The turning point in our lives was the decision to leave the uk and to go and live in Portugal,not the Portugal most knew but the central part of Portugal where few spoke English, and life was very unlike the life we were leaving,we sold our house and with our furniture and basett hound took the boat to Santander in Spain,took a wrong turning and ended up climbing the mountain roads amongst the eagles,but arriving eventually to our portuguese destination in a small hamlet,the nearest large city Coimbra a mere 30 minutes away.Over the next year or so we managed to acrue ducks,chickens, goats dogs and a feral cat.
It was no use pretending to be self sufficient as neither of us could kill anything and soon ended up with a pen full of geriatric poultry that didnt lay eggs any more and goats too old to make chanfana and who cost us money to feed.
When we arrived in Portugal there was but one supermarket in Coimbra, and the first winter we seemed to live on an abundance of cabbage and carrots! and although we were from England we were amazed by the amount of rain that winter,and the summers were just so hot we would go to the river to stay cool we made many mistakes with the language too, with the highlight being my husband ordering two small boys in place of two coffees.The local people were lovely even organising evening classes to improve our Portuguese for us and the Dutch who lived in the area.

When our old basset got sick she was operated on the kitchen table,the Belgium non practising vet must have done a good job as she went on to live another 6 years.In the summers there was always the worry of forest fires we could see the smoke it was a very real worry,we already decided goods and chattels would be left in the case of vacating the house, and somehow our non productive livestock and dogs would be crammed in the car-luckily it was never necessary.Life seemed to pass much more quickley whilst in Portugal and the 6 years spent there are just a dream now, we had a relaxed and happy time overall and ask ourselves why we left such an interesting life,but then everything has to end

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