The Dams Are Full ..............

In our last blog we told you about the colossal amount of rainfall Portugal has had this winter and to give you an idea of what a difference it has made to the rivers, I am posting a few pictures we took today down at Froia River Beach and a few from last summer! This River Beach is only 5 minutes away from us and is very popular in the summer with locals and tourists using the river beach for bathing and sunbathing, having BBQ's and picnics.

Last summer after the drought of the winter, Froia River Beach almost ran dry, which was such a shame as there is a lovely restaurant with outside terracing and we like to go there for a coffee in the afternoon and people watch. There are some lovely BBQ and picnic areas and beautiful walks. In the summer families, from babies to the grannies all go together to have a "family day outre ".

We read in the newspaper that almost all the Dams in Portugal (and there are many) are mostly 95% full whereas this time last year some were less than a quarter full!!!!!!!




These are a couple of pictures I took last summer when the river was empty:-

Rainy weather is stopping play!!!!

Another morning and yet again waking up to more rain - actually I should say this morning we have more of a heavy mist, although it looks like we have had a fair amount of rain during the night. Nothing unusual in that - I am beginning to wonder where on earth all this rain is coming from!!!! The difference in temperature and amount of sun from this time last year to this is amazing!!!! Last March you could barely dig the earth as it was so dry, the grass was like dried hay and everyone was screaming "we need rain". It is a year ago this week when we accidentally started a fire when a spark flew off as Rob was grinding off a concrete post and got carried away in the wind over to the plot opposite, giving me one of the biggest frights of my life!!!! Well this winter we have had rain, rain, and more rain, with an odd bright sunny warm day thrown in just to keep us sane. Having moaned about the rain here, and knowing what you have had in the UK, you have our sympathies with what you having to deal with!!!

After finishing off the kitchen we had promised ourselves a rest but as usual it a case of well we may as well get off outside to crack on with the garden "before the summer" when it will be too hot. We made a good start and cracked off a couple of veggie beds and gravelled some pathways. Rob is attempting to build his BBQ but this last week has been so hampered by the rain we have had to give in and spend time doing other stuff. The trouble is when its raining I don't feel inclined to go out sightseeing so Rob came up with the idea of building a workspace area (or store space which I am calling it) in the cellar so we decided to have a day at that. Lucky me - no day off lazing around!! We had some worktops left over from the kitchen so Rob built up some concrete walls for the worktops to sit on. That enticed us to tidy up the cellar as it was looking like a scrap yard with rubbish, tools lying around, clutter, etc., Guess what, before I could turn around, Rob had managed to store all his fishing gear nicely under the worktops, but he did kindly leave me a gap for some shopping storage. The worktop itself will be the home for liquid stock, etc., as we are trying to do a once/twice monthly shop.






On another rainy day we had drive out to view a Dam called the Barragem da Pracana) near Envendos, as Rob wanted to see if he could find a fishing spot. With all this rain its looking like all the Dams here are full so that means the rivers will be running well and it also means the River Beaches this summer will be good as our local one last year ran dry! There is a lovely waterfall near to the Dam but it was raining so hard we couldn't bring ourselves to walk down the muddy track to go find it!



Many of the designated fishing areas are sometimes too inaccessible for Rob as he needs to drive his van close to a fishing spot to unload all his fishing tackle. He did manage to find one at this Dam, (pictured above). The scenery looked lovely with all the wild-flowers at the roadside and in the mountains.





Yesterday the forecast was for rain first off then cloudy so we decided to nip off to Castelo Branco to do a big shop. For once, we were able to do a supermarket shop without the necessity of going to several DIY shops buying copious amounts of work materials!!! (which bores me to death!). For our journey to Castelo we take the B road which although it is a winding, up and down country road, there is always little traffic which makes it a pleasure. And I have to say although it was cloudy the scenery is stunningly beautiful. Even more so at this time of the year. We didn't get to see it like this last year as it was such a dry winter but an advantage of plenty of rain has encouraged the wild flowers to bloom. It is such a spectacular sight to see an abundance of purple and white heathers, yellow and white gorse, various blossoming trees in the hillsides and then in the fields and roadsides, wonderful displays of wild flowers, beautiful carpets of yellow, blue, purple and white flowers and red poppies. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with us but I will try and capture some on our next trip out.

One of the reasons I love this country so much is that every time you leave your front door, the scenery is constantly changing and there is always something new to see. There are so many various trees, fruits and olives, flowers and shrubs that there is always a continuous display in their varying stages of bloom, from the blossoms to the fruits, there are always different fruits at different stages of the season. The rainy weather accentuates the varying shades of greens of the pine trees, eucalyptus and other trees and the colours of the stone on the mountains stand out even more which makes it so picturesque.

