28th May CASTELO BRANCO

It was very hot today and I take back what I said about getting acclimatized to the heat – I’m not! We went to Fonte dos Clerigos for the day, as we drove up the track we passed Mr Luis working in his son’s garden. We parked halfway along the track; we’re sure we’ll be able to get the van to the farm but we don’t want to drive the narrow part too often, so we’ll wait until we’ve got the truck then we can take the camper there and leave it until we come back to Britain.

We measured all the buildings again and the ‘plunge pools’ and looked at floor levels and composition; then we took lots of ‘before’ photos, whilst reminding ourselves how the Barn had looked before we started converting it (for reassurance).

The back of studio and gym

Front of studio and gym

Possibly generator and kiln shed

Front of 'house'

These will become french doors onto the patio

Inside the 'house', this one room is 21' x 18.8'

The original fireplace and chimney!

We walked our land discussing where the track and field boundaries would go; unfortunately the wild lupins will have to come out as they are poisonous to ruminants (they’ll need to be pulled up individually). I was rather overwhelmed with the amount of work we’ve got to do, but it will be fine once we start and progress can be seen; the worst thing is seeing the land not being grazed and all the weeds going to seed.

Mr Luis turned up around 4.00 to water his vegetables; he had walked up as his moped is ‘kaput’ (his word) so we gave him a lift back in our van, he then invited us to go for a drink at the cafe in the village – Mr Luis drank three bottles of beer, Brett had one coke and I had an orange juice (we think Mr Luis rather likes to drink, which might explain his emotional state and crying all the time!). We then drove Mr Luis to his house and said “Boa Tarde” to Mrs Luis who seemed very pleased to see us; we were invited in but we declined as it gets a little bit awkward once we have exhausted all our Portuguese phrases!

On the way back to Castelo Branco we passed a lay-by where cherries were being sold from the back of trucks – we bought another 2.5 kilos!!! They’re nowhere near as good as the ones we bought straight from the farm, it’s probably a couple of days since they were picked; next time we’ll definitely go back towards Fundao to get them.

We bought some bottles of beer (1€45/litre); when we got back to the campsite we had a small celebration with Nick, Mark and Glen (Mark’s brother who turned up last week) to celebrate us getting the keys (well being shown where they’re hidden). Mark and Glen have scaffold towers and other useful tools which they’ve suggested we can use when they come back to Britain in four months time; which is brilliant as we would have needed to buy some scaffolding to do the roofs. It works favourably for them too, as they don’t want to leave too their tools exposed at their property, they will be secure with us. Their place is between us and Castelo Branco, they’ll be going back for a few months (to earn money) and then come out again to work on their house.