We say au revoir to our lovely French hosts, Eric and Aurelie, who are living their own dream in Portugal. A visit to meet with Domingues at our bank to get debit cards and set up online banking is the first thing on the agenda today. There’s something special about old-fashioned banking face to face and on first name terms.
Back into Castelo Branco, our city of choice. We are visiting Banco Montepio, a bank that is a little different as it is a mutual savings organisation. They are good and they care about the little person. We were going to go with one of the big banks, Millenium BCP, but having contacted them three weeks earlier for an appointment, they did not confirm our meeting until 5.15 pm offering an appointment for the following day. We believe that you should not reward poor service with custom if you can help it, and we can.
Meeting done, we toddle up the road to Remax Castelo Branco and, luckily for us, Paulo is in. We’re hoping the keys for the farm shed on the land have arrived, so we’re delighted when he says yes and gives them to us to go and have a look ourselves. This is tremendously exciting as we don’t know what is in it.
Driving up to CasaBo, we agree that I will video Kimberley opening the doors to the shed (one shed, two doors), for the first time. We approach the shed, Go Pro whirring, excitement building, but Kimberley can’t open the door. She tries the other one. Same result. I have a go, same result. I kick the door, but the door is shut tight.
It dawns on me that maybe I am not turning it the right way. I go back to the first door and turn the key all the way closed. The lock is smooth which would suggest it should open. I turn the key twice and feel the lock open but not the door. Then I turn it beyond where I had stopped the first time. Lo and behold the door swings open and we get our first look inside.
Hay on the floor. Some old iron farming implements that are undoubtedly older than me. No Mary, Joseph or the baby Jesus, but they would not have looked out of place. More importantly no holes in the roof or walls. We go to door number two. Open the door, and there is a room full of hay. I mean full. What are we supposed to do with that? Well, it is food for thought.
We are up on CasaBo and we are so happy. The breeze is hot but somehow cooling. We put two chairs under the shade of a large cork oak tree. I stay there all afternoon just relaxing in the most calming place. Kimberley goes off to take a jar of water from well A. It is amazingly clear despite the patches of algae on the surface of the well. We will get it tested just to see what we have.
Kimberley then goes off to discover and plot on a diagram all the trees and bushes that are in the areas that we have called Beryl, Andy, Adam, and Hope. There are a lot of cork oak, fig trees, apple, brambles, and grape vines. Nice first haul on the first four sections of land which together add up to about an acre.
I continue to take baby steps by phoning up a mortgage broker, VFS Global, who deal with visa applications, and Sparkpoint Solar who we are looking to for assistance with solar panels. I can’t get direct answers from any of them right now. I think the Universe is giving us a delay for a reason. I am just not sure what the reason is. It is going to be a late night as tomorrow, at 00:01, yes one minute past midnight, we intend to send the last instalment of the payment for CasaBo. Exciting times indeed.