Happy chappies in the new kitchen !!!!

Well, at last, one year since arriving here I am now the proud owner of a new sparkling white kitchen. (I am using the term "I am" as it seems to be me who spends the most time in it!!!!!!) Rob's main attraction to this room appears to be the fridge and any cupboard which has finger food in it!!!

Because our kitchen is a relatively small room, we have chosen white to enhance the size and keep it looking light, it is north facing and is shaded from the sun. There is absolutely nothing traditionally "Portuguese" in it except for a few knick-naks and some small traditional vinho glasses (which are essential commodities in any event)!!!!!!

We have to say that the renovation work on this room has to have been a labour of love as we have had some arduous tasks to endure (we are not professionals in any sense of the word) but have managed to achieve most of the work ourselves, albeit a small amount of electrical work which although Rob did some of it the Portuguese wiring system is different to the English method so we thought it best to make sure all was correct with it. The hard work was all the prep work, the actual installation of the units was a joy and we have been pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to fit the Ikea kitchen. So now I am enjoying the benefits of a new working kitchen as I can get on with making my jams, bread, pastries, etc., etc., quite merrily without screaming blue murder as I had nowhere to put anything!!!!

I am posting a few pictures of the "old" kitchen ........




And some of the new ...............






OUR NEXT CHALLENGE .......

The last couple of weeks we have been back out into the garden picking up from where we left off last year. Even though we promised ourselves "time off" after the kitchen, we have been lured into more hard labour again as the weeds and grass are not pleasant sights so its been a case of "getting stuck back in" again. Also as the better weather is approaching (slowly) apparently the rainfall has been the worst this winter for 100 years and as it is time here to start getting planted up in the garden we have put off our "time off" for a few weeks when family start coming out to visit. Then, it is a definite rest period for us and cant wait for the pleasure of having family staying with us.

1st Anniversary of our adventure in Portugal

Hi everyone,


We are almost approaching the first year anniversary of our move to our new life here in Central Portugal and both Rob and myself would like to say a massive "thank-you" to all our blog readers. We decided to write this blog before coming to live here in Central Portugal (as we ourselves are avid readers of other peoples)and had gathered lots of interesting and helpful information from fellow bloggers about their daily lives here in Portugal, so we thought for us it was a nice way to be able to keep our friends and family back in the U.K. up-to-date with our antics in a light-hearted fashion, but we have been astonished at the amount of readers we have attracted over the last year from so many different parts of the world.

So far we have had over 2,600 views, as far away as the Phillipines, Russia, USA, South America, Canada, Northern Europe and Asia, We are able to see from the blogger dashboard how many viewers we have had each day and where our audience are viewing from. We would like to remind you all that you can become a member of our blog and leave us comments (hahahaha) so please if, you wish to give us any advice or help, or want any from us, (lol) please feel free to post us any comments you might like to make!!!

We are posting a few of our favourite photos of us taking some "time out" and hope you enjoy looking at them !!!!!

Fun on the quadbike



Out and about

Third Bedroom Photos

As promised in an earlier post we can now show you some photos of the third bedroom. Our other two bedrooms have been decorated in a modern style so we decided to use pedra which is traditional Portuguese stone on two walls and stiple painted the other two walls in magnolia to give it a bit of a "rustic look". We have laid the floor in ceramic tiles and added a couple of rugs. This bedroom is the coolest in the summer and the warmest in the winter so I'm thinking this may well be our main bedroom!

Before ........

After ...............

I am also very excited to be able to tell you that our first kitchen shopping trip to Ikea has been accomplished and we are now in possession of the wall cabinets and one base unit and even more pleased to be able to say the first units are already installed!!!! So watch this space for news on our long awaited kitchen!!!!!!!!

SLOW PROGESS .............................

Well we don't seem to have much to report to you on the progress being made at "Casa Oasis" this month !!!! January has been a very difficult month for us as the weather has been unkind (I know we should not be complaining as rain is better than snow and ice!) but it has held up the progress and my new kitchen still seems a million miles away! The rain has been (or seems to have been) incessant with only a few bright sunny days in between and a few weeks ago we had the most horrendous storms, which saw us having winds of up to 110 kilometres an hour (that is in Central Portugal and I believe it was much worse on the coast) and lasting for nearly 2 days which caused an enormous amount of devastation all over Portugal. We were quite fortunate as we had little damage, a few branches breaking off some trees, a few broken pots but nothing structurally was damaged. The gales were so severe many trees were felled causing electric pylons to crash down resulting in lengthy power cuts all over the country. We had a 25 hour power cut but some places in Portugal had 3 days with no power or phone lines so we were relatively lucky. I have now discovered that watching a log fire burning in the dark (with just some candles for ambience!) can be more entertaining that most TV channels on a Saturday evening!!!

