BBC radio programme I’m making on the topic with some really interesting Portuguese examples.
The tech is keeping our swimming pool flowing for infinity and beyond (hopefully), watching over our tanks, keeping our drinking water perfectly palatable, and will soon be managing the fabulously nutritious water emerging from our treatment plant ready for irrigation.
My maths surrounding our whole power grid was always shaky, and with many showers testing water pumps and heat pumps, and lots of induction hobs being used, there were some nervous early morning checks on the batteries, but the system held up really well.
Gamifying the shower experience with “beat the egg timer” hour glasses attached the wall seemed to generate some interest and some competition.
The guests were the Jennings family from Yorkshire...Sarah, my godson Atti and Hugh who has been many times before to help out and was lured into the occasional odd job despite being a paying guest.
Dedicated blog reader Jeremy Grant surprised his partner Siobhan with a trip to Alentejo and landed amid the chaos of people with delight over the view...after having followed our progress almost from the start.
The other families are friends of my old pal Matthew Price – adventurous London professionals with a love of exploring with their brilliant young teenagers – who he strongarmed into coming along to an Easter excursion on the coastal Alentejo.
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The German couple were early adopters on Booking.com who stayed for some comfort at the start of their long Rota Vicentina hike down to the Algarve.
Different dietary requirements got us thinking about how to make the perfect dinner, I started developing some breakfast skills...and there was some troubleshooting running roof repairs in high wind.
It was a fantastic start to our new venture and adventure – thanks so much to all four families involved for visiting Vale das Estrelas.
We are realising that there are two sides to this job: attending to guests while they are here, and working even harder behind the scenes to find new ones to come and visit in the future.
“It’s marketing, marketing, marketing,” our friend Vera told us, and she and Cam have already made a thriving business out of their tourism resort Quinta Camarena a bit further north of us in Cercal, so it’s good advice.
Our own website and booking engine has been at the heart of it and despite the urgency, we’d been waiting for a break in the rain and the return of a little sunshine for our talented interior architecture photographer friend Cia to take some proper photos.
She spent hours working with the light and the angles to edit together an amazing set of images.
It’s always going to be hard to properly capture the scale of our views and the feeling of calm here through photographs, but @ciajansen (check out her Insta) has done us proud.
We’ve fussed over the photos, tweaked the text and agonized over the pricing strategy, but finally can unveil our new website www.valleyofthestars.co.uk or for those in Portugal www.valedasestrelas.pt
I hope you like it – please have a look through it...if only to search for the glaring mistakes we’ve made in our prices which will allow bargain-bucket bookings.
It’s our soft-opening year, so we have lower prices than similar properties in the area to give us the leeway to learn.
Ana’s new mantra is that every visitor’s expectations must be exceeded when they arrive – rather than the other way around.
Please help us out by sharing it with all of your networks – and if anyone wants to rent the whole property for a retreat please get in touch directly and we’ll make a plan.
This journey is going to continue having its challenges – first with our workload as we learn to do everything ourselves and then bring staff in to help us in the most important places.
And that’s also a challenge for us here where staff are in short supply.
We’ve been so lucky that our fabulous friend Lotti – a former deputy Swedish ambassador and top lawyer – used her Easter vacation to come here and help us wash up!
We couldn’t have had such a successful week without her (thanks Lotti!)
And on that note, I’m turning to you again…wonderful readers...if you know anyone looking for some paid summer work, we’re looking for people experienced in the hospitality industry, working in wine, or restaurants to help us out.
Of course the pressure has mostly, but not entirely, been self-inflicted.
Years in journalism have left me obsessed with deadlines and the desire to throw myself into something, get it mastered, get the story told, and move onto the next thing.
But of course not everything works like that.
Since the building work began a little over two years ago we’ve had a singular aim in mind: to get the lodge finished and open to paying guests this summer.
A year ago we were confident that we’d be ready by May, and even after the winter rain we still thought June was do-able, while the builders, engineers and every artisan in earshot said: “what, you’re planning to open this year?”
“August for sure” we told ourselves, each other and anyone else who’d listen.
But it wasn’t just a hope – it was a need.
We’ve taken a big loan to do this project, and although most of it is zero interest courtesy of the tourism authority – to promote growth in remote and traditionally poorer parts of the country – it still needs to be paid back...in just 10 years.
The capital repayments were due to start next month – just in time for the winter tourism lull – but thanks to our bank manager’s confidence in our project and lobbying on our behalf, Turismo de Portugal have agreed to postpone payments.
We don’t yet know for how long, and this certainly doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels (or the succulents we are busily planting), but it gives us a bit of breathing space.
In a few short weeks, even the dreaded DIY has been transformed into a series of “craft projects” and thinking about it that way has completely changed my approach.
I’m not sure why it all became so overwhelming, but I’ve done a full 180 and have started really enjoying tinkering with some wood, creating a couple of coffee tables and pondering how to turn railway sleeper screws into coat hooks.
Thanks to both Niels and Ola for their advice on proposing a solution to attach the heavy metalwork into the wall.
