We're really going though I do keep pinching myself in case I am dreaming!
We depart this green and pleasant land on May 6th, boarding the 12:15 ferry from Dover to Callais in a Rover 75 with our most treasured possessions parted from the majority of our belongings as they will hopefully turn up at the appointed time and place.
We decided a while ago we would take a few days to drive over, having driven across most of France a couple of years ago, we want a relaxed journey with time to explore a few new places. So we decided that our first stop would be Rouen, then onto Bordeaux for the night, the third stop will be Salamanca in Spain which looks like a beautiful city for a wander round. The final two nights we're going to Elvas, a lovely hotel, a converted convent in the medieval walled town. Then three hours on the road and we'll be home!
Monday, 25 February 2013
Time to start sorting things out.
Well sooner or later it's down to what to take and what to offload, first on the agenda was my clothes. To simplify I brought the clothing down stairs (easier not to put things back on the rail). Three considerations, is it worth keeping? Will I actually wear it again? And is it suitable for Portugal? With this in mind I ended up with three quarters of a bag to throw away and I bag for others to pick through anything left goes to charity.
That tackled it was onto books, mostly the big books shelved downstairs, it worked out about a fifty/fifty split, so we have a unit of books for people to take if they want all others will go to our local charity book shop. I have a huge pile of paperbacks to wade through but once again I have a criteria, would anyone one really want to read it, we want to have some that people can borrow, have I got a duplicates on my iPad and is it in good condition? Pretty much all the books we're taking have been packed up, many of those we're not taking have been dispatched elsewhere.
Another weekend (we only have about 6 more free), another bout of clearing and packing. Saturdays job was the spare room which has been sorted and cleaned, partly for moving reasons but mostly because we have a friend staying over next weekend. Today we cleared the shed, dumped the crap and I packed up two more boxes of breakables.
And so the mountain of boxes grows as our life in this house diminishes, I wander round with a song in my head "Should it stay or should it go?".
That tackled it was onto books, mostly the big books shelved downstairs, it worked out about a fifty/fifty split, so we have a unit of books for people to take if they want all others will go to our local charity book shop. I have a huge pile of paperbacks to wade through but once again I have a criteria, would anyone one really want to read it, we want to have some that people can borrow, have I got a duplicates on my iPad and is it in good condition? Pretty much all the books we're taking have been packed up, many of those we're not taking have been dispatched elsewhere.
Another weekend (we only have about 6 more free), another bout of clearing and packing. Saturdays job was the spare room which has been sorted and cleaned, partly for moving reasons but mostly because we have a friend staying over next weekend. Today we cleared the shed, dumped the crap and I packed up two more boxes of breakables.
And so the mountain of boxes grows as our life in this house diminishes, I wander round with a song in my head "Should it stay or should it go?".
Friday, 8 February 2013
Just a fabulous week!
Or how to get a water account set up in your name on a Tuesday when the house has two names and you speak little Portuguese!
But I'll start with Sunday, we arrived at the hotel a little later than planned as I managed to give wrong directions to it again, so after a brief tour of the less salubrious part of Faro we got back on the right road. While I was checking us in Phil got the drinks and being a little hyper we slightly over did it and paid for it the next morning.
Breakfast done we headed out to the shops to buy essentials for the house, new bedding, a TV and DVD player, wood, charcoal, food and other odds and sods. It was a good job we bought the bedding as our house has no air bricks and no ventilation (Portuguese houses just don't have them). When we opened up the house which had been sealed windows and shutters we found the condensation had played it's hand, all the bedding was damp and a pervading smell of damp ran through each room. Never ones to be deterred on went the heaters we'd bought last visit, windows thrown open, bedding out onto the line, mattress onto the veranda, lavender incense set to burn. We put our tea maker on and as I unpacked Phil lit the fire in the kitchen. All too soon we had to bring the mattress back in and set it close to a heater as the temperature dropped with the sun. Time to eat so we lit the BBQ (churrasco) and had a burger and some salad before pressing on with sorting the bedroom, we got the bed made with the new bed linen, set up the TV and DVD as our good friends arrived with an indoor table and chairs along with a couple of bottles of wine, well it would be rude not to drink it, so we sat and chatted for an hour catching up on our lives.
We sat out a little longer before snuggling down to our first night in our new home.
We got up to see the sunrise, I admit I went back to bed for an hour as it was pretty chilly. Waking up and being able to sit out on the veranda first thing is something I have dreamed of since we decided it was the house for us, the reality more than matched the dream.
First morning
So up and about early we headed off into Odemira to sort out the water account and pick up the keys for our postbox with a bit of a detour via the beach at Zambujeira.
Beach in the morning.
