Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal

So that’s what they mean by the silly season...how did it suddenly become September?It’s been both exhilarating and exhausting, but we couldn’t have asked for a better summer start to the latest stage of our off-grid Portuguese adventure.And this week we enjoyed something which a few months ago would have been utterly terrifying in the face of an rapidly expanding overdraft...a night with no guests.As the kids started to drift back to school and the summer holidays started slowly coming to an end, a gap in our arrivals calendar allowed us the luxury of coming up for air, getting some rest, and starting to think beyond the next breakfast, lunch, dinner (or all three...on the same day).We ended the summer with a flourish...dinner for 16, wine tasting for 12, a short but first proper retreat and then a very welcome little lull.Somehow – for two months – we’ve kept the treadmill of arrivals and departures going without too many mess-ups or laundry-lacking panics.Our personal washing production line is tested enough by all the towels, so we outsource our sheets to a fabulous laundrette half an hour’s drive away in Vila Nova de Milfontes.Only once amid the madness did we reach for the iron, despite having bought three times more sheets than we needed, and thankfully we were just four pillow cases short before the overworked launderers saved our skins.Some would call it bad planning, we call it learning by doing: we set out at the start of the summer with a ‘bring-it-on’ attitude to running an eco-luxe lodge.In June we didn’t even know if anyone would come, let alone test our laundry logistics.Even with the wonderful Oda spending six weeks helping us through our first season – crafting cocktails, clinking wine glasses and making meals – it’s been a blur of guests, welcome tours, beach and restaurant advice and many, many lovely people.We have the best guests hands down and haven’t had a bad one yet...and the great reviews continue to flow in.Krishna has been cleaning like a demon, turning around rooms in a few short hours to keep all the people coming and going.We now understand what tourist season means: everybody working in the bars, the restaurants and the tourist lodges of Odemira is absolutely exhausted.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Some places have closed already, either to take some late summer sunshine themselves, or to sit in a quiet, darkened room with a stash of sedatives.Others are powering on...knowing it’ll be quieter in the off-season and sprinting towards the finishing line.But as the families are returning home from the beaches, the walkers hiking the Rota Vicentina long-distance foothpath are back in force...extending the season well into the winter and with it the workload.We always planned to be open for much of the year – that’s why we installed underfloor heating – but didn’t expect the clifftop trail and the historic inland path which cuts through the bottom of our valley to bring so many more visitors to the area.Now we have the time to properly promote our three night stays for the walkers looking for a little more luxury: a daily, backpack-free hike followed by a dip in the pool, a slap up dinner, a new wine each evening and a hearty breakfast to set them up for the next day.We’re also getting all the logistics in place for our painting retreat with Ed Sumner at the beginning of October.The paint and the canvases has arrived, the winemakers are ready and from the WhatsApp group, the attendees appear to be getting excited!We’ve have had a cancellation...so there is space for one more person (or two people sharing) to join...please get in touch...here’s the info: it starts on October 3rd.Suddenly the sun is setting earlier, the mornings and evenings are that little bit cooler and we even had some rain last week.It was very much welcomed by the plants who’ve suffered from my only occasional irrigational interventions, and I was so out of touch that the remnants of Hurricane Erin took me totally by surprise.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Guests had been mentioning how the red beach flags had been flying and the ocean was in turmoil, but even the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina didn’t draw my usually weather-curious eye to the satellite images.As I was being interviewed on BBC Radio 5Live recalling memories of reporting on the storm hitting New Orleans (on BBC Sounds here at 1.39’00”), I was utterly unaware that one of the largest hurricanes ever recorded was churning around the Atlantic, flooding New Jersey and moving Iberian beaches.Only in the last few days have I realised just how much sand has moved and changed the shape and flow of our favourite beaches as it usually does only in the Spring.Thankfully Erin didn’t make landfall – but its last band of rain which hit the UK and barely clipped our coast gave me a little reminder that the long summer days of endless solar power are coming to an end.It robbed us of a clear lunar eclipse (although day 2 of the blood moon was still pretty special), but more importantly the batteries went flat and our power went off.I’ve always been obsessed with monitoring our solar system, but for some reason I didn’t turn off the pool or water treatment pumps, ran washing machine-loads of towels all day, left a load of lights on and then started the 3-phase industrial dishwasher before the sun came up.Thankfully our guests were checking out and the gas cooker provided all they needed for breakfast, but I was a little shell-shocked by my own complacency...and that’s definitely a good thing.Our systems have been remarkably robust, aside from the little power cut and the occasional water “pump cavitation.”Whether it was a leaking pipe or a pump “running out of curve,” we would have loved a little more attention from our water engineer, but for an off-grid system and an average of 18 people a night, it’s been impressive for season 1.After our quietish week guests are starting to return to Vale das Estrelas and September is already starting to look busy.We love all the readers and listeners taking advantage of our special blog-following discount...and by way of apology for my six-week absence from Substack, we would like to extend that offer into October.We’ve happily eroded our overdraft and our young business is going well, but we could really do with your support to help us through winter.If you go onto our website and booking engine here and then enter the promotional code BLOG25 you’ll get a 15% discount for the rest of September and the whole of October (but don’t tell anyone).In my old life, the silly season was the summer lull when everyone went on holiday and we needed to find quirky stories to fill the airwaves.I’m not sure “silly” is the right word for the mad world and relentless news cycle that continued throughout the summer, but that lull is certainly over...it’s been quite a week.Israel bombed a new country; American political tension exploded with an assassination; France, Japan and Nepal all lost their prime ministers; Russian drones entered Polish and Romanian airspace; and NASA (maybe) discovered life on Mars.Exhausting isn’t it? And those were just the top stories.But this news hound now listens to classical music, we still marvel every evening at our amazing view at orange time and pink time, the reorganised beaches are beautiful, and you really can get away from it all.Come to the Valley of the Stars: we’re in the country, on the coast and off the grid. And above all, it’s quiet here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

We’ve heard many encouraging words in the various iterations of these despatches, from Off-Grid and Ignorant, Off-Grid and Open and now Off-Grid and Entertaining (people)...in Portugal.And having welcomed quite a few guests already this summer, we love seeing their words left on the website reviews sections even more.Obviously the five out of fives and the ten out of tens aren’t going to last forever, but right now we’re loving it...and loving the people enjoying our infinity pool, those doing a wine story tasting, having breakfast, or joining one of our big-table family-style meals.“Congratulations” said Pedro as I introduced our latest guest and his partner to the valley, explaining how we fell in love with the view at first sight and how it was all a eucalyptus forest just a few years ago.I’d just explained their arrival had brought us a full house for the first time – all rooms occupied and one hopeful guest sadly having to be turned away.It was another marvellous milestone on this journey towards running our own little eco-luxe lodge in Alentejo.Our first full house involved an interesting mix of Dutch, Portuguese, French and British folk who somehow stumbled upon us and arrived curious about what we’ve done, or just in need of some well-earned summer rest.The following day was a second – not quite so impressive milestone – our first overbooking.We’re getting to grips with the software which keeps all the calendars on all the various booking sites up to date, but we made a mistake filling in the cleaning schedules spreadsheet and it left us thinking we had a room when we didn’t.Easy to do...much harder to resolve.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Thankfully our friends at nearby Monte de Silveira had an open room and we were able to solve the problem before the guests even realised there was a problem.In July that’s tough but possible...in August everything will be packed, so we can’t make that mistake again! A good lesson early on.Speaking of which, the calendar is now a sea of colour...we’ve been overwhelmed by just how many people have booked...and how many keep calling every day asking if we can fit them in.We’ve had a wonderful range of guests: German newlyweds on their honeymoon, a Polish couple who loved their wine and their wine tasting, two Spanish guys working in the area and loving the pool in the evenings.The banking consultant who helped us buy our flat in Lisbon more than 10 years ago arrived to celebrate her birthday and we managed to get a dinner together.Rachael, Daisy and Ed the painter stayed a week – Ed will be back in October for his painting retreat (just one space left!).We hosted our first Valley Sessions event featuring businessman and candidate for the Portuguese presidential election, Tim Vieira to talk politics and answer some tough questions over wine.Mauro the winemaker walked the soon-to-be vineyard with me suggesting when to do what to the land, how many bush-vines to plant and which grape varieties to mix in.There have been so many wonderful people...and all have left very kind comments.Two young women arrived in a taxi happy to spend all day in the pool and relaxing in the shade – we usually tell people coming by car gives you a much better chance to explore, but these guys were incredibly happy just hanging out here!September is also starting to get busy and that’s a fantastic time of year on this coast, with the ocean at its warmest and the summer rush of tourists having past.That’s why we’d like you to come and see us! If you go onto our website and booking engine here and then enter the promotional code BLOG25 you’ll get a 15% discount from our soft-opening rates for the whole of September (but don’t tell anyone).It’s a huge relief after all the worries about whether people would find us, whether they’d like the place and whether they’d tell their friends about their time “In the country, on the coast and off the grid”...as we sometimes put it.Well, they have. We’re actually doing it...we’ve built it and they are coming...It’s been a little over five years since we arrived in Portugal in the middle of COVID and the diplomat/journalist couple who’d bounced around the world for decades decided to give up their old lives and try running a business.In retrospect, the first few years were easy: we just had to spend money – now we have to make it.Regular readers will know how funny those retrospective words sound, given the challenges we’ve faced with funding, battling bureaucracy for permissions, project managing the construction and working out all the off-grid infrastructure.We almost gave up a couple of times as inflation soared, paperwork stalled so long we almost lost our funding and we battled to keep control of our budget.Naivety has certainly been our friend.For three years worries over water kept us awake at night, but now there’s lovely, soft minerally water running from the taps and the off-grid systems are holding up well to the high demand.There’s still plenty of DIY work to do tweaking the occasional leaking pipe and putting in some extra infrastructure, but the focus has switched to something we’re more practiced at: providing people with a warm welcome.It did lead me to the realisation I didn’t have any nice clothes left, having trashed them all working on the land.Thankfully Ana discovered a hidden box of the smart shirts I used to wear while reporting for the BBC – crisply collared shirts worn with the sleeves rolled up in whatever war zone I’d been thrown into.Now it’s a fabulous roller-coaster ride of guests arriving and departing as a new and steeper learning curve of invoicing, payment systems and booking engines is providing the stress we’ve been missing since we got our license.At least the money is now coming in as well as going out.We take turns leading a little tour explaining what off-the-grid means...urging people to try and beat the 5-minutes’ worth of sand in the hour glass when they shower.Anyone showing a brief flash of additional interest soon regrets it, as I get into the weeds on pipes, pumps, LPWAN monitoring systems, pH regulators and salt sensors.