I’ve had so much encouragement and advice from my crowd-sourced therapy – thank you one and all – but as I sat down to write this despatch, Bernard from beautiful Marvão up in the Alentejo hills, made some time between his own DIY projects to send me a note:
“DIY is a skilled undertaking and like gardening requires a lot of attention and organisation and you get better and faster at it. In rural Portugal it's there for life,” Bernard noted with a smiley-face.
He put my moaning into perspective – remembering a time before my mate Leroy (as in Leroy Merlin, the French B&Q/Home Depot) had even made it to Portugal...and how much harder it was to find the things needed to do the job back then.
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“DIY is underrated, regarded as trivial, especially in Britain, so you may think it's a frustrating waste of time, especially when in competition with seemingly serious tasks like getting stuff through the [town hall].”
Well that process does continue – we’re still wating for our licenses, but each we we get (hopefully) a step closer.
My decision to embrace “craft projects” began with two planks of our fallen cork oak tree, some epoxy resin, an electric sander and a pot of varnish.
Rather than rushing to finish and move on to the next job I did a little every day – filling in the cracked wood, carefully rounding it off and sanding it smooth and I now have two beautiful benches for the mezzanines for guests to drink at or to work over.
The next job is only harrowing because it involves two old Portuguese wrought iron ploughing harrows which need feet and a glass top to become coffee tables.
I can’t wait to get stuck into the wine label project, and my new relationship with wood makes The Clubhouse bookshelves sound like an adventure.
But the clearing mists have also made me realise we’re coming to summer a little late this year.
The whole point of this crazy adventure was to design our lives so we could live here – in the beautiful Portuguese countryside with our amazing views and the wild beaches and golden sands just a short drive away.
We love the fresh fish – I’ve spent a long time perfecting my grilled fish, butterflied and braai-ed – and we’ve not been to our favourite seafood restaurant in a while.
We haven’t even dropped by the Crabstraunt (as Oda calls it), or tried wine at our local Vicentino winery’s beautiful new tasting room
Part of that is due to what our friends in the Algarve Richard & Pauline call the “Agostinis” – the tourists who rock up with their outsider demands every August (but also perhaps could be the name of a noble and serious new martini cocktail).
The beaches are already starting to thin out, the ocean water is warming and our summer sidles onwards while everyone else goes back to the office.
We have managed to sneak out to the beach once or twice for planning meetings, and the occasional working lunch picnic.
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Alongside the ongoing craft project, our office currently includes Ana’s series of rockeries under construction, experiments with LPWAN technology for monitoring and automating our water supply, and gradually getting everything ready for a photoshoot for our website.
The pressure over opening may have been released a little, but we still need to make some money – attract some late summer visitors and try and run our first retreat.
Our villa will be toasty all winter thanks to the underfloor heating and my mind is already wandering into water collection for when rain eventually drops by.
In the last couple of weeks I had another countering-disinformation trip to Nairobi (we now officially have enough Maasai blankets to keep a full house of guests nice and warm in the evenings), and I’ve just finished narrating our friend Joanna's book for Audible...it was the first one I’ve done and it was tougher than I expected!
It’s an amazing book for western CEOs though – Chinafy by Joanna Hutchins: Why China is Leading the West in Innovation and How the Rest of the World can Catch Up.
Once the audio book goes live I’ll post a link, but it is a brilliant insider’s account of just why China’s economy will soon be top of the world.
I’m not sure our little business is going to change the world, but it’s certainly changing our world, and with the challenges, the things we’re learning to do...and about ourselves...it’s certainly change for the better.
Especially now we’ve emerged from our summer of stress, newly invigorated to take on the bureaucracy battles which will allow us to open, and with a nice number of craft projects to work away at.
But then there are the coffee tables and the wooden benches to make and varnish and fit and finish....
I make almost daily trips to the nearby agricultural supplies store and the hardware place because I haven’t bought enough nails or the right sized pipe or the correct tap.
But a lot of what we need involves a day trip.
The local DIY superstore down in the Algarve is Leroy Merlin – pronounced in Portuguese with an odd fake French accent: Leh-roh-ah Mare-lahn.
But I’m now comfortable just calling him Leroy – not even Senhor Merlin, or O Leroy – we’ve spent so much time together we are definitely on first-name terms and converse in the tu form.
I almost know what all the different silicones are for, what kind of paint you use on what and where everything is in most stores.
I even felt let down when one of his people refused to let me buy an air conditioning unit for the adega (wine cellar) because I didn’t have the name, licence number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and inside leg measurement of the person who was going to install it.
It’s the law apparently...presumably thanks to a well-connected and strongly lobbying AC Fitters’ Union (perhaps known as the “AC-FU”?).
The car happily drives itself the hour and a quarter cross-country to visit the Holy Trinity of IKEA, Leroy and Makro.
I’ve overdosed on Swedish meatballs and hotdogs and burned hours pondering different sized parafusos (screws...up there on my list of favourite Portuguese words with rodapé or skirting boards...why use two words when you can do it in one?).
We’ve bought so many flat-pack things which need assembling, that we have spent hours just putting waste cardboard into recycling bins.
The annoying thing is that after all this I am still rubbish at it.
Lists of things to “just finish off” take hours – many of which are spent walking from one building to another searching for missing tools or drill bits which I’m sure I left somewhere.
