We had already arranged before we left England to meet up with Sarah from P.P.Property in the town of Alvaiázere which was about an hour or so from the hotel. We went down for breakfast reasonably early, and from what we could determine it seemed that we might be the only people staying in the hotel, breakfast was brought to us on a tray! There was all the usual suspects on the tray, but there were some rather interesting looking croissants, when bitten into they contained a custard type filling and I have to say we both agreed they where the most delicious thing we had eaten, ever I think.
We arrived in Alvaiázere about 10:30 am and soon found P.P.Property’s office, a small very typical Portuguese type shop right in the middle of the town, simple, nothing fancy, just a couple of desks and chairs, but then again what else did they need. After a brief discussion in the office and determining that Sarah’s partner had a rather painful problem with his teeth and was hastily trying to ascertain the services of a local dentist, therefore was unable to really look after their very young baby, it was decided that the baby would come with us.
We all set off Teresa and I following Sarah and the baby in their car to the first of 4 properties. Don’t ask me to try and remember the exact locations of each of the 4 as we seem to be driving all over the place, down main roads, round tight corners, down tiny country lanes and dirt tracks, but we did take some photos so we could remember, a few I will share with you.
Property 1 – [Photos] A small stone building on an L shaped piece of land, about the size we felt would be manageable. The lady in the house next door, I say house but it wasn’t a lot different to the building we were looking at, was very pleased to see us, as I think it was her that was trying to sell the land and she was desperate to sell and reap the benefits (Euro’s) we were to see this quite a lot as we visited various plots. The plot was very interesting, the building had potential, access was OK, but rights over entry seemed a bit iffy, but it was very barren of trees and fruits so lacking in character. It was the first so did give us a base line.
Property 2 – [Photos] This property was inhabited, the lady of the house was very keen to demonstrate to us that it had running water and electric lights and despite Sarah’s best endeavors the owner persisted in following us around to show all that was included. The house was built on a very steep hill and most of the land was separate across a track, which gave access to the neighbours. At the bottom of the garden, which was down a long embankment there was another half building, well it was a ruin and it was a whole building but the property only owned half! This is not uncommon in Portugal as over the year’s families build housing for the children and buildings and land are sold as they feel, quite often meaning that buildings are left to ruin or are split. The house was typically Portuguese and habitable, but we were immediately, mentally, pulling down walls and opening up the rooms. Although the house was ok, the land was weird and bearing in mind maintenance it was a no, but again gave us a slightly different view of what we could afford.
We stopped for coffee and cakes in a small village and for the first time was able to sample a pastel de nata, a small egg custard type cake that Mark, one of the people on our Portuguese language course had recommended. Suitably refreshed and baby fed and changed we set off again.
Property 3 – [Photos] This was a much larger and a lot more remote. The plot was huge, but very flat; it had a stone ruin at one end, but like the first property was very barren and had little character. Access was lovely, down a long lane that winded around down the hill; the views were ok, but limited. However like all the properties we were visiting, I wanted to see everything, being a large plot Sarah wanted to show us but didn’t want to drag the baby around, so Teresa seemed to be volunteered as a surrogate mother for a period whilst I and Sarah tracked all the way round the property including scrambling through the brambles at the far end to gain some height to get the view. We later discovered that Sarah and her partner actually were the current owners of this plot; they were very good in not letting us know at the time, it was only as this was a favorite on the day that they then let us know.
Property 4 – [Photos] We had picked this one before we left the UK just because it seemed to have a number of interesting buildings, which we thought, may give us some different ideas. Sarah was a little reluctant but as we had insisted we visited the plot. Well we soon realized why, it was totally wrong. Yes it did have a lot and I mean a lot of different buildings, all run down. Whilst once we got to the top of the plot there were some lovely views, it would have taken us 20 years to clear the plot of derelict buildings and what would we do with all the rubble, it would cost us a fortune just to get rid of it. So a definite no no.
After a short review back at the P.P.Property offices ensuring we knew where we all stood, e.g. we are not buying this trip and this is our first day visiting plots we drove back to the Hotel. The mood in the car was high, was impressed with what we had seen and there was a clear winner on the day which was the 3rd property. Although not perfect it did tick a lot of our boxes.
