Property 9 – I am afraid there are no photos of this property, it was so wrong and the rain was so heavy, we didn’t bother, but the story to get there is worth a mention. It is important to consider just how cold and wet we were by now, Maria was starting to show signs of wishing she had never met us and longing that she was back in her cosy warm office.
We drove for about 20 minutes before setting off down a dirt track, running between some large open fields, as we progressed down the track; the puddles were turning into pools and very nearly small lakes. I was driving gingerly through each one as I really didn’t want to get stuck, remember we were in a reasonably high off the ground Hyundai, which was comical really as Maria and Paulo, in the little Saxo was gone way off in the distance, well we assume it was in the distance we couldn’t see it, we smiled at the thought that perhaps it had disappeared under the water in one of these pools we were driving through. Perhaps we had driven over the top of them?
A while later we realised they were quite safe, thank goodness, they pulled up near a medium sized farm, and pointed to the house we were trying to see, it was in the middle of a field and we think that maybe they had decided that we had lost interest as they had to wait for us to catch up and that their little car was at the end of it tether, certainly it seemed that Maria was.
The house looked very bland, it didn’t look anything Portuguese, I guess I could best describe it as looking like one of those grey concrete houses you would normally see in the cities of Scotland, like Dundee. It came with around 20 acres, which looked all very flat and uninteresting, what the hell would we do with 20 acres, I ask you. So it was a no.
Much to Maria’s disgust I think, Paulo declared there was one other property not too far away that they had remembered and as we were this way he would like us to see it. Reluctantly we agreed, as much as we wanted to look, it had been a very long day; we were all very cold, very wet and very tired. You can imagine by now, we were asking some real serious questions like,”What the hell are we doing”.
We maneuvered the 2 cars about and set off back down the river, sorry I mean track. It seemed to take even longer to get back to the main road and the guys from Remax had shot off again in the ever amazing little Saxo and were waiting for us, wondering if we had got lost. Anyway all back safe on the tarmac we set off for this extra property.
Property 8 [Photo] – This property was very different to anything we had seen to date. Maria and Paulo wanted to show us something at the other end of the spectrum within our budget. The house was of a fairly modern design and totally ready to move into, however the location was less than ideal, it was very close to quite a main road, although the main roads here are more like a side road in an urban area of the UK. It was overlooked by what looked like animal slaughter farm, I am sure it wasn’t but it did feel like it and we didn’t like that at all, but let’s look anyway.
The garden was adequate, but only adequate it did not inspire us at all. The house was lovely inside, had many beautiful features, like a marble staircase. The garage area was strangely as large if not larger than the house and it looked like the current owners has been using it as a living area, not surprising looking at the size. As I said it was very different but really not what we wanted, so we didn’t stay for long.
By now we were beginning to get tired, this was our third day and it was mid afternoon, the rain seemed to be relentless and of course with the wet we all were starting to get cold, but based on what we had agreed back at the office we knew there was just one more property on the agenda for the day, so hopefully it wouldn’t be too far and then we could say no more for this trip and have tomorrow our last full day free to perhaps do some sightseeing and maybe have a bit of a lay in and a more restful day. Bliss!
Note: Now. At this point, we also realised that perhaps we didn’t want anything that was already habitable, well habitable within our price range as every property we had seen where it was habitable we were mentally ripping down all the internals and redesigning. So may be we should think about building something. Anyway we have plenty of time to think about that.
Property 7 [Photo] – The property was in a lovely area, fairly remote but not too far from neighbours, it was a short distance from a village, over a very pretty little bridge and down a short dirt track through a fairly dense wooded area.
The first thing that noticeable was that a few of the trees were showing signs of burning, they were quite black in places, although it looked like whatever it was had happened a while ago. The track opened up to reveal an old farm building that looked like it had been a ruin, but the owner had started to renovate, but only to the point of raising the walls and putting on a new roof, but was this as a result of a fire, it didn’t look like it but our suspicions were raised.