(On that note, I have a short radio documentary going out this week on the rise of LPWAN and the Internet of Things) on the BBC’s Business Daily programme – not sure exactly which day yet, but it’ll appear here when they’ve filled the schedule).I officially bore myself now when I enthusiastically dive down the water-filled rabbit hole and confuse people with TLAs (three letter acronyms).Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Amid busy and creative breakfast-making – and the fun bit of getting to know our guests who’ve somehow discovered us from all over the world – there’s a new sea of bureaucracy that any small business owner will recognise.Invoices, three different rates of VAT (IVA here) and balancing the books has taught us how we’re just one part in a complicated system of helping other people making money...out of us.Everyone seems to get their cut, but I guess that’s just how the world works.Luckily the local parish council levelled our dirt road just in time for the summer rush – still providing guests with a suitable amount of adventure, but without as much risk to their vehicles.Thankfully the guests who I accidentally (and massively) undercharged the other day came back to say they owed us money after realising my mistake.Business basics.They say ignorance is bliss...and we enjoyed being Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal for ages...but now we have to step up and know what we’re doing.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.There are big laundry and recycling runs – to drop off the empties from our wine tasting events – visits to the local butcher and the lovely lady at the little cheese shop to show off to guests all the wonderful things we’ve discovered since we arrived.And there’s something strangely satisfying about one-day turn-around of rooms as one set of guests leave just as another group arrives.Our marketing education resumes whenever we come up for air, and amid the demands of high tourist season, we make plans and put out posts for painting retreats and walking holidays in the autumn and spring.It’s a new and fun stage in our transformation from international travellers to hosts and professional entertainers.We took a bet on our beautiful view and so far everyone seems to agree with us...that this part of coastal Alentejo is something very special with its wild beaches, hidden coves and great restaurants.We’ve still got a long way to go, but I think we’re heading in the right direction. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Portugal loves a party, and the summer season smoothly segues from festa straight into to festa.Since most schools were out from early June the festivities have been off to a flying start with both the unusually hot weather arriving unseasonably early this year...and with a football trophy.Beating the old enemy Spain on penalties in the UEFA Nations League final set the tone for the opening holiday weekend, then came Portugal Day and the celebration of the national epic poet was quickly followed by the Santos Populares – or Popular Saints celebrations.If you try to get anything done in Lisbon during the second week of June around St Anthony’s Day, the phones ring out as the city comes to a standstill of block parties awash in a sea of sardines.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.And there are three popular saints: António, João and Pedro. Porto goes St João crazy on the 23rd and then June rounds off with St Pedro...and that is really just the start.Across the country, live music stages are popping up on every street corner and you can’t move for parades, bunting and long outdoor dining tables.Here in coastal Alentejo it’s the Marchas Populares which bring the Sagres and Super Bock beer kiosks out of winter storage and music to the town squares.Our nearest town of São Teotónio has its annual ceiling of handmade paper ribbons as the traditional mastros festival (of masts) is underway, and across the country traditional town celebrations and full-on music festivals fill the calendar from now until the autumn.On the praias, big sea swells have been keeping the surfers entertained and the beach guards on high alert; our supermarkets are newly stocked with suncream and beach umbrellas and the summer people are starting to arrive.Having just opened our doors for guests at our new tourist lodge – and being happily surprised at the number of bookings we’re already getting – we don’t have as much time as we did to join in the parties.But we’ve been celebrating in our own way...with the arrival of our first member of staff to be officially on our books: Krishna Shrestha from Waling in the western region of Nepal (a bit south of Pokhara).Krishna is a machine, whether it’s gardening, cleaning, building, or as it turns out cooking (as we signed the contract he casually mentioned working for years as an assistant chef in Dubai).We’ve known Krishna a while now and are delighted to have him as our first employee...especially as there’s so much to do in Vale das Estrelas.Hot on the heels of our first hire, we acquired our second member of staff, and in the fast-changing world in which we live, it will be no surprise to hear we recruited a robot.Our daughter Oda hit the perfect creative chord by calling the pool cleaning WyBot Herbert Hoover. Herbie is already making a big impact on the infinity pool...if not yet and beyond.While Ana selflessly held the fort for our guests, I did manage a couple of hours at one event that no self-respecting establishment like ours can afford to miss: the local tourism festival Fei-Tur.Being in the biggest regional tourist town of Vila Nova de Milfontes and on the fabulous Mira River estuary, the FEIra de TURismo do SW leans heavily on the river and ocean sports side of things with surf schools and stand up paddle boarding.But it’s a feira packed with local producers, peddling cheese and wine, honey and olive oil, preserves and cakes com or sem gluten and on the strong booze front, a muddle of Medronho-makers (or whatever the collective noun might be: a mess? a mash? a murder? Let’s hope not).It was a collection of exactly the kind of people we need to meet in order to keep our guests happy.Our fabulous lawyer Ana Aleixo treated her husband Sérgio to a surprise Vale das Estrelas staycation, our brilliant bank manager Wilson Gonçalves dropped by with the family to see what all the money’s been spent on, and we’ve been welcoming some pioneering guests who found us online and wanted to be the first to discover our place (and tell their friends).We’ve been making daily breakfast spreads for a lovely German couple, a few young Lisbonites have been spending nights escaping the big city and our first venture into painting retreats with Ed Sumner in October is pretty much sold out already.A big part of what we want to do is introduce visitors to the tastes of Alentejo – the wines from the interior and from our region, the fresh fish and the black pork, and so a local tourism fair was the perfect place to collect a tote-bag full of business cards and flyers and a notebook full of numbers.It was also a great reminder of all the things visitors to our area can see and do – beyond visiting all the beautiful beaches – and it means I’ll have to update the guides left in our rooms for guests.Horse riding, motorcross schools, freediving courses, bird watching guides, kayak tours and boat trips, and foiling...whatever that is.But at the heart of it all is the hundreds of kilometres of walking and cycling paths which are bringing thousands more visitors to our Costa Vicentina every year.The number of people hitting the trails is growing at an astonishing rate – the bars and restaurants along the clifftop route of the Fisherman’s Trail are constantly busy with resting hikers from all over the world newly discovering our wild Atlantic coast.The Rota Vicentina had a whole line of exhibition tents at this year’s Fei-Tur festival and was promoting cycling routes as well as the stunning inland long-distance hiking path and the circular trails.Pedro Almeida is the head of cycling, and was buzzing with excitement over the free downloadable maps, a new range of automatic bicycle service stations and how electric bikes are attracting a new type of cyclist.“The Fisherman’s Trail is incredibly popular as people want to see the coast – and it’s a beautiful coast,” said our friend Pedro.“But we have so many circular walking and cycling routes and we’d like to bring people here for slow tourism and natural tourism – to spend more time in one place and learn more about the local food and culture.”Many long-distance hikers stay in a different town or village each night as they track all or some of the 226.5km from São Torpes (near Sines) to Sagres and across to Lagos.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Sunday Times chief foreign correspondent Christina Lamb – a friend from when I lived in Afghanistan – visited while walking a long stretch of the Fisherman’s Trail.Wearing her travel writer’s hat she seemed to enjoy the hike and visiting our place in an area she first discovered many years ago.Like many others she used a tour company to shuttle her luggage around. Transport companies are thriving and the local guesthouses are heaving, but they have a a lot more work to do with one-night stops rather than week-long visits.It is something we’ve already realised running a small eco-luxe lodge: the costs of cleaning and laundry push us towards a two or three night minimum stay.But with trailhead drop-offs and pick-ups, local bike hire suggestions, scenic circular routes, and a peaceful place to return to — where guests can rest their legs by the pool after a long day on the trails, sip a glass of Alentejo wine, and enjoy a fresh fish or black pork dinner with a stunning view— we believe we’re offering something really special.“We want to encourage responsible travel and responsible tourism: to attract people to do more different activities. There are boat rides, a bird watching festival – and of course cycling,” said Pedro.“The great thing about e-bikes now is you don’t have to be an athlete or to bring your own bike with you – you just need to know how to ride a bike and then you can discover more places.”And as luck would have it, the focus of the Rota Vicentina circular walking and cycling paths is all around us and the inland Historical Way crosses the bottom of our valley.The SW coast of Alentejo is well worth a visit...for hiking, biking, wine tasting, surfing...and foiling (whatever that is).We love our Atlantic coast and while we keep quiet about our hidden coves and wild beaches, a lot more people are now starting to discover this still quite secret corner of the country.So now’s the time to come and see us...before everyone else does! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

