The Loft Conversion has commenced !!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we have completed the floor we live on the time has come to bring new life into the loft and I (Caz) must say that this is one project I was not particularly going to enjoy the challenge of doing - "endure" me thinks is a more appropriate word!!!The entrance to the loft is from the hallway on the main living floor with the staircase already in place we will be creating two bedrooms with a lounge and shower room. The loft has been crying out to be insulated both for keeping the heat out in the summer and the cold out during the winter.

Rob was full of enthusiasm for this project and so we commenced the arduous task about a month ago and, can now say, that at after a month at it, and at this particular moment in time, after a gruelling week for Rob (doing his dreaded "electrical side of things") and now onto some intricate and fiddling ceiling cladding, his sense of humour has now almost diminished and the air is mostly blue and I am just pleased that most of our neighbors do not speak English (although I guess they can imagine just from his tone) that his patience is wearing thin!!!!

Firstly it was a trip into town for certain materials and several deliveries from our local builder's merchant and wood merchant for plasterboard, wood, insulation, etc., etc., Then the fun started to commence and, to be fair, it didn't seem too bad. Just tedious!!!!!! Cutting polystyrene insulation to size and fitting between the beams, sawing wood to fit batons, measuring, cutting plasterboard, passing screws, drilling holes, treating timber, plastering, filling up holes, sweeping up, and sweeping up again and again, and that's just to mention a few of the tedious jobs and then, of course, being up against it as all the original timber beams, walls, floors, etc., are never square or equal !!!!!!!

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A couple of pics here showing how the loft looked originally. The previous owners never had it finished off sadly!

A few pics showing the progress :- Bedroom 2 has pine timber cladding to the roof and 2 walls plasterboarded, the other two walls will be rendered and stipled and painted.

Bedroom 1 below has plasterboard cladding with the outer wall being stipled and painted and a new double glazed window will be fitted later :-

Veggie Delights

Really relishing our home-grown veggies at the moment - even though we are novices at veggie growing, I am pleased and proud to say that we haven't done badly at all this year with our produce. We had an abundance of tomatoes from six plants and even after munching our way through fresh ones all summer I have even managed to chop and freeze probably about 15 - 20 kilos for winter curries and chillis, etc. Unfortunately our onion stock is very low now but I have put in about 60 and have room to plant some more and keeping fingers crossed I am as successful with these as the last crop. Red peppers and hot chilli peppers are still coming strong and today we had a chicken dinner with a plateful of roasted parsnips, red peppers, peas and a cauliflower and leek bake with cheese sauce all picked today fresh from the garden (except the peas which had been frozen earlier in the year).

How satisfying to enjoy the real flavours of these home-grown veggies, the taste is way superior to supermarket veggies which have been picked and stored for heaven knows how long - it is so worth the effort to plant, weed and harvest !!!!!!!!

My first ever home-grown cauliflower - well chuffed !!!!!

Butternut squash, chilli peppers, cauliflowers, parsnips, leeks, red peppers, beetroot

And to top it this week we have had some glorious days with full sunshine and temperatures reaching 22 degrees and no wind. Perfect to be weeding and reaping !!!!!!!!!!!

AT LONG LAST - FISHING HEAVEN !!!!!!!!

Hi everyone,

The old saying "good things come to those who wait" - has at long last well and truly come good! It has been a struggle for me to acquire information on local venues for my type of fishing, partly because there doesn't to be many anglers around on a more professional basis but I have now located and have become a member with the fishing club through the internet in Castelo Branco. A couple of the anglers in the Club have put me onto venues which are paying rich dividends. Two venues are within 30 minutes drive from where we live and are absolutely exceptional. They are more like the venues I am used to back in the U.K. i.e. good car access enabling parking behind the pegs and concrete platforms to fish from.

Fishing competitions are held regularly at these two venues which makes me a very happy chappy for the forthcoming season. As I have said before I am only willing to disclose the locations to my personal friends as it has taken a tremendous amount of groundwork to discover these places.

Here are a few pictures of my last visit where I caught 18 carp, 1 crucian carp and 4 barbel, the carp ran upto 8 kilos (17 lbs) which is great "fun on the pole" and requires a lot of skill to land these naturally bred wild fighting carp!! In total I caught around 60+ kilos (around 130 lbs) of fish.

End of the Saga Bathroom !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally the bathroom is finished (although it sounds a bit daft really calling it a bathroom as there is no bath in it!!!), I can't seem to call it the wet or shower room!!!!. We decided to do away with the bath and the bidet to make room for a toilet, (the toilet used to be in a room next to the bathroom with the electric water heater) a sink basin vanity unit and a double shower. The walls are now all fully tiled and, bearing in mind none of the walls are square, it seemed to be a never-ending task. However, Rob's tiling skills have come shining through and he has done us a brilliant job !!! It hasn't been an easy job, as we have told you about some of the grief we have endured in an earlier post, but we are extremely pleased with ourselves with the result.