The plot of land that came with the build was about an acre, but totally flat and devoid of any plants or trees, so fine for planting, but very uninteresting and little opportunity to build any character in. On inspection of the building we noticed a distinct crack on the end wall, which the owner had tried to disguise, not very well, I might add. Whilst interesting was not what we were looking for.
Note: This property does become a significant place in our adventure in the coming months, for various reasons. It was at this point we think that we realised that whatever we did end up buying, if we ever did, the land would have to have some sort of character e. not flat and boring.
Property 6 [Photos] – We drove out of Castelo Branco towards the west for around 15 minutes, it was still raining but there were short periods where the rain eased and luckily as we pulled up on the plot, the rain stopped, however the ground was quite soft under foot. There was an interesting little cottage on the plot, which looked like it had a newish extension, this while it was nice on the inside; to me it did give the property a strange look.
Teresa was quite keen on this property; it had a reasonable amount of land, slightly odd in shape, a few fruit trees, mainly apples and the cottage still had a bit of a ruin attached, so scope for more development. It also had the advantage and interesting quirk, of at the village end of the land; there was a second ruin, which had a door and window to the main high street in the village. Just too highlight if the village had more that 25 properties and saw more that 5 cars a week it would have been a busy day. This gave a further bit of scope for future development.
The cottage was connected to the electric and had the advantage of mains water, borehole supply and a well. It was interesting property and had potential, but it was still very early days and we knew we have a lot more to look at and from what we had seen to date we knew we could get the sort of thing we wanted for our money, more importantly it was becoming clearer what we did want.
We jumped back into our Hyundai ix35 and followed Maria and Paulo in their little Saxo, how nimble and rapid those little cars are, so trying to keep up as best we could we set off again. Not knowing, we thought we were on our way to the next property on the list, but nope, before we knew it we were pulling into a tiny car park around the back if the Remax office. We managed to squeeze our rather larger vehicle into a suitable space.
It was just coming up to 12 o’clock; we were told ok we will see you at 2:00pm, back at the office. Oh! Right! This was our first and I can assure you not our last experience of the Portuguese style of living, 2 hour plus lunches, etc. It all sounds ok to me and again what we expected, but when it happens it’s just so alien.
So not knowing the town or area or much language we ended up in the local Pingo Doce, a supermarket chain a bit like our co-operatives where but it did have a small cafeteria a bit like our Tesco’s. So squaring up to the challenge of trying to order a lunch in Portuguese and about 15 minutes practice on what to say we picked up our trays and ordered, only to get the reply of “Do you what chips with that” Do I need to say more!
So suitably fed and watered and making use of the facilities, which were something else I can tell you, plus a further lengthy visit to a nearby café for a coffee, it’s amazing how long you can make an espresso coffee last. I have to highlight at this point that in Portugal, particularly in the area we are in the concept of a large latte or Starbucks is only something the locals may have seen on television if they had one, or in a national paper.
We headed back to the Remax office. After prizing the car out of the car park, we set off following the two little demons in the Saxo, we turned on the motorway (A23) it was still toll free and headed off to the north. We seemed to be driving for hours; in reality it was about 45 minutes before we came to the next property.
For day 3 we had arranged to meet Maria @ Remax in Castelo Branco about an hour away from the hotel but in the other direction this time. I say arranged! I use that work very loosely, as I said in an earlier blog posting we were determined to get away from the “instant gratification” of the UK, but this was extreme. It was so laid back it was ridiculous, I commented to Teresa, let’s just hope there is a Maria and a Remax, as it was all, “Well just call in about 9:30 and we will see what we can do! Don’t worry we will have what you want”. How did she know that? We hadn’t told her anything, well not really, only what we thought we might spend, but even that was vague.
We got up and the heavens had opened, the rain was pouring down, we had seen rain in the past few days but nothing like this. We knew it rains in Portugal, especially at this time of year, but this was just incredible. Anyway we are British, we know about rain, so after the usual breakfast we set of for Castelo Branco.
