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All the furniture had gone into storage. It took three men five days just to pack up and move the household effects. The snooker table was a wonder to move as the slate bed had to be split into three pieces and separately crated.
We ended up with 30 thirty pallets full of the garden sculptures and ornaments. We have a full size bronze rhino that used to live in a rough bit of grassland and was partially hidden, so as you were strolling about the farm it suddenly appeared.
When we were moving it I temporarily left it outside the front door whilst I went off and did some thing else. Needless to say I forgot to mention it to Pat, she said she nearly fainted when she opened the front door.
The day we left the new owners Darren and Lyn arrived to see us off and we exchanged leaving presents. Darren of course putting me to shame by buying Pat a wonderful jewellery box, something she said she had always wanted.
We waved goodbye to everyone including our two Rotweillers, Zena and Joxer who are being fostered by Darren for a year or so till we build our new house, and off we go. The start of The Last Great Adventure.
We drove down to Plymouth and boarded the ferry to Santander in northern Spain for the week long drive down to the apartment we are now renting in Carregal do Sal, a nice town that is quite central.
We had already started to build the first house on the 75-acre site by the river and were expecting it to be nearly ready by the time we arrived.
As this was to be the start of a completely new life without the responsibility of business, staff and the farm we had decided to take our time on the drive and stop for a few nights as and when we pleased.
I must tell you about the Paradors and Pousadas we were staying at.
They are effectively the same in both Spain and Portugal and tend to be either brand new and built to reflect the culture and nature of the region or are old buildings such as castles or monasteries totally rebuilt to a very high standard and are a wonderful stopping off place whilst touring.
We finally arrived at our apartment to find of course that like all builders left to their own devices little or nothing had been done to the first house for sale by the river.
Rapidly
This rapidly changed when I had a quiet chat with the builder and as you can see the house is coming on nicely.
I thought that after a lifetime of work and responsibility that I may have a struggle coming to terms with the laid back life here.
Not so. Pat and I have taken to it like ducks to water. There is loads to do, places to see, new contacts to make and the language to master (in my dreams).
A bit more about the language. There are far too many verbs and not enough nouns.
There are two verbs ‘to be’ the permanent one i.e. I am John and the other the impermanent one ‘I am writing’.
The numbers one and two are both spelt and pronounced differently depending upon whether a man or a woman is speaking yet all the other number remain the same no mater who is talking. They use the same noun for Thursday as they do for farm and I am trying to master the art of saying ‘see you on the farm on Thursday’. The easiest way I found to say it is ‘see you on the farm the day after Wednesday’.
Still it is coming very slowly, plus a lot of people speak English.
The apartment was completely empty when we took it on so we had to rapidly furnish it.
Surprising
It is surprising how the small things you take for granted suddenly become important when you don’t have them such as a can opener and a television.
Portuguese TV here is a joke – four stations of complete rubbish with Noddy and Big Ears given prime time viewing at 8pm on Friday evening.
A quick phone call and satellite TV is rapidly installed giving us all the UK TV and Radio channels, and so many more that we lost count.
However we are not in the apartment that much as the weather is so good you want to be outside as much as possible and I have also the building work to check up on.
We have finally got the plans for our own house passed and in the next episode I will tell you about the fun and games of starting to develop our new 60-acre farm and starting the build on the house which has ended up at 12,000 square feet.
This is nearly 50 per cent bigger than the farmhouse we have just left with a garden three times bigger. It seems that the normal idea of retirement is to downsize mine seems to be to upsize, still it will, I am sure, keep me out of trouble… well, maybe.
Read the previous installments by selecting the links below.
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