A photo just to remind you of the old "bathroom" and some of the new bathroom. It's difficult to photograph the room but we have done our best to show you what we have achieved.

Lovely ....................

The fishery

Hi everyone well at last I can now report that the fishery has finally been dug out with the JCB and the help of some of my nearest and dearest neighbours.
It has been a lifetime ambition of mine to own and run my very own fishery, and only by coming to live in Portugal have I been able to achieve this.
It has taken a full week for the digger to complete the task and now we have to await the winter rainy season(hopefully, I may hasten to add,)to see if the fishery will fill up with water naturally, or whether we will need to line or concrete the ground.
It is a bit of an unknown quantity as some locals have said yes no problem it will retain water whilst others have said not,so fingers crossed I won't have to dig into the piggy bank, or worst case scenario - it may cost another couple of thousand to shutter and concrete only time will tell.
Either way and, ever the optimist, I know in my heart it will become a success as having done more research and networking, there are people lining up waiting to fish.
Obviously it will take time for the fishery to settle down and mature,but I am very happy with the layout of deeper contours combined with shallower parts, and two raised islands with trees and one that will become a submerged island for the fish to bask in and of course breed.
Just a few pics for now with progress reports and more pics in the future .....

Motor cyles, motor bikes, vintage motor bikes and quad bikes ...........

We have noticed that there seems to be a passion here for vintage motor-cycles. Rob was invited to go and watch the start of a Motor Bike Rally which was taking place at a nearby village "Atalaias" on the last day of their Festa. However when he got there (on his quad-bike) he was invited to take part in the rally so he decided to tag on and "ride it out", not having a clue what was to happen. For the pleasure of joining you pay 15 euros which enables you to consume copious amounts of refreshments ranging from water, soft drinks to vino and beer, (very thirsty work is riding for fun in the midday heat on a hot summer's day!!!!!) sandwiches and savouries during the journey, a T-Shirt with the name of the event written on it and then lunch which is usually chicken, chips, rice and salad. The Rally takes a route through many towns and villages where the riders stop, pap their hooters for people to admire their bikes!!!!!! He came back 4 hours later (was supposed to be a half-hour run out on the quad-bike) with a huge grin on his face after a fun morning.




Unfortunately Rob forgot to take the camera with him (usually my job) so we are not able to post any pictures from the event !!!!!!!!!!!
FREESTYLE MOTO RALLY - VALE D' URSO


We also went to a Moto Freestyle Rally, again not knowing what to expect but was told we would enjoy it, and we did! There were two professional bike riders performing tricks on motor-cycles and quad-bikes an it was very entertaining, a tad on the dangerous side if you ask me (but I am a girl!!) Rob didn't think so but then he did go on to say he wouldn't like to try any of it!!!!

Too busy to blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Firstly we feel we need apologise for the lack of blogs this last couple of months (getting complaints now we are not keeping you up-to-date with our blogs!!!!!) Well, we don't really know where to start this blog as over the summer months so much has happened, its difficult to decide where to start so will just say a bit about what we have been up to.

We have taken time out this summer with a visit back to the U.K. for lots of reasons. We have had two lovely celebrations in the family, one being the birth of my great nephew Max, so adorable and cute I just want to cuddle him all day, and the other the marriage of my lovely neice to her fiance which was a wonderful occasion and so enjoyable to be with all the family and have a great day catching up, eating and drinking plenty and having fun!! What a fabulous day we all had!!!!!!!!

Being in the U.K. also gave us a chance to do some shopping, for lots of lovely, lovely goodies which we cannot attain in Portugal easily (only at an extremely high premium price!!!!!), which is mainly sauces, certain foods, t-bags and cooking ingredients, which although we can adapt to living without, after a lifetime of using these products one tends to crave these things and this was a perfect opportunity to stock up on them!!!!!

Back here in Portugal we are seeing the onset of Autumn. We had our first taste of wet weather after months of glorious back to back sunshine and boy did it rain!!! Almost a full week of incessant rain which has totally transformed the look of our surroundings. In just over a week the terrain has changed from dry, burnt out grasses, to a beautiful carpet of lush green grass with the vines and tree leaves turning beautifully from green to a variety of autumn colours. I am pleased to say now though that the sunshine is back and we are basking in temps of 25/26 degrees and we are loving it. Sadly though the nights are drawing in quickly and it starts to make you thing of the winter months ahead. We should really be making the most of this sunshine instead of grabbing an odd hour pinched whenever possible as no doubt the heat in the sun will soon be fading away. The locals have been busy reaping their harvest of grapes, brewing up gallons and gallons of the red wine and Jeropiga, which is a desert (sweet) liquor made with Aguadente (a national drink - otherwise known as Portuguese fire-water!) and partially fermented red wine and is very nice in small doses (for me anyway!).