The place is looking great – and every day it gets a little closer to being “finished” – a technical definition indicating “the placement of essentials allowing the rooms to be habitable” while other things are gradually added and finessed over time.
Of course to be officially habitable we need a licence...and little happens here once you hit August.
Businesses close, people head off on holiday and the town hall kicks the can down the road by asking for some additional signed piece of paper which we were categorically told by our architect we didn’t need a month ago.
Endless regulations, high taxes and several six-month long delays – which have twice been resolved with the official response of “oh, I forgot” – have left us financially and emotionally drained.
Both the town hall and key professionals have been unresponsive for months throughout this process. The lack of accountability from all sides is far more exhausting than we could have imagined.
Ho-hum. Let’s just hope the tourism authority are generous when they read the letter our bank manager sent on our behalf asking if we could put off payment of the loan capital until we are actually allowed to open.
We were hoping to make money this summer to get us through the more fallow winter months so are hoping to put off repayments until next Easter when tourism picks up again.
After all, compared to others in the area we’ve done things very quickly for Alentejo, but so very frustrating to spend so much time and effort to do things above board, when many people here take the approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. It’s often faster and cheaper.
Friends and visitors are generous with their praise for what we’ve achieved in the four years since we arrived here in the Valley of the Stars.
That’s quite an important number for me, because for all the years spent bouncing from country to country I have never lived in one place for more than four years since the 1980s when I left school in Newcastle.
Breaking an adult-lifelong nomadic habit hasn’t been as hard as I might have thought, probably because we’re so busy I suppose.
But I am happily settled in the place where we have settled and am looking forward to the next four, by which time I hope we will be running a successful business...ie one that brings in more money than it spends (very much against the current trend).
A thousand boxes of linen arrived the other day, the cutlery is on the way, you can never have too many vacuum cleaners and Ana hitched a lift north with our generous neighbour Daniel to order the crockery which we picked up a day later (at 6am) at one of the monthly markets in the area.
We’ve had a few friends road testing the facilities this weekend and while we grabbed a bit of downtime.
Ed, Rachael & Daisy were back for a week...officially our best return guests (we think it’s nine trips so far); Tim & Trish came with a camera...but we aren’t quite ready for the glamour shots just yet.
Their water was cold – but that’s just because I forgot to turn on the heatpumps – and it smelt a bit plastic-y, so I need to run a lot of water through the system.
But the pool was “amazing” and the clubhouse has the seal of approval as a great place to hang out.
And we had the first visit of our sommelier/acrobat/dancer neighbour Candace and her husband Geoff, who arrived generously armed with some wonderful wines for us to throw into the mix for a lovely wine tasting dinner with endless views over the hills.
For those of you wondering, yes the wine podcast has been on hiatus in lieu of all the other stuff we’re trying to do...but the next episode is almost finished and is coming soon. If you haven’t heard the first half of the season check it out:
I just keep remembering things and panicking about not getting them done...the LED lights in the bathrooms!...the website!...the fan system for the adega...the woodwork!
We have achieved a huge amount against the odds: out lack of experience of building, of Portuguese bureaucracy, of knowing how to do things...but we are so nearly there.
While the place will never be finished, it will be nice to be able to have time to think again...and to plan the vineyard, the marketing, the retreats...and learn how to run a lodge.
But for now, I suppose I need to haul myself up the hill, try to gather all the possible tools I could need today into one shopping bag and try to spend more time doing it myself than looking for missing tools myself.
Eric’s disturbing talk about death in the Valley of the Stars was taken from his knowledge of Silicon Valley and a pattern which leads many startup companies to fail.
As a geographer myself, graphs and maps always help illustrate a point, but Investopedia describes “the Death Valley Curve” as “the span of time from the moment [a company] receives its initial capital contribution until it finally begins generating revenue.”
In other words having spent almost all our money we need to keep going and finish everything until we officially open and guests start providing us with income to pay our costs and pay off our loan.
Now, I know this is not world-changing tech we’re developing: we’re not trying to train drones to swarm, or reinvent The Facebook (interestingly pronounced FacEY BOOK-ee in Brazilian), we’re just trying to build a few houses to rent out.
As regular readers know, there’s a bit more to it than that – building a totally solar-driven off-the-grid eco-luxe lodge is very challenging – although the only world we’ll be changing if we don’t make it through death valley is our own, but you know what I mean.
We’re nibbling away at the to-do list a bit slower than we’d hoped, but every little thing left to do by the builders needs to be done by us...and there are still a lot of projects.
Connecting the new Starlink to our ethernet network was a nightmare – I mean have you ever tried to wire up a fiddly little ethernet plug? Madness. Is it A, is it B...there must be an easier way of doing it?
Skirting boards remain un-fitted and un-sealed, headboards aren’t putting themselves up and the remaining furniture is slowly being assembled.
Next is to rename our buildings in a snappier way. For two years we’ve been using the arbitrarily labelled names from the architectural project: E, F and G.
Building E is the “main building” or the “pool house,” F is the villa and G is the row of en suite rooms. Maybe we need to name them after wine grapes...or stars...hmm.
Senhor Manuel the builder returned for a final run through of what still needs to be finished or tweaked and he brought an unusual warm glow and broad smile on his face...which could be either relief or perhaps pride?