The metaphors have moved from walking through mud to battling thick undergrowth as the moment in the year has passed when the clay on our land turns to concrete.A very wet winter has given everything an extra spurt of growth, and now that the days are getting longer and sun is getting stronger it’s a jungle out there.The dogs have shed their muddy socks and now bring dust rather than wet pawprints into the house.And the Scarab Cult are back – the annual bombardment of drunken beetles careering into the house and heading for “the flame...the flame” obsessed as they are with our gas stove.Apparently they get smashed on honeycombs and then inexplicably make a beetle-line for the kitchen.Simon the dog used to chase them, but these days the old man is more obsessed with bothering us and our neighbour Daniel for human food and snoozing than chasing bugs...however much he used to like the crunch.We catch each one, try to persuade it that life is worth living and then launch it back into the wild hoping it can stay off the honeycomb, out of the hive-bars and not be lured back to the flame.It’s that trimming strimming time of year again when I dust off the weed whacker and reacquaint myself with our land patch by daily patch...shedding a few pounds in the process.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The legal deadline for fire-prevention land-clearing within 50m of every building was thankfully pushed back until the end of May as usual, but it’s a time consuming business with more buildings built and temperatures rising.A dodgy knee hasn’t helped, but there is something very calming about spending hours methodically clearing hillside patches of esteva (rock rose) and silves (brambles)...and the instant gratification that brings.It’s nice to actually see the fruits of our labour as our indoor work is mostly sending messages out into the social media ether without the immediate feedback.We’re fine-tuning our video and photography, delving into design software and experimenting with Facebook ads and Instagram reels to reach the people – that we know are out there – who will love the wonderful place we’ve created.It turns out there’s more to it than just “build it and they’ll come.”We had a crazy idea, made a plan, got a loan, learned how to build, how to install a fully off-grid power and water system for a small hotel and somehow beat the bureaucracy to open something truly remarkable...in record time.Having retrained as builders and project managers, we are reinventing ourselves once again as marketeers, IT experts, accountants, social media super-spreaders, hosts, chefs, landscapers, gardeners and event organisers.Now we’re working around the clock to manage everything and make it all work.We’re fluctuating wildly between the fear of failing and having every confidence we’ll succeed – in the sense of having money coming in as well as going out, which I’m told is quite important.We’ve been blown away by the people visiting us and staying with us who have been so brilliantly baffled by the beauty...and spontaneously asked why our prices are so low.It’s our opening year and we really want expectations to be exceeded – and it’s hard on a website to do justice to the peace and quiet, all the nature and the open spaces.And it’s great to hear from people even more convinced than we are that we can make a success out of this crazy adventure.We are still caught deep in the weeds trying to get our booking engine activated, as connecting to the sites where people go to search for holiday homes has been an inexplicably uphill struggle.A bad user always blames his bad user experience, but linking Booking.com, Expedia and AirBnB to our own “channel management system” has been the equivalent of cutting through a bamboo forest with a blunt blade.Days of our lives we will never get back have been spent adding multiple photos and detailed descriptions, trying to avoid double bookings, one-night stays (due to cleaning costs), and dogs...at least for now, until Garfunkel and Albie get used to guests.After weeks of helplines and service desks some apartments still aren’t appearing online and rooms people want somehow can’t be reserved.It’s perhaps reassuring that the lower than expected booking numbers may be our own fault, but now we need bom dias on beds sooner rather than later.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.In many respects we’re lucky the season hasn’t quite got started yet as it gives us time to finish things off properly and to do the noisy stuff every morning...like cutting the grass.But it’s a nervous time for us first-time entrepreneurs and with loan repayments already fleeing our account, my childhood eczema is back and we’re both running around figuratively (and sometimes literally) shouting “Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic!”We’ve realised the best way to settle our nerves is to create retreats we can plan for ahead of time – package deals including pickups and drop-offs, meals and activities.There are far too many great yoga and wellness retreat centres in the neighbourhood, but with artist friends like Ed Sumner we’ve started proposing painting retreats and get-away-from-it-all weeks based around walking and wine.There’s been a huge surge of people hiking the Rota Vicentina clifftop trails on this last wild coast in Europe, many stopping in a different place every night.But we’re building a package plan to pick people up and drop them off each day so they can do stretches of the route while basing themselves in on place: in the Valley of the Stars.I’d happily spend three or four nights walking in the morning, relaxing by the pool in the afternoon and then trying a local dish and a new Portuguese wine every evening...all while avoiding luggage logistics.And if people aren’t obsessed with walking every single step of 200-plus kilometres of the Fisherman’s Trail or the Historical Way in a straight line, then the lovely circular routes nearby for some light hikes – or rides on bikes – can give structure to a very relaxing week.So if any of this might be of interest to you or people you know please get in touch and we’ll test out some package plans.As I write, the sun is already getting higher in the sky and the shrubbery isn’t going to cut itself, the scratching sound of a hungover beetle trapped in a plastic bag is calling for an intervention and Simon the dog wants some human breakfast.We’re discovering how tough it is to get a business up and running from scratch when the personal stakes are so high.But we’re also in a very beautiful place surrounded by pets and wildlife, a chorus of birdsong, and plenty of sunshine and wild beaches.With the undergrowth cleared and the clay firm underfoot we have a pretty open path to our first summer season. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Surprised, interested, shocked, concerned and intrigued all sum up our reaction to the massive power cuts across Portugal and Spain, but perhaps the most appropriate description of our mood was: smug.When the traffic lights went dark, petrol stations closed and panic struck the ice cream shops of the nearby tourist towns on our southwestern coast of Alentejo, we could rest easy.Our freezer-load of wild boar (wild boar) wasn’t defrosting, our water pumps were working well and our wine remained nicely chilled.While the lights went off across the Iberian peninsula, a healthy hum was heard from our control centre as our 84 solar panels were piling power into our batteries as usual.We have the storage capacity of a large electric vehicle – a BMW or a Porsche Taycan – and yesterday when the lights went out we felt very much at the luxury end of the market.We were buying fruit trees when the plant nursery billing system went down.People in Vila Nova de Milfontes were standing in shop doors and milling around street corners burning through the last of the mobile phone tower batteries for online information and updates to understand why the “apagão” or power cut, had happened.There was much speculation at the coffee-less cafés over what, or whom, might have been responsible for the outage.The explanation as to why the whole of Portugal and Spain lost electricity for many hours has to get a lot better for people to stop thinking it was Mr Putin, Mr Trump or a cabal of satanic paedophiles.I do tend to lean heavily into cock-up over conspiracy, but I’ll admit my work countering Russian disinformation led my first suspicions towards a Russian cyber-attack.Thanks for reading Off-grid and SMUG in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.But we were fine.After years of learning to live off the grid, the thousands of euros of investment, power cuts and teething troubles, our system finally came into its own.From the early days when we moved into our new off-grid home in the Portuguese countryside in the middle of the COVID pandemic we’ve been playing catch up with power.We have learned the hard way what a lot of people realised yesterday – just how much power we consume every day and how dependent we are on electricityThe off-grid system which came with our house provided a lot less energy than we were used to – even moving from Kenya where power cuts were common, but we had a generator in the garden.Toasters and ovens are the biggest culprits – and I’ll never use my hairdryer while ironing ever again!After failing to keep the giant Tamagotchi of a lead-acid battery system alive we installed new panels and lithium batteries for us...and then for the 20 plus people we can cater for at the eco-luxe lodge we’ve just opened.Three phases, hundreds of meters of buried cables, a lot of maths and fuse boxes later and we are...smug.Last week my mornings had begun with a nervous eye on the app, as 17 Easter guests and some pretty rainy and cloudy weather tested the system, which happily passed with flying colours.But while the rest of the region was powerless to do anything, our batteries were at 100%, our satellite connection kept the communications going and we were one of the few restaurants still open.We hadn’t planned on making a fish braai for our guests Robert and Kim – and we’re not even a restaurant – but in the absence of a mobile phone signal to even ask the best seafood places if they were open, we confidently offered a three course meal complete with electric light.The candles were merely for effect.And the country-wide shortage of internet connectivity led a BBC producer back to my WhatsApp and the offer of a chance to play at my old job for an afternoon.BBC Radio 4’s PM programme in the UK was interested in “some colour” from Odemira so Ana and I headed off for a wander (hear the story 38 mins in here).Our local Intermarché supermarket boss was almost as smug as we were – because their massive generator was keeping the meat and fish cold, the freezers below zero and the ATM cash machine running.There was a touch of the early COVID days about it – even if the toilet roll stocks remained largely undisturbed.We bumped into our friend Francisco from the A Terra glamping lodge – everything had gone off at his place and so he was at the ATM paying for 20 new solar panels.“Because tomorrow the price is going to be crazy,” he told me.“I should have bought them a long time ago, but now it needs to be done.”Glenn Cullen who with his wife Berny runs a beautiful tourism lodge called Paraiso Escondido was also at the supermarket stocking up on water to help guests flush.“The power cut’s a bit inconvenient...to say the least,” he told me.“We rely on pumps for the water, electricity as we’d expect for the power, so cooking – breakfast, lunch, dinners. We do have gas in one of our kitchens, so we have got a standby.