The downstairs bedroom was put on hold whilst we began work demolishing the kitchen. As mentioned in our previous post the chiselling off of the kitchen tiles was a complete and utter nightmare. Our poor hands have been battered and bruised to bits but I am now pleased to say all the tile debris and concrete pillars in the kitchen have been dismantled and have now been carted off to the local tip in their bucketfuls and good riddance to them!!!!!! Oh and the wooden kitchen units have come in very useful - they have given us hours of heat burning away on the fire so at least we had a result there!

The only remaining fittings in the kitchen now are the taps which are built into the wall. The plumbing aspect will be a challenge so not looking forward to that one!

All being well we shall be off to Ikea next week to pick up some units ready for installation. Out shopping tomorrow for sink unit and appliances so that will prove interesting!!!! Also have the wall tiles to pick up so it now feels we are making some gradual progress.

We are well and truly glad to see the back of this month but are pleased to say that today, Thursday the 31st January, we have had a beautiful hot sunny day which has certainly given us "the feel-good factor" and has given us a great boost!

Festivities over ........ Back at work !!!!!!!!

Hi everyone, both myself and Rob would like to wish all our readers "A Happy and Healthy New Year". This has been our first Christmas in Portugal so was a little unsure how the Portuguese celebrate the festive season. The build-up was very low-key, Shopping Centres were nicely decorated but there didn't appear to be any of the "shopping madness" that everyone suffers with (and endures) like back in the U.K.!!!

Here Christmas Eve is celebrated more than Christmas Day. The day begins with the men out on their tractors gathering tree stumps to make bonfires which they light about 9pm in the evening. In our village we had 3 bonfires in various places and it is usual for people to walk round to each other's bonfires and have a celebratory drink or some food cooked on the bonfire. Dinner is mostly eaten (about 8 o'clock) and usually the meal will traditionally be bacalhau (the cod fish meal) with potatoes and cabbage. We walked down to our local bar and ended up going into the Church as the bar was empty and the Church was full to watch the service. It was very different to a typical Church of England service with Carols, etc., (the Portuguese are mainly Catholic) members of the local community took part in the service, remembering their loved ones who are no longer with them. After the service it was straight into the bar and people gathered around the bonfires. We then went on to the bonfire at the bottom of our lane and was immediately invited to various wine cellars!

Chocolates and nibbles were being handed out and then food was being cooked on the fire! We gave up about 3 am and went to bed and left them to their cooking!!!!

Christmas Day was spent with our lovely friends Luisa and John, Andrea (Luisa's daughter) and Julie and Barry (not forgetting the lovely woof woof Lucy). Luisa cooked us a lovely dinner followed by 6 different deserts!!!! Home-made Christmas Pudding and mince pies with custard and I was "in pudding heaven", not to mention her famous cheesecakes and how lucky was I to be loaded up with lots of cake and puddings to go home with!!!!!

For the New Year's Eve celebrations we were invited to our Poruguese friends' house where we were treated to a feast of king prawns,dressed crab and lots of other party food and plenty of vinho!!!! We counted down the minutes to the New Year with our friends and later on went to the all night Dance Party in the village community centre, organised and run by the young people of the village, and then staggered back home at 4.30 am !!!!!! Needless to say New Year's Day was spent on the couch feeling pretty dam rough!!!!!!!

Joal, Mum, Filipa, Pedro, Carol

Sarah and Bruno, Carol

So Back to Work ................

Just before Christmas we began working in the downstairs bedroom which we shall use in the summer as it will be cooler in there but mainly it will be used for guests. After painting the ceiling and texturing two walls Rob is busy covering two walls with stone and tiling the floor. Our weather has been a mixture of nice sunny days and cloudy and rainy days which has made the job seem more drawn out as we have had to use a heater to dry out the adhesive used on the stone and floor tiles so it has been a slow and drawn out task! However, most of the floor tiles are laid and the majority of stone has been fixed to the wall.

Tomorrow morning will be spent tracking down the guy who sells us the stone (mostly to be found in his local cafe bar) and once we have bought our next load of stone we are devoting the rest of the day to chiselling off the wall tiles in the kitchen. I started doing it yesterday and thought we had "got lucky" as the first few came off easy and then they wouldn't and are now coming off in minute pieces instead of whole tiles which means it is going to be a tedious, frustrating and long drawn-out job!!!!!!!!!!!!

On our next post we shall print photos of the bedroom and update you on our next challenge - the long awaited for kitchen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!