Day 3 – Property 10

Property 10 [Photos] – I don’t remember how long we drove; I don’t think it was long and I was desperately trying to keep track of where we were going. Over all of the three days I was shouting out place names as we went and Teresa was busily trying to note them down on scraps of paper, no mean feat I can tell you as we drove over all kinds of terrain and not really knowing how to pronounce or spell the places that I was shouting out, plus all the writing implements kept seeming running out of ink.

Eventually we drove though a small village and turned down a lane between two houses, I had to fold the door mirrors in at one point as it was particularly narrow. We were soon pulling up on the side of the track and Paulo guided us into a position we could park, as you can imagine it was quite tight, very muddy and there was a small river, well stream of water running down the side of the track. Paulo had got out, complete with umbrella as by now Maria was absolutely flatly refusing to get out the car.

It was extremely difficult to see the plot as now the fog had come down to such a point that you couldn’t see more than 20 feet (6.096Mtrs) in front of you, why would anyone want to live here! Well we walked down a short track and came upon a small hut with 2 doors, Paulo retrieved some keys that were hanging in a nearby tree and we inspected the inside of the building. It was extremely interesting. There were two rooms, one was purely being used for agricultural purposes and the other was reasonably clear, it had a bed, table and a few odd bits of furniture. No one actual lived here but it was obvious that the owner was not opposed to the occasional overnight stay. Interesting, as there was no water, electric, or ‘facilities’, you know what I mean.

Paulo escorted us around the two upper terraces, which were covered in grapevines; there were also about 3 Cherry trees, several fig trees, an Orange tree, an almond tree and several Olive trees. Well this was more like it, despite being soaked through to the skin, cold and being cuddled around the plot by Paulo, surprised it was me and not Teresa?

We then walked down a further small path, down a slope, passed another almond tree across a small stream (It was a real stream, not as result of the current weather) via a small bridge to an area which was covered with every sort of fruit tree you could want, Lemons, Oranges, Mandarins, Clementines, Pomegranates, Figs, Olives, Grapevines, Quince, Sharron Fruit, OMG (Oh My God) as they say these days this is so cool, so the sort of place we really wanted. Teresa and I just looked at each other and felt like a couple of teenagers, whilst trying to keep our composure in front of Paulo. We couldn’t talk but we were both thinking the same thing. Wow!

Paulo went on to explain that we would be able to get permission to build a house on the top terraces but not where all the fruit trees were as this area was designated agricultural land, but that seemed fine to us. We walked back to where we had parked and thanked Paulo and Maria for the day.

We followed them in the car back to the motorway (A23) and pulled over at the first service area, to say our goodbyes, we thanked them again and said we would be in contact soon and let them know what we wanted to do, but we did really like the last one, shame it was so foggy and wet.

This entry was posted in 2011, Project Portugal. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply