A little post today for what was a little day. After a whole lot of excitement yesterday, we got a good night’s sleep by our stopping point of choice which is the football pitch in Oledo. The locals have been so friendly, and today one of the ladies of the village came with a bag of figs for us. How welcoming! I can’t remember being parked up in any other country where that has happened.
After a leisurely pace of getting the van ready, we mount the GoPro action camera to the windscreen of TUT to see what happens when we drive with it on. Pretty good actually. We park on CasaBo and have the breakfast that we bought from Adelina’s. We have only just found Adelina’s place and it is magical. It is a small shop packed from floor to ceiling and has everything in it. Only Adelina would know where what you want might be. She has the most amazing home made mini chicken pies and fresh bread, and it is truly a scrumptious experience.
I called it breakfast, but by the time we finish munching, it is 12.30pm so I go for a shluff (Yiddish for nap) in TUT whilst Kimberley goes to map more trees in the field known as Peter. We are due to meet Jacques again at 3.00pm when we will go through plans for phase one. This will be the widening the entrance and creating tracks up to the house and down to Mission Control which will have a major impact on improving accessibility onto the land. The well cleaning will give us clean water to drink and use. Mission Control will give shelter and shade for TUT, somewhere for us to shower, energy from a generator during the first days, and the ability to capture 3000 litres of rainwater off the roof. It’s the dry season now, but the rain will come in buckets in the autumn/winter.
Jacques arrives and we go through the final details for phase one and discuss other infrastructure projects such as drainage, digging for an agricultural pool, how to deal with Spanish Broom which likes to spread its love everywhere and tentative thoughts around the dream house. We love doing the dreaming part. Jacque’s solutions mirror our own thoughts which his reassuring. As a bonus, he arrives with a tray of jams and pesto for us to try produced from his own 140 hectare farm. Ours is 1.6 hectares, so just a little smaller than Jacque’s!
Then, annoyingly, I realise that in putting my clothes bags away this morning, I have knocked off the switch that powers the invertor for the leisure battery. We rely on the leisure battery for power when we aren’t hooked up to an electric source which is most of the time. We might have a problem if we stay out overnight, so we make a quick change to our plans. Off we go to Aurelie and Eric’s, the lovely French couple who let people stay on their land (with electric and shower!) for a donation. Tonight will be planning another visit into Castelo Branco tomorrow.
As I sit here typing this, having had a wonderful thirty-minute chat with our recently retired Belgian campervanning neighbours here for the evening, I realise how truly blessed I am to be here right now – in this wonderful country, having a life-changing, fantastic experience, but most of all to have found the perfect partner with which to share the adventure with. Thank you Kimberley.