I’m sure most of you have forgotten by now that this is a blog about building a house. I myself have wanted to forget that this is a blog about building a house. But this has all changed this week. I’m back on the case.
The story so far in brief:
Way back in 2007 I saw this house and wanted to be sure my plans for it would be accepted by council before I bought it. So I hooked up with a builder (we shall call him Fatface) and an architect (let’s call him Moron) and they together, via reams of bullshit, took 9 months to put a projecto de architectura together. Meanwhile I learnt Portuguese and subsequently discovered that the delay was due to Fatface telling Moron that I wasn’t going to pay. So I got on a plane the next day with the cash and knocked on the architect’s door. The project was finished that afternoon.
The council approved the project and I bought the house. I found a new architect and a new engineer for the projecto de especialidades. The engineer said the project[1] would take two weeks and I said pigs might fly. In two weeks we submitted the project and in about four months it was approved.
Meanwhile I had been cleaning up, digging holes, removing an oven in preparation for the build. I auditioned 8 builders for the job. Only one had any idea of the house I wanted to build, as I had picked them off a site in an aldeia do xisto in the Serra da Lousã and that’s exactly the style of my place. But they would have travel time of at least an hour each way, and for this wanted to charge a premium. Fair enough. I waited, I researched, I shopped around some more.
Some of the builders really made me laugh. When I explained I wanted to use meia- canudos for the roof, one showed me a straight 100 yr old tiles-on-battens example as in a shed. Believe me, I know the Portuguese for rockwool, ceiling, water barrier and even pumpkin: but maybe he didn’t. I’d take a look at jobs they’d done in stone and shout quel horreur! Awful cement mortar/ mismatched stone and styles/ uninsulated/ simply hideous things I saw. Clearly I’m not in the right area for decent builders. I will admit though, I did scoff when someone told me the project was too hard, too complicated for these guys. Mmm.
Then came in the great big ugly global financial crisis and stole half my money. The project was off, or delayed, at least until I knew what would happen next. I started the blog, hoping it might pay some living expenses. It didn’t. A year went by and I applied for a one year extension on the building licence. Still no sign of any money growing on the trees. I waited, procrastinated. I had the money to start the project but not to finish it. Even if I could finish the house there would be no one to buy it because the housing market was a dying duck.
I then applied for another 6 months on the building licence and in December 2010, this expired. This is what I had been dreading. Project death. It had cost in the end about €1500 including flights and hire cars and whatnot. But mostly it cost me in time and energy and heartache.
But when the council decided not to give me another extension (even the last six months was outside the legislation) the camara’s architect and I talked about a renovation. The basic rule of a renovation is that nothing of the outside is altered. The house cannot be enlarged, you can’t change the height, you can’t use any cement structures, you can’t make new openings for windows or doors.
And frankly what a relief. I had been clinging onto the project for dear life, but its weight was pulling me under. Once or twice people had suggested I simplify the design, but I couldn’t see how. The project had to be ripped from my womb first. Now I had to redesign, and it could only get simpler, cheaper, and more fundamental.
Along came Penfold, the surfer, writer, illustrator, philosopher, carpenter, renovator, restorer builder. And sort of a neighbour. As we took the tour through my house of horrors his face showed the same distress of the others who had gone before. Other builders usually mumbled and agreed to send me a quote or something, and some amateur builders criticised this or that, (because criticism makes you smarter, you know). One “builder” mistook a french drain for bathroom plumbing and another, practically in tears, told me the project was too big, because I was so very small.
But at last I was talking to someone who wasn’t overwhelmed by a need to condescend, but instead by the need to construct! Finally someone who could see what I had been trying to do but who could simplify it, under the terms of a renovation, and especially in terms of getting the project finished. He added instead of subtracted.
Brothers and sisters I have seen the light! Like all good ideas, the solution is so obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of it sooner. This should and could have been a renovation all along. The new plan means that I get to do more of the work myself (good) than would be possible in a building-project. It’s more likely it’ll be just me most of the time, plus a labourer for assistant jobs. And a licenced builder consulting.
Let’s look at the plans:
It’s massively simpler than before. All existing stone walls remain. The floors and the roof stay. No more new windows and door openings. So, anyone want to buy 68 windows and doors ripped from a french chateaux?
It’s not the house I dreamt of anymore. I’ve lost a 45m2 living room and a bedroom. It’s no way as luxurious a floor plan as I had – and it will not fetch the same sale price. It probably won’t satisfy its financial reason-to-be. But it’s do-able, and in these tough times, I’m happy just to be motivated again.
[1] An architecture project involves only the physical appearance of the house, as the name suggests. The specialised project covers the plans for water and sanitation, gas, electricity, the structure, roof, thermal & acoustics plus any additional things like solar, universal access, grey water systems, sprinkler systems, universal access etc.
You know how I feel about old stones. I can’t keep away. I wanted to visit Citânia de Briteiros since I first came to Portugal as a tourist in… 2006? But after getting rooted in Cú de Judas it just seemed too far away. Braga wasn’t too far though. Go figure.
I always thought Citânia de Briteiros was an early middle ages Celtic settlement but it is nothing of the kind. Part of what makes it interesting is that archaeologists, past and present, don’t really agree on who the people living there were. Plus, despite being studied for more than a century there is still a large amount of mystery and much yet to be discovered.
As many archaeological sites are, Briteiros is beautiful. It helped that we were there in the late afternoon when the soft light and long shadows added to the quietly abandoned atmosphere. For me, what else makes it beautiful is the masonry work on some of the houses; semi square stones of similar size are set on the diagonal in a circular beehive-like way. I’ve never seen that style before. Perhaps it is engineeringly obsolete, but the light granite diamonds look rather pretty.