After nearly two years he’s transformed this hilltop from a tatty, overgrown eucalyptus plantation into a stunning tourist lodge...and the only big part of the job left to finish now lies with the electrician who hasn’t been well.
What’s the problem with the occasional live wire sticking out here and there?
Hopefully he’s feeling better and will be back this week.
We’ve been helped hugely by the surges of activity provided by visiting skilled friends, and hosting our first sardine and wine dinner at our main building gave us a real boost.
Our Portuguese winemaking friends Mauro and Rita stayed with their kids for a few days, road testing the pool and bringing a small lake of their own wine and some much needed help and advice.
They’re naturally putting natural wine at the heart of that project and I’ve written about them in a previous wine blog – it’s in the Vidigueira region famous for Alentejo white wines and talha or amphora wine made the way the Romans made it.
They’ve put us in touch with someone who might help us navigate these last crucial stages of the project, and have proposed a little arrangement that will allow us to have our own house wine this year...watch this space.
Ana’s old pal Joanna is the third person we’ve lured to buy a house in this still-undiscovered part of Portugal, and she was here to get to grips with what needs to be done to the new place.
She has a Wine and Spirit Educational Trust (WSET) diploma in wine as well working in Greenland (I mean how cool is that...quite cool apparently...well actually pretty chilly, but stunning)...and so we’re trying to persuade her to run wine training courses at Vale das Estrelas.
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Her partner Paul also arrived from Shanghai to take a first look.
Paul’s very handy. As well as working on their place he spent some time helping us out, creating an amazing storage space and daybed headboard for one of the mezzanines (in just one day), and helping bring an added bit of Irishness to some sports watching.
He could have been slightly more sensitive during the final of the Euros, but did put in some hanging lights above the bar while Ireland beat South Africa in the rugby and stepped in with a drill when the new braai inexplicably needed installing.
It was chaos in the kitchen as Mauro and I tried to fit the taps and U-bend before people arrived (ultimately unsuccessfully) and it took an age for the coals to fire up.
But with the pink sky of a sunset over the valley, a mountain of sardines sizzling on the table, and with Mauro and Swiss winemaker friend Niels’ wines flowing we began to realise that we really have created something special.
This was just the first of many fun-filled al fresco evenings of wine and stories ending under a dark sky crammed with stars and the Milky Way flowing across the valley.
It was a great reminder of that first night here when we decided on the name Vale das Estrelas, or Valley of the Stars.
Maybe we’ve climbed up the steepest side of the valley of death, or maybe it’s a false summit...but as I never used say at the end of a BBC report (because it’s a terrible cliché) “only time will tell.”
We’ve decided that encouraging people to visit with a lure of a package, or some form of retreat is the best way forward.
Prof Eric may have scared us a little using the phrase “Valley of Death” in the Valley of the Stars, but he and his wife Régine also greatly inspired us with their project in central Portugal.
They bought an estate house, spent a few years doing it up beautifully and now run a successful business at Qunita da Marmela and run cultural tours and horse-tours...packages of things to do...reinforcing our idea this is a good way forward.
They wanted to hike some stretches of the Rota Vicentina long distance trail and loved it – despite the summer heat.
Rather than walking to a new guesthouse each day, they used our place as a base and balanced time on the clifftops and beaches with the pool and the serenity of our countryside.
“This could easily be a five day package,” they agreed.
So there’s the first idea...then there’s the wine...and perhaps a painting retreat...and something involving exploring Europe’s last wild coast.
* And if you have any ideas about “content” to fill a week while enjoying an undiscovered part of Portugal - or experience of leading retreats - and would like to explore a collaboration...do let us know!
Extra screws for the patio covers, materials to order, emergency trips for vital components...more things to do than we have time for in a day or even to get through in a week.
I’m good at the firefighting, but not so good at the big picture; I push things through by force of will, but don’t properly prioritise; I immerse myself in the technical details, but am overwhelmed when faced with an onslaught of competing demands.
Thank goodness Ana is better at that...if only she could have more space to do it.
Ana deals with all the angry conversations in Portuguese and the old-school mansplainers, and has to manage the pressure of me pushing demands to the brink of destruction.
It really is one of the most difficult and stressful things we have ever done, but the hardest part is all the things that are out of our control.
And the process of licensing – the town hall bureaucracy – is certainly out of our control.
Our architect has been absent for long periods and different people are telling us many different things about how a changing process works – what we need and what we don’t need.
Expensive acoustic inspections, energy certificates that could take a year, six months or just a couple of weeks...depending on who you ask.
We pushed hard for our final architecture project to be submitted, but it wasn’t accurately done. Now it needs to be withdrawn and then re-submitted.
The topographic survey was done quickly to keep us ahead, but now we’re told our recent spurt of landscaping also needs to be marked on the map and the survey needs to be redone
We’ve done some extreme gardening before, but the last couple of weeks has been all about landscaping – cleaning up after the builders, levelling the land and putting in a few degrees of slope here and there so rainwater flows between the houses and down into the valley.
We know water lingers in the clay at the top of our valley, and as soon as the soil is saturated, any little indentation can become a lake.