“It’s a bit of a worry and something we have to think about for the future. Already we’re talking about getting generators to have backup. We have solar for hot water, but all the other things we take for granted: every day you turn the tap on, you flick a switch and communication – the WiFi is down. We rely on it so much.”I do care a lot about ice cream – and was keen to volunteer my services to stop large amounts of it going to waste, so next stop was beach-front Zambujeira-do-Mar and Rita’s Restaurant.Nuno Rita explained the gelato was straight into the freezer as soon as the lights went out and the door would remain shut until it came back on again.“It will be fine as long as the power comes back within a day,” he explained, as much to my disappointment I realised my ice cream eating sacrifice was not going to be immediately required.The Sunset Café was packed – André had his sleeves rolled up and was washing dishes while hikers on the long-distance walking trail Rota Vicentina were fuelling up on lunch.“Traditional work – no lights, washing glasses with my hands, salads, sandwiches and Portuguese bifanas,” he said, talking about the traditional bread rolls filled with thin pork steaks he was dishing out to walkers.Thanks for reading Off-grid and SMUG in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.I’m pleased to say it was a mere 17 hours that our region was without electricity.Our neighbour Daniel was up before dawn as usual and spotted a distant glow from the nearby town at around 5.15am.Now is a great time to talk about community micro-grids rather than national grids, and how renewable energy can be better managed at a local level...however much the giant power providers may protest.Solar panels have never been cheaper, but integrating small systems into national grids are not as easy as the “sell your renewable power back” offers suggest.Our friend Niels discovered it was costing him money to sell his excess power to the grid and so invested in large water tanks and heaters to create different types of “battery” instead.And our neighbour Jeff in Lisbon had taken steps towards energy independence by installing panels, but because he is connected to the grid he couldn’t use them when the blackout happened.While conservative newspapers say the Iberian power cuts prove renewable energy can’t work at scale - because of the huge steps Spain and Portugal has made towards running on green energy - we have to remember that it must.It’s perhaps more down to the traditional systems and the big, rich power companies which need to change and adapt.And it’s also a good reminder that come the next zombie apocalypse we should be fine – all we need is a couple of extra shovels to hit them with and maybe a shotgun. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

For more than three years now there’s been a loop of thinking, building, pushing and waiting...but we’ve finally opened our doors to a flurry of guests.With thanks to friends – and friends of friends – for booking in advance and betting we’d be ready, we had our biggest test so far this Easter holiday week, with six of our seven units filled and a peak of 17 people staying.Despite all the fears of the whole thing descending into a terrible Fawlty Towers epsiode – particularly when two of the visitors were German – I think we managed pretty well.We barbequed porco preto black pork, served Portuguese arroz de pato duck rice, braai-d some sea bass alongside Ana’s amazing moules and introduced our guests to some top Alentejo wines.If only the weather had stepped up and given us a helping hand.It’s the one thing we can usually rely on, but the glimmer of Spring which followed the reservoir-filling deluge of March evaporated into more heavy rain.Whether it’s meteorologically correct or not, I am convinced that in these epoch-changing times of isolationism and authoritarianism...that Britain stole our sunshine.It’s not the kind of behaviour Portugal should expect from the world’s oldest alliance.As far as I can see, the weather doesn’t feature in the 1386 Treaty of Windsor, but in an age of re-interpreting old documents...things like the American constitution for example...I wouldn’t rule anything out.It’s what I believe and therefore it’s true – it’s my truth and you just try to prove me wrong! Opá. As they say around here: oh boy.Truth or not, it was certainly a reality for our guests from London who gave up an unseasonably warm Britain for an unreasonably chilly and disappointingly damp Alentejo Easter.I’m very pleased to report a typically stiff-upper-lip keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude from guests and proprietors alike took us all through.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Apologising, however, by suggesting they stay another week as “it’s going to be beautiful from Tuesday” is straight from the Basil Fawlty playbook. (Note to self: don’t ever do that).Without the lure of constant sunshine, our Clubhouse became the Clubhouse it was meant to be: where people hung out around a roaring fire, chatted around the dinner table, and where younger guests played cards and started learning to play the guitar.The rainy March didn’t give the pool much of a chance to get up to a good temperature, but that didn’t stop many people from giving it try...some of them every day.We’re so lucky that cold water swimming is a thing.But the ocean proved to be surprisingly warm for the surf lessons, and on the occasional beach days the sun forced its way through with enough potency to sizzle unprotected skin (guilty as charged!).Our neighbour Daniel kindly patched up some of the bigger holes in the road for Ana’s birthday, but the holiday and the continuing rain means it will be next week before the proper repair work begins.The horse riding was a great success, the secret beaches a big hit, the local restaurants proved popular and most importantly the off-grid power and water systems thrived in their biggest challenge so far: lots of people and lots of weather.We’re still tweaking our water dilution system for automatically mixing rainwater with mineral-salted borehole water, but it’s got off to a great start.I’ll be writing more about the long range WiFi / Internet of Things LPWAN technology we’re using soon as I finish editing a BBC radio programme I’m making on the topic with some really interesting Portuguese examples.The tech is keeping our swimming pool flowing for infinity and beyond (hopefully), watching over our tanks, keeping our drinking water perfectly palatable, and will soon be managing the fabulously nutritious water emerging from our treatment plant ready for irrigation.My maths surrounding our whole power grid was always shaky, and with many showers testing water pumps and heat pumps, and lots of induction hobs being used, there were some nervous early morning checks on the batteries, but the system held up really well.Gamifying the shower experience with “beat the egg timer” hour glasses attached the wall seemed to generate some interest and some competition.The guests were the Jennings family from Yorkshire...Sarah, my godson Atti and Hugh who has been many times before to help out and was lured into the occasional odd job despite being a paying guest.Dedicated blog reader Jeremy Grant surprised his partner Siobhan with a trip to Alentejo and landed amid the chaos of people with delight over the view...after having followed our progress almost from the start.The other families are friends of my old pal Matthew Price – adventurous London professionals with a love of exploring with their brilliant young teenagers – who he strongarmed into coming along to an Easter excursion on the coastal Alentejo.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The German couple were early adopters on Booking.com who stayed for some comfort at the start of their long Rota Vicentina hike down to the Algarve.Different dietary requirements got us thinking about how to make the perfect dinner, I started developing some breakfast skills...and there was some troubleshooting running roof repairs in high wind.It was a fantastic start to our new venture and adventure – thanks so much to all four families involved for visiting Vale das Estrelas.We are realising that there are two sides to this job: attending to guests while they are here, and working even harder behind the scenes to find new ones to come and visit in the future.“It’s marketing, marketing, marketing,” our friend Vera told us, and she and Cam have already made a thriving business out of their tourism resort Quinta Camarena a bit further north of us in Cercal, so it’s good advice.Our own website and booking engine has been at the heart of it and despite the urgency, we’d been waiting for a break in the rain and the return of a little sunshine for our talented interior architecture photographer friend Cia to take some proper photos.She spent hours working with the light and the angles to edit together an amazing set of images.It’s always going to be hard to properly capture the scale of our views and the feeling of calm here through photographs, but @ciajansen (check out her Insta) has done us proud.We’ve fussed over the photos, tweaked the text and agonized over the pricing strategy, but finally can unveil our new website www.valleyofthestars.co.uk or for those in Portugal www.valedasestrelas.ptI hope you like it – please have a look through it...if only to search for the glaring mistakes we’ve made in our prices which will allow bargain-bucket bookings.It’s our soft-opening year, so we have lower prices than similar properties in the area to give us the leeway to learn.Ana’s new mantra is that every visitor’s expectations must be exceeded when they arrive – rather than the other way around.Please help us out by sharing it with all of your networks – and if anyone wants to rent the whole property for a retreat please get in touch directly and we’ll make a plan.This journey is going to continue having its challenges – first with our workload as we learn to do everything ourselves and then bring staff in to help us in the most important places.And that’s also a challenge for us here where staff are in short supply.We’ve been so lucky that our fabulous friend Lotti – a former deputy Swedish ambassador and top lawyer – used her Easter vacation to come here and help us wash up!We couldn’t have had such a successful week without her (thanks Lotti!)And on that note, I’m turning to you again…wonderful readers...if you know anyone looking for some paid summer work, we’re looking for people experienced in the hospitality industry, working in wine, or restaurants to help us out.It’ll be hard work, but there’ll be time to enjoy this wonderful coastline. Let us know welcome@valleyofthestars.co.uk This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Well, that was easy.After years of waiting and hoping, begging and pushing, of sleepless nights and stressful days our reaction was...understated when the email came through.We’d roped in a trade organisation to help us bother and worry the town hall decision makers and were told everything seemed on track and a decision would be delivered on Friday or Monday.Friday nervously came and went as a warning that unrequited expectations can put a cloud over a weekend.But on Monday morning the letter from our local câmara – or town hall – dropped into our inbox, and as usual was written in a way that needed translation, interpretation, further consideration and expert reassurance before we could believe what we thought we could see.“Regarding the above-mentioned matter and for all due effects, I am obliged by order of the Councilor dated March 14th 2025...”Yes...do go on...“After a classification audit, a copy of Report No. 25/25 of which is attached...”Yes, yes..?“To inform Your Excellency,” yes-yes-yes, that’s definitely me, “that the Tourist Enterprise called Vale das Estrelas...meets the conditions to be classified as Tourism in Rural Areas - COUNTRY HOUSES.”No need to shout. Wait, what? So that’s it then? Has anything else been slipped into the five pages of ifs and buts that says in some convoluted way how this will only come to pass after we have provided x and y additional documents?No? Really?OK.In this way, played out in real time, was the anatomy of an anticlimax.