The story is this. From 1874 Francisco Martins Sarmento began excavating the site every year which led him to buying the land and discovering most of what is now above ground today. He restored some of the walls and recreated two of the round houses (but apparently he wasn’t happy with the results). Francisco was a pioneer of scientific photography in Portugal, so there exists a set of pre-20th century photos. Very cool. As well he left us a topographical study done in 1892, and tonnes of notes and a book, so there’s a good record of what was initially discovered. The site was named a national monument in 1910 – so therefore Francisco’s find was recognised as genuine and historically important.
circular remains of houses in a family compound
During the 1930′s to the 60′s more of the site was excavated and a lot was restored; I’m really dubious about restoring archaeological sites, even if it’s just putting back what was found originally. There are some horrible restorations to ancient ruins in the world. They don’t look right. Like what’s that thing at the base of Conimbriga meant to be? Was it a forum which now looks more like a basketball court? On the other hand there’s Abu Simbel in Egypt, saved from the dammed waters of the Nile in the 60′s and astonishingly reassembled 65 metres uphill, surely as great a feat as building the colossal thing in the first place.
But I digress. More excavations were made at Citânia de Briteiros in the 1970′s and then more detailed studies were done during 2002-2006. The issue now is how to apply Francisco’s findings with what has since been learnt and with current scientific approaches.
Francisco, for example, was adamant that the Castro Culture, whose persons built and occupied Briteiros, was not of Celtic origin, but current theorists disagree. They believe that this extended tribe were possibly from the first wave of Celtic expansion in Europe around 800 BC and by settling in Portugal became more isolated from other Celts thus forming their own distinctive culture and traditions. It is thought that were about 100 oppida (hill forts) built in Northern Portugal and about 50 have been discovered.
holes for inserting vertical struts?
Each community was completely self-sufficient, not only in terms of food supply but of manufacturing as well. Each of the family compounds at Briteiros included a work shed or shop which might be a iron age forge, or a timber mill, a pottery, or a place where grains from wheat and rye crops were processed into flours. However there is also evidence of trading from as far away as Carthage on the African Mediterranean coast.
broken quern stones for milling cereals
What makes Briteiros distinctive from other hill forts is its size. The population is imagined to be somewhere between 600 and 1500, comprising of 150 families. Archaeological evidence such as jewellery and grooming products suggest there was a wealthy ruling elite. Remarkable too is the presence of a public space where a council may have met. It’s thought that Citânia de Briteiros was one of the longest living hill forts of the Castro Culture. Most oppida of the Castro Culture are thought to have been abandoned by 2nd century AD, when had been occupied by the Romans and in the end used mostly for religious purposes. Briteiros, however, was possibly populated up to the 5th Century, well after the Romans have gone and up to the arrival of German barbarians, who came without a war, a rape or a pillage and set us all an example by learning the local language. Despite not apparently being quite as bad as the Romans it looks like everyone ran away and Briteiros was abandoned.
(I have to note, under the subject What Did The Romans Ever Do For Us, that Briteiros has rather notable plumbing. While not every house had a water supply, there was certainly ample public water and exceptionally lovely drainage of the streets. And what about the two bathhouses? Steam rooms fired by underground furnaces, with cold water baths. Sounds pretty Roman to me.)
the large town hall in centre bg, with built in benches for the councillors to sit on
It can’t have been in bad condition when 500 or so years later it was populated again by a middle-aged crew. This bunch added a church and started burials – the Castros had been cremation-oriented and they kept the ashes under the family compound’s walls, or in urns in the front yard.
house with a front courtyard
That’s sort of the end of the Briteiros story. Now for question time. While on our tour, my fellow archaeologist/geologists and I (The One, Tiny Art Director) disagreed on several aspects on the site. How high were the walls originally? – Francisco has the reconstructed walls at about two metres high, and that seems wrong. There are Celtic dwellings with little 1 metre high walls (and less) and many round houses (a worldwide phenomenon from Mongolia to Central Africa, Australia & Scotland) have foot-high walls in stone with the upper part in clay or wattle & daub.
Why are most of the wall heights level? If the walls were two metres high then surely the existing wall heights would vary, now that they are less than a metre. I put forward that ruined sites are a excellent source of stone for builder hunter-gatherers or thieves as they are known today. Perhaps they were tidy, responsible thieves who took a course from each of the walls, leaving the next course completely intact and even. But then again this site was excavated, so therefore much of the walls must have been underground… maybe the site (underground) was levelled to the tops of most of the walls and any stones poking above-ground were rolled downhill/ pinched / offloaded off-site by the medieval JCB. Also, these houses are really tiny, barely enough room for two beds, really, these people could have done with some interior design help. I’m guessing proto-historic cooking took up heaps of space so was one shed of the family compound devoted to cooking and not to the grandparents or the horses?
If you know the answers
or have a Briteiros anecdote,
or can correct me on something
or have questions of your own
go ahead and put it in the comments.
I’d be much obliged.
Our questions may have been answered if we hadn’t stupidly forgotten to go to the Francisco Martins Sarmento Museum, where all the little trinkets, iron spear heads and engraved stone pieces are kept. And it probably would have saved me months of research afterwards. Oh well, sometimes the call of cake is just too strong, or maybe there were other pressing matters on our itinerary. Like Guimarães, for instance. Like the Pousada-Mosteiro de Santa Marinha da Costa and the Monte de Penha of Guimarães too. You’ll have to read the next posts for explanation of these glories.
Portugal is so full of lovely things to discover. It’s hard, but someone‘s got to do it.
On my return journey from Figueira da Foz on the N111 a while back I caught a fleeting glimpse of the words Doces Conventuais which made me hit the brakes and for the Wookie to bash his head on the dashboard. Where I’m from, Doces Conventuais means Emergency Stop.
One might be forgiven for mistaking the cafés on the roadside of the N111 at Tentúgal for ordinary truckie stops. There are about 5 or 6 altogether on a strip of about 500m. A few are plain ordinary looking cafés and the others have slightly fancier facades. All sell the famous Pastéis de Tentúgal but there are two that offer rather more than just that.
For a start, the first one, A Pousadinha, has 5 different flavours of empada. Wha? An empada is a little pie, and we of Australian-Kiwi-English ancestry love pies. Normally empadas come in chicken flavour only, so to find a variety is really something in itself. None of the flavours is beef, or beef and kidney, or beef and onion, or beef onion bacon and cheese, but let’s not quibble. Let’s be happy there are duck pies, and piglet pies, and seafood pies. Tentúgal discovery number one.
