Living Abroad
Autumn in Portugal, The Seasonal Wheel Turns
Like a living barometer, you don’t need a calendar here on the farm to tell you when the seasons are changing, the animals do that for you … […]
Living Abroad
Europe
Being addicted to unfamiliarity
A year ago to the day Andy and I sat on the terrace of a shepherd’s hut on a plateau in Slovenia whilst I tucked into a bowl of gruel otherwise known as buckwheat mush and sour milk. Why? Because it was there… […]
Living Abroad
Clearly you’ve never been to Singapore
It’s so incessantly hot I feel as though I’ve sprung a leak somewhere on the crown of my head. This is what real heat feels like, and it’s only the end of May. […]
Living Abroad
Following the curve, living with lockdown in Portugal
Less than 24 hours later and I wish we’d bought more at the Alentejo supermarket. The madness we’d been reading about in British press reports descends on Portugal. There are queues of shoppers at each till, their trolleys piled high with produce including, of course, multi-packs of toilet paper. […]
Living Abroad
Of postal delivery and speaking another language
The Portuguese, like the Spanish, are complimentary when you make an effort, telling us we can speak it well when we rattle of a few stock phrases when we’re appalling. […]
Europe
Victims of fake news and foggy mornings
Without leaving the house, apart from essential grocery shopping, we’ve managed to find ourselves the victims of fake news in a national paper in the UK. […]
Europe
The view from abroad, winter woes
The depths of winter (i.e. now) in central Portugal is a yin and yang affair. Warm enough to eat lunch al fresco in the midday sunshine, as cold as my home island of Bute in Scotland at night. […]
Europe
Ten things Tenerife taught us about living and working abroad
This is how the discussion went: “Let’s give up everything an move to Totnes.” “Why not go the whole nine yards and move abroad… somewhere like Sri Lanka.” And then we ended up in the destination at the end of many discerning travellers’ noses – Tenerife. […]
Europe
The end of spring in central Portugal
The season has changed. This hit home on Friday in the supermarket where there was a distinctly different vibe. People were dressed in full on summer uniform. There were telling empty places on the shelves where boxes of Sagres beer and sacks of BBQ briquettes should be. […]
Europe
Winter in Central Portugal
After 14 years in the Canary Islands we already knew about the important difference between Britain’s centrally heated houses and ones in (mostly) warmer climes with little or no heating. But we still weren’t prepared for the temperature drop between the Canaries and central Portugal. […]
Europe
An average day in the life at our Portuguese quinta
Coffee and a bowl of fruit (bananas from Madeira, mango and pineapple from former Portuguese colonies, local cherries which are just at the end of their season) are eaten on the back terrace in the company of two black cats who look as sleepy as we do… […]
Europe
Before you escape to the continent
From internet speeds to where to buy cream for mossie bites, these are some of the important aspects of living abroad we’d want to know the answers to about any potential destination. […]
Europe
The travel destination with a perfect climate
It is 46C. My phone pings with warnings from the Portuguese Met Office about there being an extreme risk of fires. We will eat lunch outside, huddling under the shade of an umbrella which only […]
Europe
Turning Left, A Walk In Palmela, Portugal
For months we’ve lived at the end of a dirt track, in this lovely quinta with its enormous iron gates, always turning right beyond them, back along the dusty, rutted track to reach the road. Today we turn left, and I think of Jean Ainslie… […]
Alentejo
The remote lonesome beauty of living in Alentejo
The clanging of bells as goats made their way to their daytime pasture was our alarm call in the morning; a mixed chorus of song from golden orioles, bee-eaters and azure-winged magpies serenaded us over breakfast under a grape covered arbour; […]