“The number,” we both remembered. “Now we need the number.”We’d like to think we’re not just a number, but in terms of opening to the general public...of getting the quantity of people through the door we need to pay back our loans and pay staff we haven’t yet got...everything is about the tourism number.We are just a number.How many weeks, we wondered, would it take to get that?Monday afternoon was rainy and not packed with optimism as we dived into the Turismo de Portugal online portal and started filling things in.We called a few times for guidance...and a woman called Maria João picked up pretty much straight away...every time.But the last call to Turismo irritated the person who picked up.“Yes...of course,” she said sternly. But we repeated the question anyway: “So that’s our number? Our actual tourism number? The number we need to open to the public, to list on AirBnB, to run our business? So what do we do now”“Well rent out your rooms of course! Is there anything else?”There wasn’t.There was just a number. One. Two. Five. One. One.Not the snappiest, nor the most symmetrical, but it was ours and it was beautiful. Our. Own. Number.Finally, licensed...to bill.We reached for the champagne as we had some other numbers to celebrate.It was St Patrick’s Day – and the 15th anniversary of Ana and I getting together.1, 2, 5, 1, 1; 17, 3, 2010…15. Pink Portuguese espumante. Nice.And then the work began…It’s been a stormy March here in Portugal, and we’ve been using the time to get our new website firmly under construction.As four named storms pummelled the Portuguese coast, we’ve been pulling together years of photographs and months of thoughts and ideas about how to best describe our property, and do it justice.As I said last month, all we’ve got to do now is make sure all those people who will love the calm, the serenity and the undiscovered beauty of this place will find us.As storms Jana, Konrad, Laurence, and Martinho rattled our windows, scared our dogs, tested our dams, filled our water tanks to overflowing and gorged out a river down our valley, we sent Word files full of copy and folders packed with pictures to GuestCentric’s designers.They’re a website and booking engine company for small-hoteliers like us (I like the sounds of that), and will hopefully take the pain out of listing properties, prevent double bookings and encourage as many direct enquiries as possible.But while they work away finessing and finetuning we plunged straight into what is the hell of AirBnB and Booking.com profiles to put ourselves out there ASAP.That was a frustrating couple of rainy days in our life that neither of us will ever get back.Why is adding photos to room profiles so difficult? How do we navigate the different included or excluded fees and taxes to set prices that match our expectations but aren’t too much for the visiting public?Why are there so many sections that need to be filled in?As the squalls of heavy showers are becoming more scattered and infrequent, the sun is shining through literally and figuratively as our room profiles have gone live.So here they are – finally – links to our AirBnB profiles. Taking their name from stars and constellations the three suites are called Sirius Altair and Vega; the Bungalow’s one-bed place is called Aquila and the two-bed apartment is Lynx; and the Villa has Andromeda and Cassiopeia.Spread the love, my friends...please spread the love.Our website works for now, but will be shiny and new very soon.But also bear in mind AirBnB add fees on top…and contacting us directly works better for everyone ;) Back to the weather and it really has been quite remarkable.We always say we never complain about rain as we need all the water we can get, but I have an admission to make...enough already.I know the aquifers continue to love it, and although the massive Alqueva Reservoir was half a meter from being full a week ago, our local reservoir Santa Clara is still only at 55% and it would really help our region if it filled up.Four major storm depressions in March is a first and although the rainfall hasn’t overtaken levels of 2018, the year 2000 or the more historical averages, there have been 100mph winds along the west coast and quite a bit of damage caused in Lisbon. There are trees up and flood damage all around our region too.“Unusual...but not unprecedented,” is how the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere or IPMA is quoted by Portugal Decoded.It’s a great news site in English which I’d heartily recommend. They have an obsession about making a carefully crafted infographic every week...and who doesn’t love an infographic.The winter weather has certainly become a personal obsession as we need to balance our power use on those rare weeks when sunshine is at a premium, and so keep a close eye on the Apps: Weather Underground and Ventusky are my go-tos.And I learned early on that it’s the Azores High which is the most important influence on the Iberian peninsula.When it’s a little weaker and further away from the Iberian Peninsula, as it has been this winter, some of Britain’s weather ends up here. Imagine.“Rising ocean surface temperatures suggest climate change may be playing a role,” Portugal Decoded add, with North Atlantic sea temperatures 3 or 4 degrees Celsius above average in places.But proper Spring is now most certainly on the near horizon.Despite the high winds, the cuckoo is back...somehow it made it through storm Martinho!And I’m sure I heard a Nightingale the other day.And the medium-range forecasts are no longer packed with precipitation and the temperatures are going up into the 20s Celsius next weekend.As soon as this rain stops and the temperatures soar we’ll get out planting and prepping the land before the mud turns to concrete, and get started on clearing all the rapidly growing brush to protect us from fire.But the main priority right now – as our finances reach pinch point – we have to learn how to run this place properly...and fast.Thanks for reading Off-grid and OPEN in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Some of you reading this despatch will have followed our progress for years, others a little less, but it’s a major milestone to announce we are finally open for business.Thank you for your support...it’s really helped...and if you or anyone you can think of might like to come and visit to see what all the fuss is about, please share this post.I’m pretty sure there’ll be plenty more to write about as this journey continues to unfold! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Since our Portuguese adventure began, there are certain phrases I never thought I’d say out loud.For example: “Once we discovered pillow tanks we knew we had the answer to rainwater capture.”Then there things I never knew I’d even know, let alone say out loud: “The LPWAN system is like WiFi over kilometres and it helps us blend our mineral salted water with rain to make drinking water...oh, and stops the pool overflowing.”I mean, really.And then there are those truly out-there unexpected sentences: “So we’re having an event in two weeks’ time celebrating Alicante Bouschet – a French grape the Portuguese made their own.”I like wine, I like history, I love telling stories...and it turns out there’s a wine grape which does all three across Portugal, France and America and thoroughly excites normal people like us (or is that pushing it too far?).More about the event on Saturday March 1st coming up.But there was one message we received last week which we really never thought would come.It was one of those distant hopes lying at the top of the Penrose Stairs – that infinite staircase you climb forever but never reach the top.One of those things that for every one step forward, you take two steps back...and it’s only when you give up and turn around that you actually get there.Or it’s like penguins toppling over watching a plane fly overhead: an amazing idea which could be true, but is actually just a myth.You get the general idea. Anyway, the message said: “You have your licence.”Drumroll please.Now, before you get overexcited and start inundating us with messages of congratulations, it’s only the licence to use the buildings...there’s still an inspection from the tourism authorities to come before we get our final stamp to fully open for business.But...actually...do please inundate us with messages. Because we’re delighted, astonished, amazed, blown away and all sorts of other predictable synonyms one can use, given the circumstances.The message just popped into our inbox one afternoon, but to begin with the letter kept us guessing.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Written in the fabulously complex high Portuguese and in the best traditions of formal legalese we read it, looked at each other quizzically, ran it through DeepL and were even more confused than before.“I hereby inform Your Excellency,” it began, “that following the approval of the aforementioned request, the application timely submitted to that effect and the payment of the respective fees, the ‘Response to the communication, for use after urban operation subject to prior control no. 9/2025,’ which is attached hereto, was issued.”“Is that good?” we asked each other.“Is that good?” we asked our architect.“It’s good,” our architect replied.So now we have a long list of things we need to make sure are in place before the tourism inspection.It includes mirrors, soap, electricity, a big rule book, drinking water, a pile of local tourist guides, a complaints book and a waste water treatment plant.There are a few other rules for “Agro-tourism” establishments, but we’re classified as Casa do Campo...or country house.(Just as an aside, I love the concept of “agro-tourism” – presumably when you arrive you are greeted by a furious host hurling a string of verbal abuse and screaming at you?)Anyway, there’s plenty of work to be done.The website building is progressing, but we’re waiting for the sunniest of days to take the best photos.And we keep being distracted by fabulous visitors.Top Portuguese winemaker Hamilton Reis came to visit and Ana cooked up a feast for his wife Susana’s birthday dinner.“Is it OK if I bring my own wine?” he asked. “Oh, go on then,” we replied.Hamilton is winemaker at the legendary Mouchão winery and produces his own Natus Vini wine...which is usually served in the best Michelin starred restaurants.Some old university friends were in town and were treated to some of the best Alentejo wines going.Among them was Nick Spotswood who has the Spotswood wine estate in Stellenbosch, South Africa and loved his first steps into Alentejo vinhos, even if his dinner table deep discussion with Hamilton over the brix system for measuring sugar content in grapes wasn’t for everyone.But all were blown away by what we’ve achieved – at least that’s what they told us – by the local fish and porco preto black pork, by Oda’s amazing LA-style cocktails, and by the beaches (yes, we managed a February ocean dip).Shameless PlugTo celebrate our successful licence approval...and the launch of our next podcast episode about one of the oldest, most historic, and most amazing wineries in Alentejo, we are holding a special wine event on Saturday March 1st.Space is limited, but we have two amazing winemakers talking about Alicante Bouschet – a French grape which (as I found myself mentioning at the beginning) Portugal has made its own.Developed in the mid-1800s to give poor French wine a deeper red colour, it was brought to Portugal in the hope it might resist a bug destroying Europe’s vineyards (it didn’t), but it then thrived in the heat of Alentejo.