Hopefully it will be managed by the long drainage trench cut between the future vineyard and the houses, and the new roadside ditch filled with drain pipes and gravel.
We bought many cubic metres of material – carefully calculating the cost of different colours and qualities to try and stay within our trimmed budget.
With the builders’ cabins gone the area in need of prettification required before welcoming guests, was a lot larger than we expected: hundreds of square metres.
Thankfully we had Helder from the material supplies and plant hire place up the road – he smooths and levels piles of gravel using the tractor buckets like extensions of his own hands, flicking here, patting down earth there.
The list of things left to do is overwhelming, but with Alan & Margery Gledson staying again we got the final building’s concrete floors sealed and all the wooden bathroom sink tops and bowls installed.
The marble kitchen tops arrived – they’re beautiful – and slowly but surely the electrics, the metal safety railings and the water system are being completed.
The beds will be the last things to go in...once the workman boots have moved on.
Even a beautiful Portuguese paradise can become a millstone of pressure and worry.
But retuning to Africa, meeting some Ethiopian journalists who live their lives in fear of the police knocking on their door in the night, helps bring some perspective.
I’ve been doing some work on the side countering disinformation and that’s what brings me to Nairobi – our old home – for the first time in five years.
A vast concrete overpass – the lauded Expressway – now flies above the city.
It took just a few years to build...a little more than our lodge which pales in scale.
High-rise buildings have sprung up, development is everywhere...but so is protest – five years on, different voices are now being silenced by the same water cannon, riot police and teargas that were so familiar I owned a gas mask.
These are the voices of the youth facing down a tumult of new taxes.
Maybe it’s time for me to mix the morning classical music listening with a little more news again, to read those Economists, to re-engage in that big world beyond the valley.
There are books waiting to be read, there are beaches ready to be visited, there’s calm to be restored and chaos to be tamed.
Balance needs to come back into our lives – we need to be running this, and not letting it run (or ruin) us.
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It’s time for a reset, a plan, a strategy...to be ready for guests as soon as we can and to get ourselves rested and ready for them
After all, this is just the beginning of something that will never be finished, but will just get better and better.
Spread the word, help us get this soft-opening year off to a good start.
By the way, if you haven’t started listening to the podcast yet please go over to our other Substack page – or search on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. We’re up to Episode 5 already!
Help us, part 1…
The first way you can help us is to rate the podcast and leave us a review to get the algorithm working for us…and getting more people listening.
The other big deadline was saving the lives of our 250 olive trees, scattered citrus and newly planted rosemary and lavender bushes in front of the new houses.
They were all starting to seriously sag and even though we started the process of replacing a broken irrigation pump early it was a close call.
We decided to install a submersible pump in the lake to provide all the irrigation water for now – until we have a full house at the lodge and the waste treatment plant starts providing us with ample nutritious agua.
The brilliant Cristiano and his brother Eduardo built an island out of an old pallet and four second-hand blue barrels bought for the occasion, but sadly the island sank and we had to switch it for a bright orange buoy.
The guys laid out the 300m of pipes in the blink of an eye, because they are experts in what is an undervalued, but hugely valuable skill.
Then the thief of time became the drippers.
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You can buy ready-to-install systems with a connector to the main pipe, a tube and then a spiked dripper which you push into the soil near the tree or plant to deliver water directly to the roots.
My decision to buy the constituent parts rather than the whole thing, and then put them together ourselves was meant to be time saving not money saving, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
It took us hours and at the cost of blisters and holes in our fingers which have still not recovered.
And then after Ana connected them all, they didn’t work - water was just flowing out and not reaching half the plants.
We realised we were supposed to have installed regulators as well so each plant receives a certain amount of water and everyone gets their share.
That took hours more of blistering bother.
Irrigation systems do need regular care and attention and there’s a lot to monitor, but despite a few losses they’re broadly doing well.
The calçada guys know all about working under an unforgiving sun – it took four days for the white limestone blocks to all be carefully chipped and placed by hand and tightly tesselated. The result is stunning.
The pool, the deck and the calçada all look amazing, we put some wooden poles in to stop people falling (the protective glass is under construction), and after weeks of looking at the water we finally found the time to take the plunge. Lovely.
The lack of Sr Manuel’s builders doesn’t mean everything is finished – a long line of his and our contractors are still coming and going as the deadline for “finishing” drifts ever into summer.
The electrician occasionally drops by with complaints about his worsening gout while his mate takes up the slack; Rui the water guy pops in for a few hours here and there to keep our plate spinning while he juggles 70-plus other jobs; and the carpenter, plumber, glass people and metal work guys still have a few things to finish.
We’d brought in some help in to hammer in wooden posts, cover the pergolas with willow and waterproof roofing, and to make our old water tanks drinking-water ready by emptying them and scrubbing them clean (much harder than it sounds).
Then things need doing NOW:
* get LED ceiling lights after the Amazon delivery never turned up (drive to the Algarve, realise later we didn’t buy enough)
* pick up finished handmade sink basins from Monchique (drive to the Algarve, realise later the plug holes aren’t big enough)
* fight with angry cork furniture delivery guy (he actually knocked me over with his van as he left)
* pick up new Starlink dish because the old line-of-sight internet providers unexpectedly pulled the plug and left us on EDGE (rather than fibre or 5G) pretty much overnight
* deal with a dramatic water pipe leak here, a demand for a big decision there
But all efforts are currently focussed on the landscaping – the literal moving of mountains...of earth and gravel.
