Today I want to tell you all about what has been happening on CasaBo (the name we’ve given our Portuguese homestead) since we left in September, nearly three months ago. Like most things in life the journey from A to B is not going in a straight line.
We thought we had water on the land in the shape of the three wells that are there. The wells needed cleaning and to do so, they needed to be emptied. We hit a snag though after they were emptied. They didn’t refill. Now this might be considered a bit of a problem, especially as we were going to use the water from well #1 to provide for the house.
The good news on the water front came a few days later when digging a hole for a rainwater tank. The hole was dug, the tank dropped in it and the workmen went home. The next morning though they came back to discover the tank was no longer sitting in the hole. It was floating in the hole. Overnight a large amount of water had trickled into the hole which suggested there must be a natural spring there. Now we know we have water of some sort, and we will spend the next few months working out how best to utilise the water we can capture in our wells, water tank, and our new spring source to provide the water we need to live and do the small amount of growing we want to do.
We had the drive done this month too. ‘Drive’ conjures up images of tarmacked or paved areas. This is a compacted dirt drive. Nothing too fancy but serviceable and essential. When we first bought the land, we couldn’t even drive Tut, our campervan, on it for more than a couple of metres at the entrance because it was so overgrown. So putting the drive access in was a bit of a…I can’t put the word I want to here as the editor (aka Kimberley) will change it. Let’s say it was a bit of a problem. It was fine in places but in others it meant breaking up granite rocks to create a relatively smooth track. The good news is that there are now two drives from the entrance; one to go up to the barn and one to go down into the van shelter.
The van shelter is reaching a climax this week as the frame will be finished and with a prevailing wind the roof panels will go on. Actually, it would be better if there was no wind at all. This is a big structure and will house both the van and allow me somewhere to work out of the sun and rain.
The barn is now listed as an ‘urban article’ instead of just an agricultural building. That means we can renovate it or build on the footprint of it without planning permission. This is very exciting as it now means we can start planning for phase two even though phase one isn’t remotely finished.
Things that are still to do on the new extended phase one. Get the quote from EDP to get electricity to run to the generator house by the gate. Get a licence for the septic tank to be installed. Build a new water capture area from the new spring source. Work out how water is going to supply our home and land. Then, once the septic tank is sorted have a shower and toilet connected in the barn. The list is not small.
The generator shed is now almost finished, as is all the work that went into making the entrance legal. Indeed, it may be that the gates to CasaBo go on next week.
As I sit here in my van in Hertfordshire I am now longing to be back in Portugal. The only thing stopping us is my visa. The Portuguese embassy have my passport and until a decision is made about my application we can’t go anywhere. We are planning to go back to Portugal with a whole van load of our tools and stuff on the 25th November – this month – but this, as I have said already, does not feel like an A to B journey. All you can do is put the destination into the satnav of life and go where it may take you.