Homesearch
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I should have known better when she said to me: “You’ve been a bit quiet these last few days, have you been thinking again?”
I have this theory that thinking gives you a headache so I don’t do it too often. I tend to act rather than think, saves on the Paracetamol.
So I told her about moving to Portugal. We discussed it for a few days and agreed to go and have a look, without commitment.
But where in Portugal? The obvious place is the Algarve but after studying the map it was obvious that there is only one major road running east to west and all other roads run off this heading north.
We have lived in the countryside for so long that we need to replicate a similar lifestyle and running up and down the same road to the same beach would not suit us at all. Nor would the lifestyle on the Algarve.
Research
After a lot more research I decided to concentrate on central Portugal because it’s incredibly well-served by fast and empty motorways. It’s only two hours to Porto airport and two-and-a-half hours from Lisbon. Spain is 40 minutes to the east and Coimbra, the old university city and ancient capital of Portugal, is 25 minutes to the west and then a further 15-minute drive to the seaside.
A bit of internet research, a few phone calls to land sale agents and off we go.
First lesson of a happy marriage is not to listen to a single word your wife says, or so, of course, I believed. She did keep going on about the European football matches being held in Portugal and as usual I did not listen.
When we arrived, there were no hotels within 20 miles of where we wanted to be and car rental was twice the price it should have been.
Also, masses of English soccer fans were following masses of Swiss soccer fans who were wearing very large red hats with big holes in them, I presume to imitate Swiss cheese. The English fans following them were shouting and yelling, ‘Cuckoo, Cuckoo’.
You would think with a small population and masses of land it would be easy to find 40 or so acres. But no. We looked at every conceivable piece of land available. Beware of what the
Portuguese tell you, they have a tendency to tell you what they think you want to hear. A great shame that I had not sussed this out before I bought the 10-acre plot of land at St Geraldo with a definite promise that the other 30 could be easily bought. Not so. One more down to experience.
However, there are two ruins on the land and I will rebuild them some time in the future for sale.
The next chunk of land we look at is 75 acres, south west-facing in a nature reserve by a river with a large town very nearby. Seven ruins on it, just perfect. Yes, we’ll have this and build our house and live there.
On second thoughts, it would make much more sense to split it into separate lots, build seven new houses and sell them. Next we were offered a five-acre plot by a huge lake within 20 minutes’ drive of Coimbra with planning permission for between four and eight houses. Who could resist such a temptation?
Pat did mention a couple of times that we now owned three separate plots of around 90 acres, could build up to 16 houses, seemed to have bought half of Portugal and still had nowhere to live.
Back to the search.
Overgrown
At last, after seven visits and 18 months we found the perfect plot. Although massively overgrown, there were 60 acres of what must have been a very wealthy farm in its day with four ruins, two huge wells, running water, nine granite terraces, interconnecting steps and very fertile land. That will do very nicely. Time to put the farm in Bury on the market. Although the house is very large, I only built it as a two-bedroomed property so even if we fell out we still have a bed each to sleep in. But with 20 acres of manicured park and gardens to maintain, this could easily take two years to sell.
I started a big advertising campaign and the MEN Homes team were interested enough to come up and look at the place and give it a four-page spread. One Sunday morning in July 2006 a man called Darren and his wife came up unannounced as I was just about to cut the grass, which takes five hours on a fully automatic 6ft-sweep mowing machine so I wasn’t too pleased at having my plans disturbed.
They had spent three hours trying to find the farm so I suppose I really had to give them a quick look round. I explained that if they could not afford the upkeep then they may as well go home and not waste any of my time. That did not put them off, nor did the price.
One week later we shook hands on the deal and had a date to move out on December 18, this now being late August.
Now all we have to do is to sell the engineering business, sell the manufacturing business, arrange accommodation in Portugal, restructure the letting business, organise a farewell party to say goodbye to our friends and introduce the new owners, buy a left-hand drive car and arrange to pack the house with its lifetime of collectables.
Oh, and we must not forget the garden with its full-size bronze crocodile, rhino, woolly bear, marble lions, black panthers and the many other things we have accumulated over the years.
Still. All in a day’s work.
Read John's previous installment by selecting the link below.
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