The removal of the construction cabins revealed just how huge an area we have on the top of the hill behind the houses. We need trees, but can’t now plant much until the autumn, so we need ground cover to beautify our eco-luxe lodge.
The process involves breaking up the already baked-hard soil with a giant tractor, then moving and levelling and rolling it with enough of a slope to help water runoff next winter.
At least three truck loads of 23 tonnes of white tout venant were delivered – a mixture of gravel and rock dust which compacts well and will surround every building, make paths and the pétanque court.
Grey tout venant will follow with some gravel, wood chips and mulch...and felled pine trees and white stones for edges.
And with every machine hour - and truck-load of material - our landscaping budget has a big chunk excavated out of it.
The payments have been flowing out as the spending curve accelerates to the end of the project, and amid it all the tourism authority who has given us the loan blocked our final (and pretty significant) block of funding.
“No money until the work is finished” they said.
“We can’t finish until we get the money,” we replied.
After weeks of back and forth, our legendary bank manager Wilson worked some more of his magic and secured an agreement...the cash should arrive this week.
Even with the rest of the loan, we were worried about whether we had enough money to make it over the line.
We’ve thrown all our savings into this, and I’d been putting off the full audit because I was scared about what I might find.
But with a strict landscaping budget to define, we needed to know how much money is left.
I’m glad to report that despite some big and unexpected hits like a broken borehole and spiralling water system costs, the figures just about add up. It’ll be tight, but we should make it...as long as we can welcome guests this summer.
Help us, part 2…
So, for those of you who couldn’t make it here to volunteer...please help us by coming to stay.
With our last burst of helpers expected soon, everything should be open-ready by the end of June, and while the online booking engine is still on the really-must-do-now-but-haven’t-got-time list, please let us know when you’d like to come and stay as paying guests.
It’s a soft opening year, so the prices will be good! Come and visit and claim your free bottle of Alentejo wine...with a story.
Check out the dates and if you’re local, drop in and show some support for Oda and Taylor (she’s got an amazing voice).
Oda knew it was going to be a busy time in the Valley of the Stars, but none of us anticipated just how manic the last couple of weeks were going to be – it was a proper case of spinning plates while juggling (or a combination of the two).
She arrived in the middle of our filling-the-pool water crisis which I wrote about last time, a task made much more difficult by a broken borehole.
After trying everything he could first, the ever impressive Cristiano and his brother Eduardo set about hauling the pump 120m out of the ground to discover it needed to be replaced...along with its cable, pipe and rope.
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It was another unexpected cost which merely contributes to my active avoidance of checking the accounts to see if we actually have enough money left to finish our project.
My former BBC colleague and audio-genius friend Peter Emmerson helped us through the first two weeks of the podcast launch.
Episode 2 went live yesterday – please head over to the wine blog and sign up if you haven’t already...or just search for Ana & Al's Big Portuguese Wine Adventure where you get your podcasts or have a listen here:
You’ll remember our friend John Rourke from my last despatch: the Scottish strimmer and cork floor fitting fiend who dragged his pal Tony over to cork click-floor our mezzanines.
John said he’d be back to finish the job after a short trip home, but decided to have a heart attack in Scotland instead...I mean, as far as excuses go that’s a pretty good one.
Thankfully he was just 10mins away from Glasgow hospital and out a few days later struggling more with the regime of enforced rest than anything else.
Wishing you a speedy recovery John – all that strimming made him as fit as a butcher’s dog which should help – and in terms of places to keel over I’d certainly choose Glasgow over the hills of Alentejo for speedier emergency care, rather than the scenery.
Most items on our post-it wall of ambition are proving stubborn to shift, but my old university pal Hugh Jennings was also on hand this week to help us make some impact.
“Finish the cork floors” was high up on the running order, and Tony insisted on coming back and giving us a masterclass in click floor installation as we fussed around him trying to help.
Hugh and I moved a lot of heavy things around, unpacked the entire restaurant kitchen, assembled some furniture and conquered a lingering gutter which has been staring at me for weeks, begging to be installed (just in time for the next drought).
And we certainly couldn’t have prepped our sardines and wine tasting day without him...thanks so much again for coming Hugh!
I dropped Hugh off at Faro airport and picked up another old friend Ciaran for the return trip.
Our Algarve adventures always involve big shops and pickups, and after negotiating Cassie the Hilux and a trailer through the narrow streets of Faro, Ciaran was treated to Leroy Merlin DIY store (twice), Makro, a large metal factory, and although spared Ikea, was dragged to the irrigation pipe place.
The sudden arrival of summer means all the trees we have planted need regular watering – all 300 of them.
The irrigation pump failed last year and so we’ve upgraded to a submersible pump for the lake to feed the citrus and the olive trees down in the valley and up on the hill.
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This requires 500m of pipe, scores of fiddly drippers to install and the construction of a small island out of wood and plastic barrels to support and power the pump in the lake.
