5th July CASTELO BRANCO

Ewes on their way to be milked - this is a main road!

We were at the quinta for 8.00 again; Mark followed us in his lorry, he managed to squeeze all the way down our track into the farm. I watered the vegetable garden, nothing had come up overnight; Brett and Mark went to check on Gary’s sofa (which is still outside).

The sofa was fine! But he had left Betty out; after her disappearing for twelve days, he has left her wandering around outside again.

Mark took masses of measurements of all our buildings for the house; he’s going to draw them all to scale (on his computer) and then calculate load bearings/stress something (I don’t know), basically how thick and how many beams we need for our roofs and whether we need to build pillars either end, as I don’t want a support in the middle of the room.

We then did a bit of material sourcing, the three of us travelling in the Ute; first we went to the builder’s merchant, in our village; he seems to have, or can get, most things we’ll be needing and he’ll deliver (and he was very friendly).  Then we went into Fundao to check out a timber merchant we’d been told about and had lunch sitting outside at one of the cafes.

The timber merchant looks quite promising, we haven’t found wood flooring, plywood etc in Castelo Branco but they had everything (at a price, wood is much more expensive here than in Britain); they are also carpenters and they make a rather nice range of kitchen chairs.

By the time we got back to the quinta (we had to return for Mark’s lorry) it was 4.30 p.m.; I checked on my vegetables and my Scarole (chicory) is coming through, I’m so excited. Before we left we checked on Gary’s sofa (it was fine) and Betty, she was still around (thank goodness).