O Afonso
A bit further up the road towards Coimbra there’s a fancier sign with a large parking area for O Afonso, and this place is a revelation. Are we in Greenwich Village? Covent Garden? Double Bay? There is gourmet stuff everywhere: teas, cheeses, local wines, sweet exotica in nice bags with gold labels. The displays, photographic wallpaper and furniture are like, groovy and expensive. Lo and behold, interior design, right here, in the middle of nowhere.
And then, OMG look what’s on offer to eat. I myself am obliged to a Pastel de Tentúgal, but The One has to pace up and down the counter several times umming and ahhing as everything here seems new and original and extraordinarily delicious. Our yummies are served with a proper tea pot and a gorgeous coffee cup and saucer á la Caldas da Rainha.
And THEN the empresaria, Dona Margarida, invites me back-stage, to the kitchen. Ya. For the uninitiated, doces conventuais are pastries invented and created by nuns (and brothers) in convents (or monastries), often centuries-old recipes (the Tentúgals come originally from a closed Carmelite convent of the 16th Century). Frequently these recipes are kept secret (in this case because the convent is not open to outsiders, the nuns speak with no one) and they were given as welcoming gifts in honour of visiting bishopry or benefactors, as well as being stashed in the secret cavity of the nun’s bibles for midnight snackage.
The Tentúgals came to prominence in the 19th century, as the convent was running out of money they sold their goodies at the convent gates. They became popular with students at nearby Coimbra university, and I suppose, as the convent closed, the sweets then became commercialised. Pastéis de Tentúgal can be found around the country at the more serious fabrico proprio pastelarias, but for the real experience you have to come here.
The village of Tentúgal is a turn off the N111, and what a little treasure it is. It’s so cute that it made The One angry. “I want to live here” he said, tearfully. It’s the way little villages should be. What makes it so is that it’s really old, first referred to in print in 980 but then taken under the wing and developed in the 11th century by a dude named Dom Sesnando. A lot of old buildings have stayed. This Sesnando Davides, by the way, built castles at Coimbra, Lousã, Montemor-o-Velho, Penacova and Penela. He’s a guy that got things happening.
I was trying to find the 16th century Carmelite convent – which is tucked away in a little square and distinguishable by a checked hat on its roof. (If you do want to see inside the convent, hot tip, the Dona of Casa Armenio is good to call upon, or else start with Margarida at O Afonso, or even there’s an office opposite the Igreja Misericórdia. Actually it’s hard to find someone who will not want to oblige in Tentúgal). But en route to the convent there are a few very impressive little churches worth looking in at. The first is the Igreja da Misericórdia, built in 1583. The Casa da Misericórdia in Tentúgal, I was told by the local historian, was the second to be established after Lisbon. The Casa is one of the longest running charitable institutions in the world, establish by Queen Leonor in 1498 who recognised the need for someone to look after Lisbon’s orphans, widows, druggies and useless. And they also run Portugal’s national lottery and have a special place in our hearts for the hope they give to all of us.
The church is very simple and the reredos is carved from wood – the figures are quite unsophisticated but still hold some colour: each scene depicts a story from the bible for the illiterate masses.
Similarly simple and decorated in wood is the Capela Nossa Senhora dos Olivais. It is very cute indeed with naïve and humble statuary.
Now it’s time for dinner. Casa Armenio has something of a reputation for its roast duck and I’m not sure that anyone orders anything else when they come here. The One, who is something of a connoisseur of rissóis de leitão (piglet rissoles, mate) was almost in tears again because Casa Armenio’s are that good. This is a damn fine restaurant. It has atmosphere and conviviality, it’s not pretentious but it feels a bit special, the food is excellent and we had to have three desserts. I’m tempted to say it’s my second favourite restaurant in Portugal (for the first favourite, see Braga). Tentúgal discovery number five.
leite creme at casa armenio
But where’s the gorgeous guesthouse? Anyone?
with thanks to emma and loz for making it all possible
Central Portugal is dotted with small mountain ranges that shelter isolated, intriguing and picturesque villages. Although it’s easy to imagine how remote most of Central Portugal must have been before the sealed roads of the mid-late 20th century, access to these particular villages must always have been considerably more difficult when you look at the mountainous slopes they have been built on, away from any major rivers and several kilometres from any of the larger, more established towns.
Many small communities had to have been completely self sufficient in this region, no doubt many across the whole country, but these villages are so much more isolated, and without any obvious advantages (other than the security brought by their height and their spectacular beauty) I can’t help speculate that their isolation served another purpose; as hideaways. I can’t find any evidence of this idea but I think about Jews and the Inquisition, or the more recent history of anyone avoiding Salazar or Franco and laying low in the hills of Central Portugal. Indeed, even today it would be an excellent place to abscond to.
Ghost towns quite blatantly have a life after death, just as the ruins of great civilisations inspire awe, even the simplest little abandoned village breathes a soft symphony of history and life. I think because they solicit more questions than they divulge secrets. Only the stones remain, undisturbed and slowly ageing, alone in the quiet forest.
It reminded me of Angkor, Cambodia, where the smaller, less famous temples, like Ta Prohm are overwhelmed by the growing forest, as though the buildings are being assimilated by the trees to become one organism.
The rural desertification of Portugal, generally characterised by young people leaving the countryside in search of work, is intensified here, as living conditions in these remote villages still seem somewhat medieval. The mountain villages that have already been restored and renovated by Portuguese and foreigners, have the luxury of telephones and electricity – but you can see in the untouched houses that remain in the same villages that without insulation summer and winter wouldn’t be too comfortable. The steep terrain would have meant herding goats and other livestock & farming the land very serious work. The houses are generally tiny and built deep into the ground, abutting other houses. Someone might argue that being on top of one another was an insulation of a kind – but all I see is damp and no privacy. It’s gorgeous and rustic, but the truth is there are easier places to live.
But these two villages Silveira de Baixo and Silveira da Cima actually seem grander and larger than the still-occupied and renovated villages of the Aldeias Do Xisto group. Silveira do Baixo has the ruins of a chapel, and the remaining dwellings are large and spread out over a wide area, rather than terraced. Certainly the forest seems to have re-claimed most of the terrain, and any agricultural land is difficult to make out, but these houses look as though they would have had gardens, and were spaced by smaller stone out houses for animals and storage.
