Finding our new adventure -What was it to be?
Being on board our boat on passages had given us the experience of being entirely alone and self-sufficient with constant views of the horizon and nothing else - what else on land could match that we wondered.
For twenty years we had visited the Algarve in January and had loved the inland hills and had walked many miles along tracks seeing no-one for many hours. Could this replace the sense of isolation and self-sufficiency that we had experienced on the boat?
We decided to explore this possibility and contacted some agents to arrange to view some properties. We were shown some very nice properties in our price range which had small manicured gardens and near neighbours. They were very tempting but as we sat down and contemplated them the same question came into our heads 'Yes, very nice, but what would we do?'
Feeling not quite ready to do without challenges just yet we asked the agents to look a bit further afield and within a few short weeks one of them offered us a viewing of Quinta Ventura. He warned us that the property was 4 and a half kilometes along an unmade track and did we still want to go? Yes we certainly did and so we found ourselves standing 400 metres above sea level, a short distance from the Alentejo border with a view over the entire central Algarve to the sea.
He explained that energy came from solar power and the water came from a well.
The well and the tracker solar panel
Immediately we both felt that this replicated our boat experience on land - the only difference being the land didn't move about like the sea - and we both knew we were going to buy it. There was no doubt in either of our minds - and it was within our price range. It had been on the market for a year and only two other sets of people had viewed it. Both had considered it too isolated. An offer was immediately accepted and we prepared ourselves for the Portuguese legal system.
We were fortunate in being referred to a good lawyer and we went through all the various processes with him including having to appear in various offices to sign documents and apply for certificates. In the end it turned out to be quite painless.