We know the money is with the lawyer. We now know that she is waiting for a date for all parties to be in Castelo Branco to sign the deeds over. Now we must wait. Patience is a commodity that I am still trying to master. I have a feeling that, thinking that I need to master patience, is causing the Universe to give me lots of practice.
Maybe what I should be thinking is, ‘Take a chill pill Phil and go and have some fun.’ Kimberley and I really try to, but we are both so distracted about waiting for the date that it was not our greatest day. Don’t get me wrong it was a good, but not a great day.
We skip breakfast, which we do from time to time, and go back to Idanha-a-Velha to have a good look round. We stop at a beautiful little street café but today, somehow, I am not feeling it as much. There is a huge amount of work going on to preserve this village with parts of it dating back to the Roman occupation in 1AD.
Having had a leisurely stroll around the ramparts, we set off to CasaBo for the afternoon and to eat supper. Whilst there we meet more of our soon-to-be neighbours, George and Kate, who stop to introduce themselves when they see our campervan. They are lovely and surprise us when they invite us round for a cuppa tomorrow morning. So here we are thinking that we are in the heart of rural Portugal and most of the neighbours we have met have been Brits.
What you have to realise is that these Brits have all come looking for a different way of life. Also, when we say neighbours, we’re not talking over the fence. They all live hundreds of yards away from each other. There is a lot of positivity among this group of people. After all, you do need a fairly can-do attitude to buy land in a foreign country and go and live there.
It is also rather pleasant to realise that when the CasaBo project starts, if I am in Portugal and Kimberley is working in the UK – as will be the case at times – I will still be able to communicate with people nearby. That does not mean that I will not be learning the language. I will. It is just reassuring that If I do have a problem, there are people I can call on for help and vice versa.
Each time we eat supper on CasaBo, we go to a new spot to see the view and map out what we would like where on the land. This is a great game and always leaves us excited dreaming about a new project to develop a particular portion of the land. Tonight’s topic of conversation is septic tanks and drainage fields and where to put it. There were some differences of opinion, but I have to say that Kimberley was right.
Having packed up to leave, we bump into two more of our near neighbours, Grace and Matthew who are also from the UK. So much for being the only Brits in Monsanto, however, so far, we can claim to be the oldest!