So why were these abandoned while the other villages live on? In Ireland in the latter half of the 19th century, famine was a major precursor to whole villages packing up and shipping out. Catastrophe can end a village’s life. Was the water supply contaminated, or reduced due to drought? Could the village been invaded by marauding Danes who slaughtered, ravaged and burnt the village to the ground like in the Swedish town Sjöstad, Närke in 1260. The same happened in the French village Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, when occupying Germans massacred the village’s population. The entire area around Chernobyl is home to several villages disbanded due to contamination. Dam building, the invasion of fat highways or other reclamation of land by the state are other reasons.
However, it’s not too much of a mystery why, sadly, these villages are abandoned. Families getting older with no kids who want to stay, a gradual erosion of trading connections as better roads were put in other places and job opportunities arose elsewhere. I’d say the introduction of electricity and the exclusion of access to it for some of these villages may have sounded the death nell for them. As the larger towns grew and access to better health care became available people moved to where they could access it. The chance to immigrate, particularly revelant to Portugal and Spain during the 60′s and 70′s, following other family members to better opportunities. It’s all economic.
But times continue to change, and the fortunes of these villages might be reversed. The Aldeias do Xisto program has been very successful in renewing interest in these remote villages as a valuable cultural asset. Foreigners continue to seek out seclusion and peace where they can hope to live more simply, sustainably and healthily. Once on a visit to a profoundly expensive English lawyer I was brushed aside to make way for clients who were buying an entire abandoned village. It can be done, and eco-tourism is the future.
But for now, we are happy to stumble over the stones of our own secret ancient cities, even if they are only 50 years forgotten. What more is there than intrigue and imagination, and the misty breath of village ghosts?
Hey here’s a little message for HGTV House Hunter’s International viewers who have found my blog! And for any others that have stumbled in accidentally just at this moment: I have just appeared (10:30pm New York Thursday Night Time) on a cable TV show about my search for a house in Portugal. Congratulations to you all and thanks for googling.
I suppose you’re wondering if I am still alive and whether I have built a house yet? Yes and no. But there’s far more to the story than that and every gory detail can be found right here on the blog. In fact, you can start on the epic true story of before I bought the house at the beginning.
Let’s backtrack a little. Bought a house in 2007. I scrapped around for a year applying for building permission, digging holes, planting things to eat, accumulating pets and looking for a builder. Then, come around November 2008, the globalfinancialcrisis tornado hit and over the next 4 months blew away almost half of my money. There was no clicking my heels and wishing I was back in Kansas, or Oz.
The plan then was to sit tight, work hard on the writing and pray for a financial miracle.
I worked hard on the blog, and the blog grew and grew and then grew some more! People became insanely passionate: finding at last a safe place to share their pasteis de nata desires!
But, alas. So far, sharing-the-love of Portugal has not made me rich, nor therefore built me a house. I’ve extended my building licence twice, fortunately because the council people do understand that no one has any money anymore, least of all us foreigners. Portugal was hit very hard by the crisis and will take a long time to recover. But on the other hand, the Portuguese are so familiar with tough times that this is a really nice place to be poorer. A part of this story is how I’ve learned to live on less and how this translates into living a greener, friendlier and healthier life. Caring about the environment might be a by-product of having less money, or it might come from living in the countryside in a less stressed, self-obsessed existence. Whatever the reasons, the alternative life to wanting, consuming and polluting is viable growing here in Portugal, in a strong way driven by the expat community and by switched-on local authorities. Without a cent in the bank, we still feel like we will survive. Hope makes you rich.
But enough about money, love and hope, let’s talk about me. Instead of building I have been adventuring, checking out secret corners of this sunny country and digging below the surface of the big towns. If you're planning on doing the same, it really pays to shop around for car and/or camper rental, as finding the hidden nooks and beauties of rural Portugal is really better done by private vehicle. Campervan holidays are hugely popular here. As my Portuguese has improved I’ve been able to understand more about the Portuguese psyche, and what makes this country tick. Along the way I´ve been eating, drinking and watching football (that’s soccer just between you and me).
As with any journey, it’s not all roses. Portugal is a bureaucratic country, frustrating to do business in and make an honest buck. Portuguese businesses are way behind when it comes to service, the internet and marketing. And this is the conundrum. We love this place because work does not come first. We love this place because the people aren’t mad with stress and rage. We love this place because it has creativity and originality. It has pride and passion. Like a ruined house, it has beautiful potential.
On the personal front, I’ve had health dramas which I am now almost completely recovered from. My pets, Mao and Wookie, also no strangers to bumps in the road, are also happy, fun and as cuddly as ever. I have fallen madly in love and moved house (and now luxuriate in the sound of a flushing toilet and the hot water that gushes from the kitchen sink). There are rumours of roof building, of annexe finishing and even of surprise weddings…
What more would you like to hear? What piques your curiosity? Why not start in the archive or the category section to read more? Or cruise the gorgeous gallery of photos. Would you like to contribute or get involved somehow? You might be interested in being a sponsor. You can advertise on my blog, and reach thousands of loyal Porty-philes. You can make a donation to keep the wheels oiled and the pets fed, and at the very least you can make comments and share your stories. I’d love to hear from you.
Recent trip to Porto reminded me of all the things I like about it. First stop, as usual,
1. Bolos de Berlim at Leitaria Da Quinta do Paço
These are so terrifyingly good that it makes me shake like a junkie just looking at the pictures.
2. Rua Da Galeria de Paris
While in Vitória make a detour for this street full of art nouveau charm and the restaurante/bar Galeria de Paris. Also some cool shops and Made in Portugal.
3. Alvaro Siza’s Serralves Foundation Museum Contemporary Art
Great art gallery in stunning Siza building, surrounded by a sculpture studded gardens and the Casa de Serralves, another museum with a Jaques Tati air.
4. Palácio da Bolsa
A truly remarkable bit of neo-classical mish-mash architecture, take the tour so you don’t miss the Salão Arabe. I also adore the bar of the Telegrafo restaurant, with its gorgeous purple/blue velvet furniture against blue tiling. Luscious. Great for a dessert and a glass of expensive port.
5. Les Cafes Grandes
The Majestic (although ever so touristy) and the Brasileira are gems and will fix you up with a decent coffee too.