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Hot on Hamilton’s heals we have Mouchão’s custodian Iain Reynolds Richardson telling the many amazing stories of his family’s 250 years of Portuguese history, how they introduced Alicante Bouschet to Portugal and how he now champions simplicity and tradition in his winemaking.And French winemaker Baptiste Carrière Pradal (Domaine de la Massole) is bringing his single varietal Alicante Bouschet from the region in the south of France where Henri Bouschet created the amazing red grape with red juice in the first place.If you’d like to support us and help us celebrate do come along.Contact us directly for more information, but we’re offering a three course dinner, a guided wine tasting by the two aforementioned marvels and a stay in our lovely eco-luxe lodge for one or two nights at a really good price.So, if you’ve been thinking about coming to see us, now’s the time! Ping us a message. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Birthday presents can reveal a lot about one’s age, stage of life and current circumstances, and this couldn’t have been closer to the truth than on the occasion of my 53rd birthday.I mean this year’s couldn’t have been much more self-explanatory:* two chequered shirts* working dungarees with lots of pockets* steel-capped safety boots* a two-pack of crowbarsI presume this means there’s stuff to do in the country.We are, of course, all aware that Darth Vader knew what Luke Skywalker was getting for his birthday...because he felt his presents.But I imagine even The Force wouldn’t have helped the bloke in the black cape work out what was in the long and extremely heavy silver-wrapped box.In retrospect, the clue which Ana always writes on presents should have given it away, but in my defence I had just woken up.“Where Murders of These Guys Would Go,” it said.Adding “...for a drink” still didn’t help me. But it was a high bar.“Of course,” I exclaimed, as I excitedly ripped off the wrapping paper, forgetting how I’d mentioned a while ago how much I wanted a new crowbar.But why two? You might ask.Well either – like dogs – you can never have too many crowbars...or Lidl were doing a special two-pack deal...and you can never have too many crowbars.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Itching as I was to get outside with excellent foot protection, carrying loads of tools in my dungaree pockets to start crowbar-ing things, there was a birthday to celebrate.And so the most colourful of the fabulous chequered shirts was the first present to be pressed into use...once I’d enjoyed my fabulous birthday sandwiches and coffee despite the kind offer of help from the dogs.Lunch with Ana and neighbour Daniel – during one of his fleeting visits to the valley – was at our favourite clifftop restaurant O Sacas, and then it was back to the Clubhouse via the beach to continue the shelebrations.A January birthday is always a nice lift after the post-holiday comedown, but the holidays extended themselves this year as we were lucky enough to have our daughter Oda and her boyfriend Derek staying with us from mid-December well into the New Year.Derek also celebrated his birthday before Christmas – with a trip to the birthday beach and a stunning lunch of all his favourite things.We’ve found an amazing straight-from-the-source oyster supplier (with thanks to our friend David) and our butcher considers bone marrow to be only suitable for dogs which makes it considerably cheaper than in Los Angeles!Our present, and the theme of all his birthday sandwiches was “a night in a castle” and so we took the guys to the fantastic Estremoz Pousada in the Alentejo interior.Derek really enjoyed the trip, the meals, the experience...and to be honest his baggage allowance wouldn’t really have stretched to one, let alone two crowbars, to take back to LA.A few projects were ticked off at the farm including getting the raised beds built, but we also took advantage of a slow tourist month to take a couple of trips up to Lisbon to stay at our flat and enjoy some city time in our suitably named Estrela neighbourhood.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The calçada cobbled pavements in that part of Lisbon feature various black star designs which inspired those arranged in a constellation on our limestone deck in the valley.We’re just across the road from the landmark Basílica da Estrela and one of my favourite places in the world (and certainly one of Simon’s favourites) – the Jardim da Estrela.Dating back to 1842, it was designed in the style of an English garden and has the most incredible mature trees: towering palms reminiscent of LA (with matching streetlights) and giant spirit trees like the one under which we were married in Bangkok.Parrots play in the treetops, ducks do their thing in the ponds and a peacock puts in the occasional appearance.Sculptures and statues, an old bandstand, lawns, coffee kiosks, a giant children’s playground and a maze of paths makes it the go-to place for workout classes, dog walks and happy hour.Simon the ageing Hollywood dog is utterly in his element there, spending hours piecing together the pee-mail stories of every dog in Lisbon and becoming less obedient and more food obsessed with age.Garfunkel is less keen. Order, security and control are what cattle dogs pine for – not the chaotic city sounds of trams and traffic.There are only two safe spaces for Garfie in Lisbon: the flat, and the big red box of freedom which magically transported him here from his rural home at great speed...and can just as magically take him back.Most trips to Lisbon involve the running repairs required from a short-term rental property and it’s a good yardstick to how far my tinkering skills have come.I’m pleased to report replacing toilets, fitting ceiling lights, extensive drain cleaning and advanced shower replacement are now firmly in my repertoire.The place is back to being tip top, so if you fancy a stay in Lisbon this is our listing on AirBnB...but if you have dates in mind please contact us directly.But Lisboa was not all work – we discovered some wonderful new wine bars and restaurants and were honoured to attend our friend Mauro’s 40th birthday bash in the very cool Fábrica Braço de Prata.It’s a former munitions factory in the artsy Marvila neighbourhood of Lisbon close to the river between the city centre and Parque de Naçoẽs.It’s an area emerging from an old industrial zone to give vibes of San Francisco when artists could still afford to live there.It was fantastic to wander the arts space and meet Mauro & Rita’s friends and family and – in the same week as my birthday – to be treated to my own cake.I do hope Mauro wears that Alentejo farmer’s flat cap we brought him from the countryside!Back in the valley, outdoor work has taken a bit of a backseat as a decent bout of rain has kept us indoors making sure all the animals are warm enough.With the rain coming down and amid cloudy skies, there’s something strangely exciting about having a hot shower, knowing the water was heated at the same time as we were, courtesy of the roaring wood fire.And there’s something even more exciting about watching a 200,000 litre pillow tank gradually filling up with rainwater to see us through the summer.We’ve been staying in each new unit making sure it’s comfortable and properly equipped, casting a critical eye across everything, making tweaks and improvements as we go.The list of DIY tasks never seems to get any shorter, but the slow calm approach to craftwork makes it more of a hobby than a chore.Anyway, a higher priority right now is to make sure all those people who will love the calm, the serenity and the undiscovered beauty of this place will find us.We’ve been plotting and scheming marketing strategies, planning retreat proposals, making lists of people to approach and getting down to the serious matter of website construction.If running a retreat – or just attending one – is something you’d like to do with us, please get in touch. Art, writing, wine, wellness - send us a ping.The next date for your diaries is Saturday March 1st when we’re planning our next wine weekend of tastings and dinner at Vale das Estrelas with a chance to stay over.This time we’ve decided to celebrate the French grape that Portugal’s made its own: Alicante Bouschet.We’ll be hosting a dinner with the amazing Mouchão winery and our great friend Baptiste Carrière Pradal who will be visiting the valley with his family wines.The Alicante Bouschet grape has been a personal obsession for a little while now – and there’ll be a new podcast episode coming out very soon, so if you haven’t signed up for The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure, now’s your chance! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Januaries here in Portugal are more palatable than most northern hemisphere winters.For one, I never do the whole Dry January thing because it’s my birthday month, and while we do need more rain, I love the clear chilly mornings which open up into beautiful sunny blue skies.The low arcing winter sun strikes our south facing glass and pours heat into our house – something it doesn’t do in the higher-in-the-sky warmer summer months.And the winter sun also brings enough heat for beach walks in shorts, ocean dips and plenty of power to keep the heat pumps running.Cold air coming in off the ocean blows over our hill and sinks into the valley keeping our temperatures higher and providing spectacular sunrise views over seas of mist below which in the mornings slowly burn off and melt away.Unusually we saw a little frost last week, but the new villa we’ve been trying out for ourselves has remained toasty thanks to the underfloor heating.Of course as I put the finishing touches to this despatch the rain has finally arrived and we’re monitoring water collection pumps and power systems and getting our energy saving levels right.Sun or storm, it’s a great chance to put on the fire get into the reading and research and to plan for success in this first year of being open for business.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Every new year brings plenty of predictions of tourist trends for the year ahead – and so I’ve been deep-diving into some of the articles, reports and industry advisories to learn about Bleisure, Calmcations, PTO hacking and the “new dawn for oenotourism.”It’s a lot to unpack, but at least one or two of every “top trends” list is exactly what we’re creating, so I thought it was worth sharing:* I got most excited about the BBC’s “Seven travel trends that will shape 2025” article which listed Noctourism, Calmcations and “Off-the-beaten-track goes mainstream” at numbers one, two and five respectively.* In terms of tourism for nighttime, our skies are really dark and usually clear. The reason we called our place “The Valley of the Stars” was because of that first night we spent at our new home when we sat outside with a glass of wine and stared up, gobsmacked, at the Milky Way soaring across the sky above us. We’re a bit too far south to offer the northern lights, despite this coming year’s peak of solar activity, but I’ll be working on my astronomy knowledge over the winter months for another string to the storytelling bow and we’ll be investing in a telescope or two for a closer look.* Calmcations “focused on creating a sense of tranquillity” are very much our bag, and I can understand why, after this WHO noise report quoted in the article revealed that 20% of Europeans live in unhealthily noisy places. The quiet calm in our valley is something our friends always love – relaxing time to take in the nature – a silence only interrupted by frogs, owls, the eagle that lives over the hill and occasionally the extended playlist of the Nightingale. With yoga and massage to suit some visitors and wine tastings to calm others, this style of tourism is front and centre of what we’ll be doing at Vale das Estrelas. We’ll be offering little retreats based around painting, pottery, wine, writing and hiking....that kind of thing.* As for “Off-the-beaten-track goes mainstream” I’m happy to report our off-grid track is firmly in the un-beaten category and our area is home to the last truly wild and undiscovered coast in Europe. We face the hills and valleys, but there’s an endless supply of rugged wild beaches and coves to explore just 15 minutes from the lodge.