Again we eat in the Hotel, there was another couple this time but it was still very quiet. The upside was we got the attention, the down side was the food at dinner was not the best, In fact it would be true to say it was pretty rubbish, but it was food. We returned to our room to try and email but again the Internet connection to the hotel was out, so back to linking up via the phone.
One thing we had noted at this point and is worth while anybody who is thinking of doing something similar, Portugal is generally a poor country, and many of the Portuguese see English people as rich, of course we know this is not true, but in comparison to them I guess we are, so be careful as soon as the locals know you are English the Euros will rise! You will have to accept the fact that you may pay over the odds, unless you gain a lot of local knowledge. Saying this even at probably inflated prices it is still cheap and if you are happy with what you pay, then the deal is a good one. There are many websites that will guide you, research estate agent sites they are fairly realistic as they need to try and get a sale locally as well as abroad.
It was time for the off. The cool box was loaded with bacon and eggs, we had what to most would have been a month’s supply of freshly ground coffee, which by the way was spreading the most wonderful aroma around in the car. With all the other bits and bobs, we felt we may need. Everything fitted quite nicely into the boot of our Hyundai ix35. Fitting everything in the boot was important as we knew we couldn’t make the whole journey in one go and we didn’t know if we would find a hotel for the night, so had packed blankets and pillows so if the worst came to the worst we could sleep in the car, so really needed to make sure we had some room.
We also make a couple of crucial decisions before we set off. We were going to enjoy ourselves, try to be as relaxed as possible after all it should be a holiday as well, in fact it was really a holiday with just a fact finding trip built in, giving us a little more of a purpose to the holiday. We only wanted to see what possibilities there were and whatever happened we would not buy anything this trip.
The ferry crossing was great, although at night we did manage to get some fairly comfortable seats and managed to get a little sleep. We arrived in Dieppe around 3:00am and set the Sat Nav for Proença-a-Nova and off we went. Most cars turned left and headed out on the main road, our Sat Nav told us to go right and head for the center of town, huh! Oh well maybe they are going to different places to us. Through town we went and was soon heading off towards Tours, which we knew was right.
We drove for a couple of hours and were able to maintain a good speed with just the occasional slow down as we went through a town. Just before daybreak we thought it was time for coffee, (do you detect a theme yet?) I was kind of hoping to find one of those picnic areas that we had always seen on and used on the motorways in previous years but we hadn’t seen any yet, somewhat odd but never mind, there’s a lay-by that will do, we are probably not down far enough yet. Out came the stove, on with the water, on with the milk, coffee in the cafetiere and a few minutes later we were back in the car with our large insulated mugs of freshly brewed coffee and back on our way, leaving a somewhat bemused French lorry driver observing us in the lay-by.
We drove for around another hour and came up on the motorway, at last we thought we can get some real miles or should I say Kilometres under our belt. After about 10 minutes the Sat Nav was telling us to turn off the motorway again. What! This is stupid; shall I ignore it or what? The decision was made ignore the stupid thing, carry on the motorway. Well for the next period the Sat Nav still kept telling us to turn off the motorway, I can’t think this is right, when Teresa suddenly said, “You haven’t told it to ignore motorways have you?”. “No of course not” I retorted. Hum, but maybe I did tell it to ignore toll roads! Yep you guessed it! A quick reprogram on the settings and it announced “Keep on this Road (the motorway) for the next 250 miles…
The rest of the day went well, stopping around 9:00am and frying up eggs and bacon along with the yes you got it more coffee. We stopped every couple of hours for more coffee, it was great apart from making us take a break as they say when driving, the coffee also helped in keeping awake.
-oOo-
As we got to mid afternoon around 3:00pm we had, had enough, the time between breaks was getting less so maybe we should call it quits for the day. We had done really well as well, we had calculated that the whole journey was about 1100 miles and we were approaching the 600 mark.