Just love the space ship. No idea if it´s still a functioning stadium. Please advise.
8. While on funky modern architecture, I love the airport.
9. São Bento train station.
Knockout tiles, suitably old fashioned layout. The way all train stations should be.
10. Espinho.
No, not in Porto, but your first stop south. The thunderous roar of the Atlantic and the restaurant BaiaSol (on the seafront) which has twice saved my life with its prawn omelete. Oh yeah.
Oh yes there’s plenty more to like about Porto. The Eiffel Bridge. Casa da Musica. Ikea. Let me know your favourites.
The other night I was standing outside at half past two in the morning waiting for a sick Wookie to finish tearing up the grass, stop vomiting and come inside. It was a clear, still night, cooler than usual but not yet cold. The sky was bright with the moonlight and there was complete silence except for The Wookie chewing his cud.
And there it was, from across the valley came the unmistakable call of the veado, the deer that roam the Serra da Lousã.
The One had said he’d been hearing them calling a few nights before, but I didn’t believe him – September is too early for the mating season and anyway, I had never heard them in Cú de Judas, where deer and silence were plentiful.
But sure enough, there it was again: a mooing that was not entirely sad but full of longing. A longing for deer love, I’ve no doubt.
So the following night we grabbed the cameras (The One’s new mobile phone actually, and the remaining camera of mine not destroyed by the freak wave in last week’s post) and we headed for the hills. Dusk, as all hunters know, is the best time to catch deer, and sure enough as soon as we reached the top of the Serra da Lousã the boys were braying away enough to make me sceptical once more that the sound was perhaps actually the gearing down of the wind turbines. I mean, it just couldn’t be that they could be so close, or so many of them, all calling at once.
We dropped the car and set out on foot and almost immediately I saw what could have been a Y-shaped stump of a tree. Except it was a female deer, standing very still…watching me. As I moved closer, still deerly disbelieving, I saw the male’s enormous antlers twist around and they both made a move camera left. And then they were gone. Before I’d even drawn my mju to take a shot.
certainly not a shot taken by me, no, but this is the dude I´m talking about
Well that just whet our appetites for more venison really: we spent the next hour and a half tiptoeing around the pine forest after horny mooing wildebeest, who were relentlessly just over the next ridge. Finally, in the pitch dark, without the moonlight able to penetrate the forest and the mountain’s chilling temperature dulling the spirit, I gave up. There was no way my little camera could handle the low light anyway and using the flash would be way too slow for these sprightly antelope.
Anyone who’s done a bit of wildlife pursuit will know how compelling it is. Bird watching is all very well, but there’s something very special about the presence of big animals. You feel humbled. I feel a profound respect for them. Perhaps it’s partly because I’m Australian and deer of any kind seem very exotic, but the veado of the Serra da Lousã are awesome animals. Firstly they are big, as fit and statuesque as a horse. Add two square metres of antler and you have a beast as spectacular and mesmerizing as a sighting of Pegasus.
That anyone would want to shoot the things, well, make no mistake on where I stand on hunting. In Australia, the rabbit and the fox are introduced species and destructive vermin, decimating native and engangered wildlife. Kangaroos too require culling by the million each year, and make a lovely purse or carpaccio. Hunters, and furriers of the world come on down, but leave the gratuitous slaughter of nice animals elsewhere to killer whales. Who doesn’t laugh when a hunter gets shot?
this was taken by me, and yes it is a sleeping bullwinkle in sweden
On our return home, we saw another deer crossing the road in front of us – the usual way to have a deer experience in the Serra da Lousã. They are so robust and proud an animal that, like a kangaroo, they are likely just to stand there and stare you down rather than get out the way of an oncoming vehicle. But this spotty dude, possibly a roe deer or a young red, knew we had cameras and didn’t care for posing. So he sauntered off while we mere mortals fumbled with our instruments and swore.
Still twinkling with the thrill of having just been in their presence, The One then discovered while surfing the subject that our local pub the Palácio da Lousã is running a photo competition on the very subject!!! It’s not just us who are turned on by the mating season – they are even offering tours! I doubt they’ll be giving me a sneak preview of the pictures entered so far, but maybe after the 15th November I might get access to some of the pics for the facebook page. Naturally we are now determined to win – given the prizes are accommodation and dinner at what I think is a very lovely hotel (and I already have plenty of photos to prove it).
Okay now I guess it’s time to fess up – I have moved to the other side of the mountain. Don´t panic, punters, Emma’s House in Portugal is still there, it’s not being sold or even abandoned in any permanent way. It’s just that I’ve had an offer of a flushing toilet and plumbing in the kitchen and a handsome lump in the bed… did I say lump, sorry I meant love. And who can resist a flushing toilet?
For those that remember that this is a blog about building, thank you. The absence of mortar in my hands does burn at my heart. But the Great Financial Crisis will not be told and euros have not started falling from the sky as I have wished, so therefore dramatic erections of the scaffolding kind have not materialised at Cú de Judas. Actually that’s a lie. While I’ve been waiting for sufficient funds, the neighbours have built one house, one al-fresco kitchen and dining room with views, one garage, one adega, one storage shed and some ugly furniture cut with a chainsaw from an ancient chestnut tree. While the men at my scaffolding hire place are forgetting my name, their upcoming summer holidays are being fully funded by my neighbours. Maybe I am being melodramatic about the palace next door, and maybe there is a hint of jealousy finding its way out through my ramblings. Let’s remember they have very little cash too – but these people just get on with it, really rather putting me to shame with my permissions and engineers design talk.
But don’t give up on me yet, there is a plan. I have to pick up my building licence before the end of the year or that will be the end of it. The council have been very patient but the ruin waits for no woman. One more winter of being rained upon and it will turn to soup. So a roof, at least, she will have. The dream is yet alive. Building action, albeit on a modest scale, will be resuming shortly, and I just can’t wait to get dirty again.
mao's new step-pet
And although Wookie and Mao have integrated themselves happily and I am a ga-ga with amor, I do miss my little hell hole. I liked cooking over an open fire and shopping in the garden for a meal. I miss my weirdo neighbours and their good humour and generosity. I miss my cafés and the fish truck and my routines. I miss my solitude.
