Skip to main content

Getting out and about

Image
By Helen Lee Gray

When you live somewhere you never seem to make the most of the benefits of being there.  In London I never really went to the museums or galleries, they were always there so always something to do another day.   Now we live in the mountains, with time on our hands we don’t seem to make the most of the opportunities for making the best of the benefits the area has to offer.  Almost two years ago when we arrived we were out and about every day, exploring, walking and swimming in the local praia fluvial’s every day.  

Peter promised himself that every morning he would walk to the top of the hill our garden backs onto and run down to the stream and take a swim.   It has never happened.   We promised that every Sunday we’d walk up to Coentral, about a 2 hour round trip uphill, stop for a coffee at the cafe at the top then walk back for a lovely hearty lunch.  It happened once!  I said I’d sit outside, learn my Portuguese while looking at the landscape, it’s normally too hot/windy/cold to do that.  Last year we must have swam in the local praia fluvial just a handful of times.

We got the dog, I had images of us taking long walks through the forests, exploring areas inaccessible by car and off the beaten track, taking our lunch with us, sitting under a tree with our feet cooling in the stream.  We got a dog that cannot really be off the lead, and dog walking has become a daily chore!  And while he loves his walks he also loves sitting in his bean-bag bed.


But, on Saturday we changed that, just for the day, but changed it we did.   Packed up our sandwiches, harnessed up Lord (!) and off we went into the forest.   We took a route through the area devastated by the forest fire we had at the end of the summer last year.  It is strangely beautiful, the charcoal of the trees, no dead bracken on the ground, opening up vistas that normally wouldn’t be there.   


 Lord found a black squirrel and chased it up a tree, he took a paddle in the stream and we even sat on a large rock and ate our sandwiches while Lord sat in the water (far too cold for us).




All of this had a motive though, we were heading up to our friend Ferrie’s house to welcome him home after a few months in Holland.  He has a B&B up in Sarnadas and very lovely it is too, with a pool fed directly from the stream and small waterfall his property backs onto.

Being served three strong dark beers while sitting on this terrace in the heat of the winter sun made me think ‘we really should do this more often’!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building our Barrel Vault Wood Fired Oven

By
This is a short description of my barrel vault build that I have done here in Central Portugal. The final internal size is a 1m squared floor with a arch height of 50cm. I hope you enjoy and get some ideas from it. I wish to thank ukwoodfiredovenforum  for their advice and support. • 1: First I dug out a hole in the flower bed, on top of the stone wall, where the oven was to be built • 2: Set up a form to pour in the concrete base • 3: Pour the concrete base, which was about 5-6 inches deep • 4: On top of the base I cast 4-5 inches of LECA (light weight expanded clay balls) mixed with cement to hold it's form • 5: Then I cast a 2-3 inch heat retaining base, to add to the thermal mass, using calcium aluminate cement with large grain sand, as a flat base for the hearth bricks to sit on • 6-8: I then dry laid the hearth bricks on a dry bed of fine sand and clay mixture, with th...
1 comment
Read more

Read the signs

By Helen Lee Gray
In 2009/10 there was a brief outcry in the UK about the amount of unnecessary road signs on British roads.   The consumer group called Civic Choice submitted information that there were tens of thousands of excess road signs and that too many signs were confusing and distracting.    The AA results of a survey can be found here and the Campaign for Plain English also supported some of the findings. I think this problem has ‘gone global’, well at least ‘gone European’ OK maybe just ‘gone Portuguese’.   There is certainly a road sign disease spreading on the IC8, one of the major highways in Central Portugal.   This disease seems to have reached its peak in the area between the turn off for the IC3 and Castanheira de Pera.   The disease is spreading, the spores of signs scattering along the roadside and new signs growing all the time.   In this short distance, it takes just 10 mins to drive, it has been reported to me that there are a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

oh what a lovely bougainvillea

By Helen Lee Gray
It was something I wanted to grow, a plant which would cover the wall, give shade, give colour and really stamp the fact we lived abroad.   Bougainvillea. We have the other Mediterranean type of plants growing; we have olives in abundance, we have the grapes thriving, we have the figs establishing, but alas no bougainvillea.    I looked up how to grow it and it says:   Bougainvillea thrives in full sun.   “At least 5 hours a day of direct sunlight is the minimal light required for good bloom. More hours of direct sun are better. Less than 5 hours and the plant may not bloom very well.”   5 hours of sun ‘check’, good light ‘check’, south facing ‘check’….but alas the Med we are not!   This little peak of Central Portugal has cold air in winter (snow even), a vigorous breeze at dusk and is prone to a late frost.   Our courtyard is just too exposed to the elements, there is no little ‘nook’ for a bougainvillea, there is no wall for it to climb...
2 comments
Read more