Then there’s Ana and Oda’s dresser re-decoration job to finish, sealing material for the concrete floors to buy and spread, skirting boards to install, more interiors to order, bills to pay, accounting to put off...and that’s just today.
It really has been one of those times when a week feels like a month...when there’s not enough time in the day or space in my brain.
There’s not even enough space to cram it all into one despatch (but I’ll keep trying).
Oda, Ana, Ciaran and I did all enjoy a night away at the stunning Tróia Design Hotel on the sliver of Alentejo that points at the Setúbal Peninsula just south of Lisbon.
It was work rather than play, as I’d been asked to do a couple of turns at a conference known as the Sleeper Sessions – a high-end networking event for top hotels and international designers.
Matt Turner, editor in chief of Sleeper Media which publishes the influential Sleeper Magazine (among others) invited me to run a couple of their “Sustenance Sessions” after hearing the radio pieces I did for the BBC on off grid living (which you can listen to here and here).
It involved hosting a tasting and talk about Portuguese and Alentejo wines, some background on the kind of madness required to build an off-grid eco-luxe lodge with no prior experience, and stories from my previous war-reporting life.
It was great fun – thanks to Matt and to moderator Guy Dittrich for the invite and for giving me the chance to meet so many real hotel and design people. Hopefully a few of them might even come and stay.
It also inspires me that perhaps the wine tasting/live storytelling part of our business plan might just work…
Our Scottish friend who lives about 45 minutes away in Cercal arrived with a car-load of strimming machines, all fuelled up and ready for action (he even brought his own water bottles to keep hydrated through the job!).
I’ve been putting off the annual weight-loss programme as long as possible and this was just the kick I needed to get things started.
I should know by now that strimmers emerge from their winter hibernation with missing parts, wobbly fittings and absent essentials which always require at least a couple of trips to the local Stihl shop.
John’s already been strimming his land for weeks and so was totally in the rhythm on the hillside while I was spending ages getting up to speed.
He stayed the night to get an early start and had sorted most of the land above the house before I’d really got anywhere in the citrus grove – moving all the dead agave flowers from last year and trying not to get too tangled up in the ancient un-irrigated grape vines and left over electric fence.
I’d patched up a dodgy wire-strimming fitting which lasted right up until it didn’t – when the whole thing flew off in every direction…including towards the side window of our neighbour Daniel’s car.
While I can’t say for sure that the exploding strimmer was responsible for his shattered glass, it’s probably more likely than a toad with a catapult.
While John strimmed ever onwards, the Stihl shop was sadly awaiting a delivery – providing me with just the excuse I needed to focus on something else for the time being.
And there has been plenty to focus on.
The post-it wall has remained stubbornly static as the daily demands of project managing the workers and keeping power humming and water running has required regular shuttle runs up and down the valley.
Pumps and the various workmen’s tools all running at once tended to trip the fuses, so it required careful management and repeated visits to the fuse box.
Filling the pool without a grid connection was always going to be ambitious, but we’d been told it had to be filled as soon as the final pebble and cement layer had been applied to protect the concrete from cracking in the sun.
A little rough mathematics rounded up to the unlikely figure of 70,000 litres needed to get the infinity pool overflowing, but the cost of bringing in fresh water was prohibitive (to say the least).
We’d stored about 180,000 litres in a pillow tank at the bottom of the valley, and water consultant Rui Faria had the solar pump all connected and tested, but it only runs in the sun.
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We filled our new tanks with 30,000 litres ahead of time, but that was just a start – the key was going to be the boreholes which provide good, clean water and the slight saltiness ideal for a salt-water pool.
But right on cue – after years of working brilliantly – our main borehole dramatically failed and even the brilliant Christiano couldn’t get it going...despite his efforts on the national holiday – the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution.
The only solution was using our neighbour Daniel’s solar system to power-pump water up the hill, but unexpected cloudy skies drained his batteries too...plunging his house into early morning darkness.
Overcast skies have slowed the pumps, but have also reduced the threat to the pool from the sunshine and it is now well on the way to being full.
It really has been all hands on deck – our daughter Oda has arrived from LA to bring a much needed creative touch to the interiors – and we’re hugely grateful to artist Ed for dreaming up the idea of our new logo and to Tim for his design genius in jointly producing something very special. We hope you like it.
We’re tweaking the stars which form the constellation of Cassiopeia and will be recreating the same pattern on our limestone deck of calçada cobbles in front of the main building.
Ex-BBC audio whizz Pete Emmerson has been staying with us too – editing and mastering the first few weeks of our wine podcast which we’ll be launching really soon – and lending a hand on the building site and with the landscaping.
But above (and beyond) the call of duty...John Rourke returned, swapping his car-load of strimmers for click-floor partner-in-crime Tony...and the two of them set about one of the biggest tasks to be keeping us up at night.
I’ve dabbled with click floors for the guesthouse bathrooms, but the cork boards for our mezzanines required another level of skill and dedication.
I’d say they nailed it, but they actually hammered it...and levered it, and tweaked it and fiddled it... and created beautiful floors that we are hugely proud of.
They’ll be back to finish the job next week, and I might push my luck and ask about skirting boards! Thank you sooo much guys.