A quick check of the map and we were approaching Bayonne which was just on the French / Spanish border, so enough. 15 minutes further on we turned off the motorway as almost as we pulled off we sighted a Formula 1, tired and hungry we said well let’s just go for it. We were in luck, as we hoped there were rooms available and 36 Euros for the night it was a steal. As we came off the roundabout towards the hotel we noticed a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) so a known quantity, it was a quick check in, a stroll down to KFC for some, well what was the French version of KFC which we renamed as KFP ( Kentucky Fried Pigeon) you guessed it not much meat.
We were back in the F1 by 5:45pm and after a quick email or 2 (they had free wifi) and setting of the alarm for 3:00am as we still had about 500 miles to do, without realising we were in the land of nod by 6:30pm.
We were up at 3:00am, a quick shower etc and back on the road by 3:30am. The rest of the journey continued in the same vein, stopping every couple of hours for coffee and cooking up a feast and when we needed food.
We hit the Portuguese border early morning and the clouds that we has seen since day break began to break and the sun came out, welcoming us to the country, a good sign, things were feeling right. A couple more stops for the, yes you got it proverbial large cup of freshly brewed Columbian. If you have read this far, I guess its only fair to share with you the type of coffee that has us hooked.
Around lunch the Sat Nav announced “your destination is on the right” and sure enough there behind a high rather pink wall was the hotel. Impressed with the accuracy of the Sat Nav we felt that checking in now was a bit early so spent the next 3 hours just touring around the area. We both agreed that it was exactly the type of area we were looking for and it felt very Portuguese! Don’t ask what that is, but it felt it. Late in the afternoon we reset the Sat Nav again and allowed it to take us back to the hotel. Checking in was interesting as they spoke no English and of course the only Portuguese we knew was Hello, Good-bye and Thank you, but we managed to check in and found our room. The hotel was supposed to have wifi, it did but it didn’t work! After about an hour or trying to make the hotel staff understand my problem, I gave up and used my mobile to connect up my laptop and email and managed to fire off the required emails to the estate agent to let them know we would be with them some time tomorrow.
After a couple of Sagres beers and a somewhat disappointing meal in the hotel restaurant it was time for bed.
The thought of a 2 day drive didn’t faze us too much as we had completed many a long drive including the South of France when the children were young, but of course we are a little older now and would we be able to cope? There were other considerations too that had to be thought about, you know the important things in life like, breakfast and most important of all coffee. How were we going to get our regular rather large cups of freshly brewed coffee? We should probably take some bottled water and of course plenty of fizzy drinks. We had seen that Halfords the UK Car and cycle accessory chain had an offer on a cool box that you could plug into the mains or the car, now there was an idea, which would keep our food fresh. A purchase was made. We also brought a small camping type stove that we could boil water.
As the date for departure approached, supplies were purchased, eggs, bacon, water, frying pan, kettle, mugs, milk etc and most important of all the coffee, freshly purchased from Whittards and ground to cafetiere grade.
We’re ready to go, I think!
Did I mention coffee? 
Ok so things are starting to get serious now. Maybe we might be able to do something, but what about the language, should we learn some, but we don’t know if Portugal is right for us! Will we be able to, we don’t do learning! Are there any courses? OK break out the Google again. Well that’s good there is a basic course in Brighton starting September, just a year, not too pricey, let’s do it.
Click done! Oh heck what have we started?
Well we did go, and at the start we quite enjoyed it, there was a good mix of people, all ages, all there for different reasons, which was interesting in its self. As the year progressed it did become harder and I think towards the end we both found it a little too hard / fast for us so we did bail when there was about 5 lessons to go. On the positive we did learn quite a lot although we may not have realised at the time, as we were later to find as we visited Portugal more, we actually understood a lot more than we thought. Did we do it a bit early? I think maybe we did, but I also think if we had left it till the next year it would have been too late.
One thing we did find that apart from the really rural areas, most Portuguese have a reasonable handle on English anyway. Many times we would endeavor to communicate in Portuguese only to have the reply returned in near perfect English. I still think it was a good thing to do, but not as important as I thought. However saying that the locals did always appreciate and where always a lot more incline to more helpful when we did at least try.
The wonderful world of the internet also provides a whole number of useful tools, Google scores again with its translation service which will also speak the result. Another very useful site is memorise.