On the other hand, the grass really does look greener on this side of the mountain. I’m in a stunning little village with a new cast of crazy neighbours. There’s the concelho of Lousã to show you, castles, palacetes, outdoorsy adventure and hidden local treasures to explore. It’s a whole new angle to the adventure. Stay tuned.
We learn as we go. We learn as we grow. A woman is not an island, I’ve discovered. And there’s something very grown about allowing yourself to be loved.
My life is a house
You crawl through the window
slip across the floor and into the reception room.
You enter the place
Of endless persuasion
like a knock on the door when there’s ten or more things to do
Real estate is a bitch. Earlier this year I thought it might be good to have a swing at this business and make my hobby of house-perving into a money earner. House perving is an art. I have a friend who has drawn up architectural plans and with full landscaping designs based on what he would do if his random-house-favourite in Bondi happened to fall into his hands one day. No doubt the neighbours think he´s been sizing up the place for a robbery, for the last four years, or perhaps they have concluded, correctly, that he is simply a house pervert.
Anyway, back when I was looking for a house in 2007 I would meet lots of other people looking for a house … in cafés, at the markets, at the pousada juventude in Lousã… Central Portugal was teeming with foreigners on holiday-house-perves. Now I meet none. This is not the only reason my brief foray into real estate has not been a success. Firstly, I broke the golden rule of being a pseudo estate agent: I became emotionally involved with the clients. They became my friends. I liked their houses, I liked their dogs, I liked them. And we all know that a normal real estate person doesn´t do any gratuitous caring because in order to actually sell houses one must devote 110% of one´s soul to selling.
So back to being a fully-committed-builder-blogger it is for me…
But if you happen to thinking of following me in this crazy pastry-filled lazy life, and buying a house in Portugal, then I would like to share with you these three little house-gems I found. Three different ideas, three different concelhos, three different prices but with one thing in common. Three very nice honest owners who just want to move on.
Let´s start with this little beauty in Mosteiro, Pedrogão Grande. I discovered the cutsey little village of Mosteiro when I first moved here during my rampant Sunday drives. It´s tucked away in the middle of a quiet little forest, a short detour from the best bread kept secret of Vila Facaia. It´s a picturesque medium sized village with two cafés and and rather decent restaurant located at a flat grassed river beach with a charming bridge and plenty of shade. This village even has a bandstand (my dad just loved bandstands), and I strongly suspect it has recycling bins (which, believe-you-me is a clear sign of civilisation. I envy people who live in villages with recycling bins).
The house is for sale for €43k. For this price I can´t quite work out how Sergio is making any money out of it because it is a recently renovated stone cottage. OK maybe he inherited it and spent €39,000 doing it up. But let´s not look a gift horse in the mouth.´Tis indeed a charm-packed little two storey one bedder, with renovated bathroom and kitchen, heating in the ground floor kitchen, small walled patio for the barbie, pushbike, plants and winter woodpile. In other words, a low maintenance, with all the facilities, nothing more to spend, weekender and summer holiday house… about two minutes walk from the river pool with café, icecream and rather tempting looking restaurant.
The owner, Sergio, is a local schoolteacher and antiques collector. We met at the Figueiró Vinhos Velharias fair. So the house is filled with really nice furniture and interesting bits. This makes the place even more special, because it´s unusual for Portuguese who most often like their things new and shiny. The antiques work so nicely with the stone interior… well if it were me I´d be negotiating a price with contents included. Too easy.
The next one is the paradise I really wanted when I was looking but didn´t have the money for. It´s €55k, a 120m2 ruin on one hectare (10,000 m2 or almost 2 and a half acres, thank you sophie ), and if you can´t imagine that, well it´s about a 20 minute walk around the circumference and pretty much what you see in the pic above minus the background mountains). It´s located in a gobsmackingly beautiful valley about 5 minutes outside of Figueiró Dos Vinhos. Your nearest neighbours, about 1km away, would be the rather groovy dutch couple who run Quinta da Fonte, a nice eco-holiday type arrangement, which might give you some ideas about what to do with your place. One hectare of land has potential. You could plant more olives (there are already about 50), more fruit, or plants trees for timber. You could have sheep, horses (although the terrain is quite steep in places) or 5000 chickens. With no neighbours, you could do what you liked. The ruin itself begs for a spacious, passive solar, low impact, simple stone design. The water supply is ridiculously good, with a small river running through the property, two wells and about another 4 tanks. The last time I visited, Figueiró council were running “company” water along the road anyway. The electricity is about a 25m connection.
So peaceful, so beautiful… I think it´s a very precious little spot. You´d want to have at least another €70k to get the house done … but after that, it would be Gins and Tonic on the balcony overlooking the garden in perfect serenity for ever.
Option number three is actually three and four because there are two of them. They´re in Castaneira de Pêra, which is a little disneyland town created by the Mayor of Big Things. Castaneira is home to a Big Fake Grass Rat, Four Big Ugly Things on Roundabouts (on the bright side there are several Nice Big Old Mansions one Megalith Pink Magnolia) and one Very Big Pool. My very cool niece, when visiting, named the pool succintly: ”Mega Pool”.
Mega Pool, aka Praia das Rocas attracts hordes of sweaty punters from all about who are perfectly happy to queue for an hour before opening time in order to secure their resort style deckchair and table by the “beach” for the day. By “beach” I mean graduated sandy-coloured painted concrete and a wave machine – ´the biggest waves inland of the sea´, would you believe? The thousands come prepared with buckets & spades, lilos, eskies, hats & blow up crocodiles and they make a day of it. Actually they make a whole summer of it, as Castaneira´s cafés heave with the aprés-pool crowd.
But where the hell do they all stay? There are some tiny cabanas at the pool, so that sorts out about 16 people, there is one nice old house which sleeps about 10, two small but nice hotels and a medium sized camping ground. The masses I speak of come literally in their thousands… and here´s where Joe´s houses come into the picture.