Everything is starting to take shape, but as April ticks towards May...and more volunteers are preparing to arrive to help...we’re confident we can get this thing done and get this lodge open.
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The only problem – and huge concern that fills us with fear as well as frustration – is the licensing part of the project.
Our architect has joined the crew of the Mary Celeste and left us drifting in our hour of need...three weeks of ghosting has left us panicked that we won’t be able to open for the summer and raise the income we need to start paying back our loan.
It’s a good time and an energising time...but we’re not completely out of the eucalyptus woods yet.
Things are certainly happening...I had to go through photographs and the diary simply to remember all the stuff which has been done since my last despatch...and that’s a very good thing.
We have stairs in both apartments and the metal handrail makers will be back on Monday to measure up the safety barriers; the cork floors have arrived; the pool pump is in, and its concrete structure has been prepped for its final pebbly layer which is due next week.
The discovery that our infinity pool overflow tank was too shallow required some quick cement-block action, but that ended well.
The water infrastructure has taken a couple of major steps forward towards flowing – even if our key borehole has for some strange reason stopped working right now and our house supply is dwindling (well, I did want the tank empty in order to paint it with a drinking water seal anyway!).
The solar pump, on neighbour Daniel’s land, is now bringing irrigation canal water hundreds of meters up the valley to mix in with our salty borehole supply (when available); and the house and panel rainwater capture system is almost finished...just in time for the summer drought.
We need about 60,000 litres of mixed and treated water by next Thursday...but that requires electricity to run the pumps and the softener...and clean tanks to store it in.
I messed up on the tank front by asking for soil to be piled onto the sides without properly reinforcing the tank first needing some extra bulldozer hours to undo and redo that job.
And the power grid appears to require the kind of focussed attention not supplied by the occasional drop-ins by the electrician checking on his worker.
At least we found the electrical cable that connects the current guesthouse.
You may remember months of random digging, detective work and the unsuccessful deployment of Niels’ 1980s metal detector to track down the power cable before it reaches the house...and save us a huge rewiring job.
Some carefully selected hand-digging uncovered the illusive little blighter...to great acclaim and relief all round.
That means we can now seamlessly integrate everything into the new system.
Ana celebrated yet another 29th birthday and her morning birthday sandwich illustrated the gift we both want...in fact it’s the same thing I wanted for my birthday...oh, and it’s what we both asked Father Christmas for as well...DOORS AND WINDOWS.
It’s a small thing to ask. No, actually it’s a large thing to ask...and require before anything can be effectively done inside the new buildings...but we did order them last year.
The promised deadline keeps slipping...please, please, please can it be this week??
While our daughter Oda has introduced a new family rule that birthday sandwiches need to be edible, I gambled on the current intermittent fasting regime of “no food before midday” to get away with mixing cheese and corn tortilla, fishpaste, carrot and cucumber with cake decorations.
After two consecutive years of proper surprise trips to Atlantic Islands (Madeira and then the Açores) I totally blindsided my wife this year by not taking her anywhere!
She didn’t expect that!
It wasn’t that much of a surprise...given that we have so many things on the Post-It note wall, but thankfully dinner was more palatable than my sandwich.
We’ve been meaning to go to the fine dining experience place nearest to us – the Michelin mentioned Näperõn in Odeceixe – and at least that was something of an unexpected element of a birthday which also involved a visit to the aptly named Birthday Beach.
It was great...carefully thought through and created “moments” with a great wine list.
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Of course the absence of doors and windows hasn’t stopped us cracking on with the interiors...we haven’t got time to waste.
We finally managed to wrestle the cork oak planks – heft from our ancient fallen tree – from the local carpentry shop.
After weeks of waiting it was a pretty disappointing job, but we transported them down to Ben in nearby Aljezur for him to weave some magic and turn these scratched and scraped, slightly warped planks into a stunning 2m long bar and some fabulous bathroom vanities.
He selected the best of the bunch – the rest will be a possible wine rack and a couple of tables which we will turn our own hands to.
We still have to work out a good solution for the countertop legs, but the stunning wood will be an amazing addition to all the bathrooms and we will mount handmade pottery bowls as sinks.
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Our most recent acquisition trips to the Algarve took us to the workshop of Leonel Telo Cerâmica up the mountains of Monchique.
Leonel was so enthused about the project he started making the first sink before we’d even left the shop!
I made a little video of stage one of the process: do check it out!
The Facebook Marketplace runs also resulted in the collection of two huge electrical cable spools which we’ll convert to dining tables, old iron farming tools we’ll turn into coffee tables and a beautiful old crockery dresser for the main building.
Slowly, slowly we’re collecting some beautiful things and Ana is spending hours poring over chairs and poolside furniture, umbrellas, crockery and décor.
In the race against time that is our hillside, everything we plant from here on in is going to be a challenge, but with water on its way and power coming for the pumps soon we will be turning our attention to irrigation once again.
Hundreds of metres of drip-pipes and a new submersible pump and floating platform for the lake will hopefully help us keep our hedge of two hundred olives alive...and the ones on the hill...and the lavender...and the fruit trees...and...
...and why am I still writing when we have sooooooo much to do.
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