On arrival in Odemira we head to our favourite cafe there and have second breakfast and coffee, first being a small bowl of cereal, before walking up the hill to the Water authority building, which proves how unfit we both are. We know where we're going having been before, when they couldn't transfer the account because it was paid up to the end of the year. I have all the right paper work ready and with the help of a translation app we hand it over and wait, and wait, and wait. The ownership document and last owners bill are passed around many people several times, after around three quarters of an hour it is gestured that we should follow one of the women, I suggest to Phil on the way upstairs that the problem is the last owner renamed the house. After fifteen minutes in another office Phil puts this suggestion to them, both women nod profusely. The correct paper work is found and we head downstairs again, one of the women has decided we're ok and tries out her English on us we have a bit of a giggle and converse as much as we can. I pay and they ask me if I have met the water man who operates the irrigation system, we thought we had but had been misinformed, finally a man who speaks English turns up and we conclude business. We decide on another coffee before heading to the Correios (Post Office). This is relatively simple but involves waiting, we hand over our €4.50 and we have keys to our post box. We head to the supermarket for bread, cheese and ham before returning to the beach.
The rest of a week is dream like, breakfasts on the veranda, days wandering from beach to beach. On the Wednesday we had a lovely long lunch with our friends, Friday we went out for a stone steak, they bring you a hot stone and a raw steak which you cook at your table. Saturday we reciprocated and had our friends over for an afternoon of nibbles, spaghetti and wine. All too soon it was time to pack.
Saturday morning we stripped the bed and put the bedding into ventilated boxes, shut up the shutters but left a window in each of the four main rooms slightly open with cardboard to stop them flapping around, hopefully the house will be dry and aired when we return in twelve weeks time! It was sad to have to leave and come back to the UK to pay more rent when we own a house, to not seeing Egrets from the veranda in the morning, not hearing the ocean crash in the distance or the goat bells clunging. But our heads are full of what we want to do, ideas, plans, plots, strategies, marketing...
And after all we have but twelve weeks to sort and pack and do innumerable, well stuff!
And we have this to look forward too!
But I'll start with Sunday, we arrived at the hotel a little later than planned as I managed to give wrong directions to it again, so after a brief tour of the less salubrious part of Faro we got back on the right road. While I was checking us in Phil got the drinks and being a little hyper we slightly over did it and paid for it the next morning.
Breakfast done we headed out to the shops to buy essentials for the house, new bedding, a TV and DVD player, wood, charcoal, food and other odds and sods. It was a good job we bought the bedding as our house has no air bricks and no ventilation (Portuguese houses just don't have them). When we opened up the house which had been sealed windows and shutters we found the condensation had played it's hand, all the bedding was damp and a pervading smell of damp ran through each room. Never ones to be deterred on went the heaters we'd bought last visit, windows thrown open, bedding out onto the line, mattress onto the veranda, lavender incense set to burn. We put our tea maker on and as I unpacked Phil lit the fire in the kitchen. All too soon we had to bring the mattress back in and set it close to a heater as the temperature dropped with the sun. Time to eat so we lit the BBQ (churrasco) and had a burger and some salad before pressing on with sorting the bedroom, we got the bed made with the new bed linen, set up the TV and DVD as our good friends arrived with an indoor table and chairs along with a couple of bottles of wine, well it would be rude not to drink it, so we sat and chatted for an hour catching up on our lives.
We sat out a little longer before snuggling down to our first night in our new home.
We got up to see the sunrise, I admit I went back to bed for an hour as it was pretty chilly. Waking up and being able to sit out on the veranda first thing is something I have dreamed of since we decided it was the house for us, the reality more than matched the dream.
First morning
Beach in the morning.
On arrival in Odemira we head to our favourite cafe there and have second breakfast and coffee, first being a small bowl of cereal, before walking up the hill to the Water authority building, which proves how unfit we both are. We know where we're going having been before, when they couldn't transfer the account because it was paid up to the end of the year. I have all the right paper work ready and with the help of a translation app we hand it over and wait, and wait, and wait. The ownership document and last owners bill are passed around many people several times, after around three quarters of an hour it is gestured that we should follow one of the women, I suggest to Phil on the way upstairs that the problem is the last owner renamed the house. After fifteen minutes in another office Phil puts this suggestion to them, both women nod profusely. The correct paper work is found and we head downstairs again, one of the women has decided we're ok and tries out her English on us we have a bit of a giggle and converse as much as we can. I pay and they ask me if I have met the water man who operates the irrigation system, we thought we had but had been misinformed, finally a man who speaks English turns up and we conclude business. We decide on another coffee before heading to the Correios (Post Office). This is relatively simple but involves waiting, we hand over our €4.50 and we have keys to our post box. We head to the supermarket for bread, cheese and ham before returning to the beach.
The rest of a week is dream like, breakfasts on the veranda, days wandering from beach to beach. On the Wednesday we had a lovely long lunch with our friends, Friday we went out for a stone steak, they bring you a hot stone and a raw steak which you cook at your table. Saturday we reciprocated and had our friends over for an afternoon of nibbles, spaghetti and wine. All too soon it was time to pack.
Saturday morning we stripped the bed and put the bedding into ventilated boxes, shut up the shutters but left a window in each of the four main rooms slightly open with cardboard to stop them flapping around, hopefully the house will be dry and aired when we return in twelve weeks time! It was sad to have to leave and come back to the UK to pay more rent when we own a house, to not seeing Egrets from the veranda in the morning, not hearing the ocean crash in the distance or the goat bells clunging. But our heads are full of what we want to do, ideas, plans, plots, strategies, marketing...
And after all we have but twelve weeks to sort and pack and do innumerable, well stuff!
And we have this to look forward too!
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