A few years ago Joe, a civil engineer, built these two houses with his family´s future in mind. With one son a chef and Joe and his wife Mariza heading towards early retirement, he had the idea that at least someone in the family would fancy having a B&B, and Joe having seen the development of Castaneira since Praia das Rocas, saw the potential in it. He built two houses, both with two attic bedrooms with ensuite plus three more middle-floor bedrooms plus a ground floor apartment. The lounge, kitchen, dining and garages are all big and they have massive backyards with room for a pool. Both houses have been ducted for central heating, the living rooms already have closed fireplaces and the kitchens have chimneys. Natural light pours into the houses from all sides, there is double glazing and security shutters. The front door has a intercom system accessible on each level of the house. The houses are fully wired for all manner of telecoms, there is an outdoor dining area off the kitchen, plus the ground level barbecue area, smashing town views from most rooms, at least one bathroom on each level, landscaped gardens and, and, and… Gee it looks like the only thing Joe didn´t think of when building these places was to make them wheelchair accessible because as soon as they were 95% complete some jerk crashed his car into Joe´s and landed Joe in a wheelchair. Permanently. Paraplegic-Like. So now he can´t even get through the front door of his own houses, much less down the stairs. Shit and a half, I say to that.
Então, slight change of plans for the Ramos family then.
The 95% finished bit is a good thing. It´s just the interiors that are unfinished. There are no kitchens (plumbing of course is there, but you´d choose the look and arrangement) Ditto for the attic en-suites – plumbing, no fixtures. One house has floating timber floors and the other has unfinished concrete. The final final job will be yours. The ground floor apartment space in not enclosed. All the wiring and plumbing, and a bathroom, is in, but right now they look like outdoor entertainment/basement spaces. So hence, these are new-builds that leave room for your taste, and I like that. New places are all very convenient and clean but I inevitably want to rip out their ugly pine kitchens and start again. Just thanks that Joe has taste in bathroom appliances, because those I rather like: a bit luxy but not pretentious.
So let´s talk business here. One house is €175k and the other is €210k. Say you spend another €5k making them ready for business. During the summer you could have at least a monthly income of €1200 (based on a modest guess of 5 nights out of 7 of the two attic rooms @ €30ea /night). OK so the summer is only 2 months – but then there´s the apartment downstairs which can be rented out full time or you live in the apartment and rent out the 5 bedroom house upstairs. What I´m talking about is the potential of immediate income. I haven´t done all the research but what I see are full cafés and thousands of people and not thousands of places to stay. I would also say again loud and clear that you should not attempt doing business in Portugal without speaking the language. Your main clientele will still be Portuguese, not English-speaking foreigners. My gut tells me this is a goer, and let me tell you Mr Joe is no idiot either.
Fontainha and Mosteiro are listed with Chavetejo Imobiliaria LDA who are based in Tomar. The office number is + 351 249 32 77 00 but you know, every time I call it I get the answering machine and that really pisses me off. So what I suggest is that you call the mobiles of Derek +351 918 479 978 or Nicky +351 918 484 547. The best time to catch them is at 7:30am, after their two hour yoga session and just before 8am mass in Tomar.
I’ve got a thing for bath houses. While in Turkey I did my best to get a sweat, a steam, a scrub and a wet down everyday. I just think it’s the height of decadence, and cultural intimacy, to mix it with the locals in a watery way. And after communal bathing in Turkey, the Mid East, North Africa, Northern Europe, in Sydney and even once at the Paris Ritz I tend to think that the people of the world are much more at ease with nudity than is commonly thought. But I digress, because this post is about Spas, which are related to bathhouses in their water treatment way. And because there is an antique architectural element that attracts me to them both.
Caldas Da Rainha, the Hot Springs of the Queen, is a classic spa town. Spa towns always hint at a 19th century grandeur, where the monied would while away their days “taking the waters” and relaxing. These days the old spa towns are gracefully fading, and the ailing have moved on to detox and rehab. But the grand old hotels, gardens, tea rooms, and what used to be fashionable architecture, remain. Spa towns are quaint and gentle, and often very pretty. Caldas certainly is all of these things.
The Spa is a predominantly European phenomenon, but Katoomba in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney has exactly the personality I’m talking about. Cauterets in the French Pyrenees is a classic place, and I’ve been to a wonderful old pool/spas in Berlin and Stockholm. Luso in Portugal is also a favourite town of mine here, especially as the hospital-spa still offers many kinds of water treatments, like a “Vichy” hose down, steam inductions and a variety of strange massages. I’ve met delightful spa town in the colonies too. Dalat in Vietnam is a charming 19th century gem and I would imagine there might be a few ex-spas in India.
One day I’d love to do a tour of the great spas of Europe. I’d start in Budapest, certainly the bath capital of the world, and move south seeking them out in Switzerland and Austria. You can never be too clean.
Anyway back to Caldas… the first stop should be the hospital itself, located in two lovely old buildings just down from the main square. At the back of the main building is the gorgeous Nossa Senhora do Pópulo, which has a fabulous bell tower, and where patients can go to bolster their faith in modern medicine. Opposite the church and beside one of the many lovely Manueline palacetes in the back streets of Caldas, is the Hospital Museum. I can never resist a hospital museum, and although there’s nothing much macabre about this one it certainly reinforces the image of an olde worlde cleanliness and some hysterical hypochondriasis… fainting spells and smelling salts and that sort of thing. Quaint, rather.
Of course it made me feel like a lie down in a cool room followed by a good professional pummelling by Irmã Perpétua (or whoever the Portuguese equivalent of Swedish Helga might be). But alas! Unlike at Luso, the hospital isn’t open to people just-chucking-a-sickie – and seriously Caldas CM - this should change. Honestly they must have no idea how arduous being a tourist is and just how willingly we will shell out €15 to have someone in a white coat give us a rub down.
Actually it’s probably a good thing because there is really no time to waste if you want to see everything else that Caldas has got going on. The first thing you should start noticing is Caldas´ very special street signs. There aren’t many left these days so keep your eyes peeled, especially around the hospital area and along the park. The parque Dom Carlos I is gorgeous, with ponds and row boats and an excellent café/restaurant with loads of shaded outdoor seating. A wander around the José Malhoa Museum (naturalist / impressionist painter 1855-1933) inside the former park boat house is relaxing and mildly interesting. There’s also this enormous dilapidated building which they call the pavilões do parque, which appears to have been a former school. Stunning building, superb location and if this was Sydney it would have been turned into some seriously nice and expensive apartments by now. Looks like the pigeons will have it to themselves for a while longer.