It took just over the hour to get to Castelo Branco on the Motorway (A23). It’s worth noting that at this time the motorways that we were using were still free, e.g. no tolls, the Portuguese government had installed some new fangled fully electronic toll system, but due to the elections had not switched anything on yet, well so we hoped. We found a place to park and 9:30 on the dot we entered the Remax office.
After a short wait we were introduced to Maria and a guy named Paulo who we were later to discover was Maria’s husband. We spent about an hour or so, outlining our thoughts, as rough as they were, but they certainly seemed to understand what we were on about and started thumbing though bulging level arch binders, full of details of varying plots / properties. A number were extracted for us to review. How many will we be able to see? Very much like a couple of days early 4 seemed to be a good number; you can cope with 4 or 5 in day. Much more than that and they might all mix in together when trying to recall the details. We selected 4 and set off at high speed in our car following and trying to keep up with Paulo and Maria in their well-used Citroën Saxo.
Day 2 was originally planned as a rest day, we had thought one day looking, one day resting, one day looking, etc, just so we could pace ourselves and got some site seeing as well, but just before leaving the UK, a property had come up on GekkoPortugal via Facebook, which looked extremely interesting, so a last minute email before we left we arranged to visit it on the Tuesday.
Property 5 – [Photos] We arranged to meet the estate agent at the gates of a cemetery just off the motorway (A23). It all seemed a little peculiar the estate agent was a German lady, a very nice German Lady, but meeting a German Estate agent in Portugal outside a grave yard, well! Anyway the agent joined us in our car and off to the forest we drove, about half an hour later we turned onto a dirt track and drove for a further 15 minutes along a pine tree lined dirt track until we came across the house complete with 2 street lights, huh! How? What! Huh! The agent explained that in Portugal the local councils were obliged to provide street lighting wherever a house is built, but it did seem weird.
The house was lovely, again typically Portuguese with some lovely views. Two old ladies who were sisters apparently owned it but it was too much for them to manage these days. There were some new power windmills on the hill opposite, you know those great big metal things, which while many people would find this a problem, we actually quite liked them, there was little or no noise and they were somewhat hypnotic.
There were a couple of orange trees just outside the house, along with about 70 olive trees. We were both very impressed; the thought of our own olives and being able to pick our own fresh oranges was a real winner. It also reminded us that one of the more important things on our tick list was the requirement for fruit trees of some sort. The house was great, very sound, we inspected the roof space, where the ladies had been storing potatoes, so it was nicely boarded out and very dry. There were two good storage areas under the main living area, but again we were mentally ripping out the inside to open up the whole space.
This was a winner, exactly the type of thing we where looking for and we could afford it, just one thing initially concerned us and that was could we manage 70 olive trees especially as they were all planted down a reasonably steep embankment.
It was then when Teresa was surveying one of the open terrace areas, said “We could put a nice swimming pool here” the estate agent proclaimed “Yes and you will probably get a grant to help with the construction”. Huh, tell us more? Yes she said so if there is a forest fire the helicopters could swoop down and use the water”. Ring, Ring, screams, flashing lights, yes every type of alarm started ringing, water, helicopters, fire. It was then it all became apparent; of course we were in the middle of a forest. So however much we liked it, insurance, huh that would be a laugh! We were later to discover that the region we were in was known locally as “The Fire Zone”.
After returning to the Grave Yard we said goodbye to the agent, but asked her to let us know if anyone else was interested as despite everything this was our new favorite.
We spent the rest of the day driving around the area, beautiful was not enough to describe the area, and the views and scenery were just outstanding. We found our way round to those windmills I wrote about earlier and managed to pick the house out on the other side of the valley. Remote it certainly was, surrounded by trees it certainly was, but the risk of fire was just too much.
We returned to the hotel, a little down, but still very optimistic on the whole project, after all we are still only on our first exploratory trip and we expect it will take us up to 3 years to find the right place and we still liked Sarah’s plot we had seem the day before and we still has another day of visiting planned for the next day.
