So, what can you do in 48 hours if you really try?
For example, if you could start your wildest dream and you had a weekend to kickstart it, what would you do? This was the question Kimberley and I had to address when we decided our wildest dream (right now, I hasten to add) is to buy a piece of land in Portugal and build our dream house on it.
Obviously, not build it ourselves.
After all, anybody who knows me knows I can’t even paint, but we can find the right partner to build it, the right piece of land, oh – and last but not least – find the money. These of course are my naïve thoughts. You dear reader are probably thinking, but what about solicitors? Citizenship? Architects? Family? There are just so many facets to this dream but right now we are looking at the first three.
So, what can we do in 48 hours? Well, here’s what we did.
At 4pm on Monday 19th July 2021 we got into our campervan ‘TUT’ and set off to Gatwick airport. It was just starting to rain and then it started to bucket down so that it was bouncing off the road. Just at this moment, the satnav decided it was going to take me down every narrow lane between West Wickham and Gatwick. Twenty minutes in and I am already swearing at every car coming in the opposite direction – and there are loads of them. I am getting stressed, and we haven’t gone anywhere yet!
Eventually we emerge out onto the M25, and we arrive at Gatwick when the sun decides to put in an appearance and the countryside lights up as only England can during a particularly wet summer. Lady Kimberley and I start singing, our spirits lifted by the sudden about turn in the weather. After all, we are on our way to Gatwick.
We’re taking our first baby steps towards a dream house in a country that neither of us has ever visited before (yes, you did read that right). Where all our friends will be new. Where there is a rather difficult language to learn. Where even the easiest task like buying a stamp or asking to go to the toilet is fraught with potential awkwardness and embarrassment. My only Portuguese is ‘Eusebio’ and ‘Bom dia alegria’. Not a lot to work with there. But you know that when you know, you know – and we know that right now, this feels right.
So why go to Gatwick in a campervan?
Well, we are going to the drive-through Covid test centre so that we can have an antigen test that we don’t really need because, as of Saturday, France changed the rules again. We pull into the car park early wondering if we can get a head start by turning up 60 minutes early, and there is not a car in sight. Lots of very friendly staff but no actual punters. They wave us in and five minutes later somebody is doing something with a swab that tickles the inside of my nasal passage, and I can’t stop giggling. She tells me the test results will be ready in 45 minutes and we can check them online.
If these results go against us, it could scupper this trip before it has even started. This is going to be a long 45 minutes.
Part 2 tomorrow