Don’t let it get past midday or you’ll have missed the Caldas market. It’s on every day in Praça de Republica, right in the middle of things. It’s one of the nicest markets around, with the perfect balance of fresh veg, charcuterie, bread, sweets and stacks of different local handicrafts. But especially it has a spread of the famous ceramics of Caldas de Rainha. What you see at the market is not strictly Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro but it’s still fun and highly photogenic.
Just beside the market square is my favourite café in Caldas, Café Central. Here is a café as we knew them in the old country, a place that does proper lunch, as in, light meals with salad. The food is inventive and wholesome and there is serious gelato and cakes too. But it’s the interior design that does me. Like the Brasileira in Braga, it’s like the owner (I don’t know her name but she’s always there and I want to be her when I grow up) has done the most restrained renovation possible, simply restoring the original design and adding a fresh coat of paint and some new chairs. It’s a rejuvenation of art deco/ mid century elegance. It looks modern and vintage at the same time. Thoroughly divine.
And right outside the café is one of those unique street signs. Cute. On the same side of the square is Residencial Central which is where I like to stay. It’s a big homey oldie of course, run by the super welcoming Diogo and Fatima who have three great girls. Watch Diogo or that welcome drink will end up with you under the table. It’s the kind of hotel I’d like to live in, and it felt like I did. Still a bargain at €20 single, €35 double.
But the real reason I visit Caldas so often is to catch up with my mate Rafael. Caldas is a good place to get to know him, first in the Museu de Ceramica where you can see his work in context with the other wacky ceramicists of the era. Then at the Bordalo factory there’s another little museum which explains more specifically about Rafael’s life in Caldas. After that you can lose a couple of hours in the shop where there are new editions of bizarre giant fish and crab artworks, fresh copies of large scale commissions, figurines and of course cabbage things in all colours. But what else the factory produces is some of the most lovely table china I’ve ever seen. Opulent, classic, whimsical. Oranges, rabbits and palm trees. Funny and just pure elegance… and the most adorable little coffee cup sets in the world.
You’re bored? But there’s still the new cycling museum, Atelier-Museu António Duarte (1912-1998), some groovy Henry-Moore-like sculpture at Atelier-Museu João Fragoso (1913- 2000), the Museu Barato Feyo and yet more 20th century art at O Espaço da Concas. And a bunch of small interesting shops. And Mango. But never mind, you can always pop off to the beach at Foz de Arelho (20 minutes), a pleasant strip of golden sand and no swell to speak of, and if Caldas hasn’t tickled your cute inner pony enough you can clip clop up to Obidos (15 minutes) which will twee your tail off.
I was going to apologise for the lameness of the subject but I’ve just seen ‘primavera’ as the title for Miguel Esteves Cardoso’s column in Público today. Now I have to apologise for being so unoriginal.
But the thing is, the arrival of spring is indeed worth noting. As Sr Cardoso points out, the season of spring in Portugal is a true season, not just summer light. The charm of spring is that it definitively marks the end of the winter. OK that’s obvious, but its psychological effect is really significant. Quite suddenly this year, the sun has come out, I’m not wearing a coat and insects are everywhere. And the flowers! Spring has sprung!
That the malady named SAD (seasonal affective disorder) actually has been given a name (and what a dumb name) seems ridiculous to me. Of course winter makes you unhappy. Winter is miserable. Winter is bad for you. It’s cold, wet and dark. Winter should be renamed depressing. I concede that some things about winter can be nice, like a roaring fire, woollen scarves and hot chocolate or a warming whisky. And I do like snow, for an hour. But the rest of it totally sucks. I could tolerate winter in Sydney, because it’s not really winter, just summer again, watered down. We don’t need beanies or gloves, for instance. I hate beanies. If there are laws against wearing headscarves I think there should be laws against wearing beanies too. To me beanies represent something dangerous, oppressive and separatist. Beanies are a political statement.
And this winter has been the worst winter ever, according to my neighbours. Tia Maria says she has never seen a winter as long and cold and despicable as this one. You know it’s a bad winter when matches won’t light. This year the firelighters won’t light either. The vet told me we have had five days of sunshine since October. And not just a bad winter in Portugal either. Even the Swedes were complaining about the snow, still falling in April (just for me and the film crew). And Swedes are pretty tough.
So thank god that some buds have appeared on the bare trees at last, confirming what we were all quietly suspecting, that it’s not quite so cold as the week before. Like the trees, I’m relieved to have survived the hibernation. I’ve run out of firewood, because it’s been longer and more fierce than expected, but now I don’t have to run around after twigs like my life depended on it. The panic of basic survival is over. And that’s what the little flowers are saying: it’s not something twee or quaint or puerile: it’s time to get on living, which is not what I’ve been doing this winter.
I look around the still soggy, green-with-moss-house, and my ruin looks more ruined than ever. It seems years since I did any building work. I have watched while others continued to point and pour in the hours between showers, but up here in the mountains I just can’t see building in winter as a feasible proposition. During the multiple trips back and forth from the Tomar plains I calculated there must be five degrees difference in temperature, and if it’s cloudy down there, it’s raining up here. And it never seems to be just raining here; it’s either gusty & rainy or bucketing. Or it is just that I’ve lost my nerve? A financial beating is psychologically crushing as anyone knows: it’s an dark and omnipresent worry. Being sick is humiliating and boring, and both of these things are tangible obstacles to building work. But the winter has smothered me, like my eyes are still full of dirt from the burrow and my mind is foggy from the deep sleep of internment. My stores of incentive are as empty as my garden.
And I confess: I can see the projection that some weaker wills judge me to be. A dreamer. A procrastinator. An ingenue. HEY! STOP RIGHT THERE CAPTAIN! I only have to write those words to see how wrong there are. Moi, ingenue? Given the choice between the crotchety, tired and disappointed old woman of the winter, and a blithe virgin-of-life: I’ll take the wrinkles thanks. Young I was once, but naive I’ve never been.
If there’s SAD for winter, is there a diagnosis for spring? Is it contagious?
Goodbye winter. Good riddance. Shower me with spring rain, let me walk in compost and estrume and adubo and the sun:- shine, warm and colour me… and watch me grow a house with my hands.