* According to The Portugal News there are More Brits heading to Portugal and why wouldn’t they? The UK was the largest source of flights to and from Portugal from January to November last year and the number of British travellers increased more than any other nation. Quoting a Statistics Portugal report, the article explained that more people in general are heading to Portugal. It was apparently a record year for visitors, and November 2024 saw a 6.2% increase in passenger numbers year on year. Research Nester’s Global Tourism Industry Market Overview reports Ryanair will have 5.2 million affordable seats to Portugal available as part of its summer 2025 schedule.* And even more are coming – the IPDT Tourism Barometer predicts 33 million tourists will visit Portugal this year – up from 30 million in 2023 (the last year with figures). According to their survey of professionals in Portugal’s tourism sector, they highlight “a focus on sustainability.” Reinforcing the “Off-the-beaten-track goes mainstream” thing, they predict 2025 will be about “demystifying the perception of overtourism.” The IPDT believes “dispersing visitor influxes from overcrowded areas to less-explored regions is key to maintaining balance and reducing tensions in popular destinations.” So leave the city and come and see us in the country!* And it’s not just about holidays any more – a BBC article about people staying away for longer talks about “blended travel trips that include both work and leisure, which are occasionally referred to by the mush-mouth portmanteau of ‘Bleisure’". So now you know. That’s also where I discovered the concept of PTO hacking (Paid Time Off) which was apparently a big TikTok thing – the idea of combining national holidays with paid leave to get longer breaks. Quoting a Skirft Research report there’s apparently a “shift to spending on experiences over things” and it could be "the year of long getaways." With the continuing popularity of remote working and Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visas we’re hoping to lure some people to WFV (Work from the Valley) and stay with us through the winter. It’s why we put in underfloor heating.* That fits in with record November numbers seeing the tourist season extending deeper into Autumn and people travelling earlier in the year. “Spring is the new summer,” according to Zicasso’s luxury travel report, which says March to May is becoming increasingly popular for holidays and that Portugal is now the sixth most popular place to visit in the world – up from eighth for the last couple of years. There’s still a broad interest in “food, culture, wine, wildlife and adventure.” And younger travellers are showing more interest in culture and history. Repeat travellers are interested in off the beaten track tourism and there’s “an increase in requests for eco-friendly and sustainable luxury options.” Marvellous.* The most interesting thing Conde Naste Traveller announced from our perspective was “a new dawn for oenotourism” as “curiosity around lesser-known and re-emerging wine destinations is growing.” The Alentejo wine region is becoming increasingly popular, but it’s crazy hot inland where most of the wineries are! By bringing their stories and their wines for tastings at the cooler coast we hope to take advantage of the interest in 250 indigenous wine grapes and put vinho at the centre of our tourism.* The Portugal Portfolio puts the Rise of Sustainable Travel in first place, both with the demand for “eco-friendly experiences” such as eco-lodges and Community-Focussed Tourism. “Tourists in 2025 won’t just be looking for breathtaking views; they’ll want responsible ways to enjoy them,” the property management company says. They emphasise Off the beaten path exploration: “Travellers are seeking lesser-known spots, avoiding tourist-crowded hubs. This desire to discover “hidden gems” will shape new...local tourism economies.” And on ‘Bleisure’: “Digital nomads are no longer confined to coffee shops in major cities; they’re branching out to smaller, scenic locales offering reliable internet, cultural richness, and a stable environment.”Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.* And as a final thought...less about tourism and more about a longer term move...the Financial Times featured a big report recently on “Creating new utopias in Portugal.” Sadly it’s behind their firewall, but all their examples were in Alentejo and they quoted Claus Sendlinger, founder of Design Hotels saying “Portugal has become the new California,” and a “fertile ground for experimental developments.” We’re certainly that! Portugal Portfolio has a similar take: Portugal’s New Utopias: Sustainable Communities is about environments that “blend modern comforts with eco-friendly practices.”So my take-away from all this is that we’re doing something right. Eco-luxe, off-the beaten track, place for Calmcations, Noctourism and the “mush-mouth portmanteau of ‘Bleisure’". What a great line, I do love the BBC. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Despite the excesses of Christmas, and the many visitors we’ve been welcoming to the valley, I’ve managed to put together a video of our whole building project as it took shape from start to finish.As well as writing updates and despatches, I’ve been photographing and videoing our land ever since we started cutting down our tatty eucalyptus plantation almost four years ago.I’ve documented every stage of the building process from the moment the first building supplies arrived (and we realised this crazy idea was actually going to happen) to the very first wine tasting event we held a few weeks ago.Edited together from thousands of photos and hundreds of videos I hope you enjoy our look back at what we’ve achieved so far as we prepare to start the next stage of our journey and start running the place in the New Year.There’s so much more I could have included about our water treatment and electrical systems: the hundreds of metres of trenches dug and the miles of pipes buried, but this is a quick review of how we created our new eco-luxe lodge.The loan is not going to pay itself back, the rooms need to be filled and we need to start employing local people to help us, so please get in touch and book a stay.Ideally we’d like to start out with big bookings - groups of friends and family - or running retreats based around wine or walking or painting…so if you know anybody who runs retreats please put us in touch. With group bookings in the diary we can bring in chefs, arrange trips and transport, set up yoga classes and massages and introduce visitors to the amazing hidden beaches of the last wild coast in Europe.Yes, we were in the ocean yesterday, and yes it was a little on the chilly side.And don’t forget…the clue is in the title…we’re off the power and water grids: fully sustained by the sun, and by the water from our land.It’s eco, but it’s luxe…and it’s not just a great place to get away from it all, but also to learn about Portugal and about sustainable living, enjoy the peace and quiet of our countryside and our amazing coastline, try the local food and wine, and to do it all leaving just a tiny footprint.We need your support as we soft open…it’s even more beautiful once you get here…so please help us make a success of the lodge now we’re finally ready to open. This is a big year for us.The new website will be live soon, but for now here’s a summary of the rooms we have available and the prices we are offering in our first year of opening:Thanks again for following our journey and for reading my despatches from Vale das Estrelas. Your support, comments and great advice along this journey means a lot to us - perhaps more than you think. Please spread the word about this blog and what we’ve created, and I’m sure the stories of the next stage of our new life will be just as…interesting. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.And even more importantly, all the very best for the New Year. Let’s hope 2025 holds great things in store for all of us.See you next year! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

We started the Google search with escarradeira, then moved on to cuspideira and then we started calling people.A few hours and many phone calls later we realised we just weren’t going to be able to buy any spittoons for our first big wine event at Vale das Estrelas.And there are some pretty compelling statistics for why that might be.Who, you might ask, are the biggest wine consumers in the world...France? Italy?No, and no.At 61.7 litres per person per year, it’s Portugal by a looooong way, so I guess people here don’t really feel the need to spit it out.It was explained to us very well by João Barroso of the Alentejo wine commission: “Wine in Portugal is a staple food” he told us. And that’s why the prices are so low, the quality so good, and the consumption rates so high.People here like to lunch – for at least a couple of hours every day – most shops shut, workers gather around a shared dish in their favourite tasca and it’s all washed down with a jug of table wine and maybe even a shot of the local medronho firewater with a coffee to finish.As foreigners in Alentejo the options are to: a) get stressed about not being able to go to the shops in the middle of the day...or b) learn to have a long lunches.You can imagine which option we’ve settled on.In The Big Plan for Our Second Life, wine has wound itself into the centre of everything we’re doing here.Wine, of course, is all about the story – a good wine can sell for three or four times the price – if the story is good enough.And what can be better for a storyteller than to ply one’s audience with booze while the story unfolds? It is only going to improve.With this in mind we held our first public event in the valley in partnership with Howard’s Folly – a wonderful winery headquartered in the eastern Alentejo town of Estremoz.Howard Bilton is a Yorkshireman we met through a Hong Kong connection, and he makes wine in collaboration with Alentejo’s favourite Australian winemaker David Baverstock (hear him talking about the iconic Esporão winery he's famous for here).I’ve written about Howard’s Folly before...back in 2021...have I really been writing this blog for that long? I guess I have.The winery is run by Howard’s son, managing director Tom, who brought their whole range of wines to our stretch of wild coast for our first tasting event.We decided to make a day of it – invite some friends to stay, hire a chef and put on a proper dinner afterwards...and take the first tentative steps towards running our hospitality business.Our plan is to hold regular events for locals and visitors alike to bring the history and the stories and the wines of the Alentejo interior to the coast.We sent out invitations and were overwhelmed by the interest...but then had to deliver!A stressful couple of weeks preparing everything followed.It was ambitious to have a wine tasting and a dinner in the same place on the same day...having never done this before.But it was also a deadline to get the kitchen ready for professional use and the apartments finished and fully furnished – down to the last knives and forks and whisks and colanders.Thankfully the weather was beautiful and 45 people joined the wine tasting outside with our amazing view as a backdrop to the event. Tom was fantastic – and the wines were great.We bridged wine and the dinner with more booze: an adventure down the hill for guests to try some medronho made by our friend Jorge, kindly hosted by our neighbour Daniel.Our vizinho has been working some magic on his property recently – totally transforming his whole hillside with plants and trees: landscaping like a demon before winter takes hold. Daniel was the perfect host.The three course dinner back up the hill was a huge success – helped along by Howard’s wine – and it was great to meet some new folk and bring people together.Our winemaker pal Mauro Azóia, his wife Rita and the kids also joined us and brought a special delivery: a car-load of our first Valley of the Stars wine...and the labels we had lovingly created and he had arranged to be printed.We roped in our friends Danny and Carole and their friends Alfredo and Carol to help us label the first hundred bottles and dip the tops in colourful wax.It’s a red wine made entirely out of the Castelão grape and we used the beautiful image of a sunset over our valley painted by Ed Sumner, as the artwork for the label.The first wine to carry the Vale das Estrelas logo is now available for sale! Come and stay with us and buy one while stocks last...we do have a couple of hundred bottles, but Christmas is coming...so you might not want to leave it so long!We still hope to plant our own vineyard in March if finances allow – we’ve been asking advice from every oenologist and viticulturist who would listen, on the proviso that we will only plant Portuguese grapes.Close to the ocean and away from the classic Alentejo wine region we will have to battle with the moisture – and the bugs that can bring with it – but it’s likely we will plant Castelão for our red wine.Unveiling our new wine; with Mauro the winemaker; Danny, Alfredo & Carol with the newly labelled bottles; and the label with art by Ed SumnerSo it is even better to be able have a fantastic Castelão hand-crafted by Mauro as our first ever wine.We think Arinto and Alvarinho will be the whites we plant, but the study continues – we’d love to get it right first time!Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The wonderful Portuguese-adopted Dane Carsten Jensen who’s the bedrock of the nearby Vicentino winery, paid us a visit to advise how to prepare the land for planting, and we’re hoping to secure the plants from Dorina Lindemann and her Plansel nursery.It’s an amazing process seeing how they prepare the vines by grafting Portuguese varietals on to American rootstock...as they have done since the phylloxera bug first devastated Europe’s vineyards in the late 1800s.That’s episode three of our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure and we think it’s worth a listen – and it features us learning to spit out wine for the first time.We may not have had any cuspideiras available for Howard’s Folly, but as sensible grown up wine people, we did buy some vases which could be suitably repurposed.Suffice to say they weren’t needed.But we do now have a few spittoons on order for next time, and the time after that… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

I’ve recently realised we don’t live like real people.When real people have a problem they call someone: a workman, an expert, a master technician, Ghostbusters, or whoever it might be - and they come with some tools and they solve it.It costs some money and takes some time to arrange, but it works. They know what they are doing, and grumbles aside, they get things working again and real life goes on.But somehow I’ve found myself in the position where I’m kind of responsible for everything...and when stuff breaks I have to work out for myself how to fix it.I’m not entirely sure how that happened.Obviously the not-being-connected-to-anything thing means we’re pretty much off most workpeople’s grids when it comes to the usual sorting of things like gas and electric.We’re very lucky to have some amazing people who we’ve met over the past few years who are the real experts...but I don’t want to bother them for the small things which I can probably do myself if I’m careful...or if I find the right YouTube channel.In retrospect, taking my expensive De Walt drill apart to repair it was a bad idea...but I really didn’t know it was going to be that fiddly or complicated to put back together (it now just about works, but slips and makes a terrible grinding noise).Given that getting this place up and running - and keeping it running - falls under my area of responsibility, I do pay a lot of attention to what the professionals do when they’re here.Much more so than real people might do.They trust the experts to get on with it unsupervised and don’t need to know how they do whatever it is they’re doing to make problems go away.Perhaps my engagement and enthusiastic nodding confuses them into thinking I understand what is happening, can remember it, and might even be able do it myself next time as it will save them the hassle of a home visit.And we are “bootstrapping” things as they called it at the Stanford Graduate School of Business classes we sat in on while there on a journalism fellowship.In other words doing it on the cheap: if I can do it myself next time, then we save money.All this perhaps explains why, when the solar hot water pump started making a very expensive sounding noise, Guido the German boiler master felt confident enough to tell me I could do it myself.“You just need two pairs of pliers of the right size,” he said after watching the video of the screaming water system and recommended a new pump.I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that...but he is very busy at the moment...I mean, what could possibly go wrong?Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.One thing we can now do very successfully by ourselves is roast chestnuts on an open fire.This year I celebrated Verão de São Martinho (St Martin’s Summer) - officially now one of my favourite times of the year - by buying a metal chestnut roasting pan.(I say that, but we could have smoked some salmon as well while we were at it - the first use of the fire filled the place with smoke until I gave the chimney a good old brush and we were back in business).St Martin’s Day (November 11th) marks the opening of the talhas and the releasing of the fresh natural wine still made in huge clay amphorae here in the Alentejo as it was by the Romans two thousand years ago.We made our now annual pilgrimage to Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town) - the spiritual home of talhas - to taste the new wine and meet the winemakers.And this year we were invited to take part in a couple of films being made by famous Portuguese wine writer Madalena Vidigal called Rota Tesouros do Alentejo (The Treasures of the Alentejo Route).Our programmes aren’t out yet, but here’s a sneaky peak at Episode 2 in Portuguese of course.Each episode looks at a different aspect of Alentejo wines, and we were invited along as special guests to learn more about old vines and talha wines - at Vidigueira cooperative and ROCIM where Pedro Ribeiro makes amazing wines with clay pots.He hosts an Amphora Wine Day every year with wine producers from all over the world who make wine with clay...and it gets bigger every year. Again it was a great day out - as was the amazing annual Wine & Friends lunch at Hamilton Reis’ Natus Vini.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It’s a great story with wine and song and you can hear it come to life in Going Roman, Episode 4 of our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure.I wrote about our trip to Vila de Frades for the opening of the talhas last year and it’s great to look back at this time a year ago and see how far we have come in our building project and how chaotic things were 12 months ago.Hopefully we’ll soon be hosting talha winemakers here in Vale das Estrelas.St Martin’s Day also tends to coincide with a spell of beautiful sunshine, warm temperatures and a surge of growth for all the plants before the temperatures drop.The meteorological explanation is a little wobble in the high pressure zone over the Açores - one of the most important influences on Portugal’s weather.The Atlantic is the warmest it has been all year thanks to the warmer southern waters being pushed north during this annual transition into winter. Maybe we’ll even venture to the Birthday Beach this weekend...I spent a good amount of time down a rabbit hole investigate g the story of St Martin’s progression from plain old Hungarian Martin, to patron saint of the poor, of tailors, winemakers and curiously both soldiers and conscientious objectors. Oh, and of France.It’s all linked in with Halloween, Martinmas, bonfires, Remembrance, tricks and treats... and some Polish competitive croissant baking.This year the temperatures quickly dropped after the wine jars had been opened and all efforts in the valley were focussed on making sure all the dry wood was chopped and stashed under cover before the real rain arrives.My old pal Hugh Jennings was on a whistle-stop volunteering trip to help, and after some back-breaking hours with the splitting axe we had enough prepared to see us through winter.We also took the chance to make sure the rainwater collection systems were properly set up.It’s a vitally important part of our water plan to collect loads of rain over winter, and so Hugh spent hours siliconing the gaps between our solar panels while I secured the guttering and pipes we’d installed last year to increase the flat surfaces area to harvest rainfall from.This time we have a reception tank and a proper pump to take all the water we can up to the storage on the hill, so we don’t waste any.The pillow tank has already grown courtesy of some October rain and now I have meters installed to see just how well the system is running...and to keep tabs on our water collection. Full is 200,000 litres…fingers crossed.I guess there are some things I’m becoming an expert at - living sustainably...that we are certainly doing!I wrote back to Guido asking if it was really all that easy to just change the solar water pump without emptying the whole system of very hot water.“You’re right, that will probably be too much of a problem for you,” he replied, while requesting more photos of the offending items.The dials revealed perhaps a leak in the system and the pump might just be whining about it rather than failing...maybe it’s something I can solve it after all...watch this space. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Sometimes we thought it would never happen, but four years after moving to Portugal full time and two years after construction work started on our retrospectively but objectively crazy off-grid eco-luxe lodge project we are finally ready to open.The cut-down-and-dug-out eucalyptus forest where our new buildings now stand is a distant memory, the views are as stunning as the first day we found this amazing property, and we’re ready to start tackling a new chapter in our second life: running a tourism business.We were warned how long the finishing works would take – especially as it’s all been down to us – but the beds are made, the rooms look beautiful and we’ve already been using our Clubhouse for trial-run dinners and wine tasting events with friends.You won’t find us on AirBnB just yet of course...the licensing process and the permissions are still pending, but we’re on track to start hosting some events and retreats over the next few months and will open to all in the Spring.The tourism authority’s help in postponing capital payments has lifted a huge weight off our shoulders, but now it’s up to us to lure people to our perfect part of Portugal.Alongside frustrating bureaucracy, the biggest challenge of all has been overcoming our lack of connections to power and water grids.But our water is no longer salty, the waste-treatment reed beds are thriving, and a test run of the villa’s underfloor heating sent the temperatures soaring along with our confidence that it’s going to be a toasty winter.Real time power use data is streaming into my phone, which I’m also using now to control the heat pumps.We haven’t got all of the monitoring systems in place just yet, but the first post-summer storm was a good test for the rain-collecting systems and to work out how to manage all the pumps and heating systems so we’re never without power.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.It sounds so easy written down, but we’ve been ironing out all the bugs, and learning by doing I’ve realised I need to write a guide-book if we are ever going to get away from the valley for a few days and leave it all in the hands of someone else!I’ve grumbled about DIY, but seeing things finished and installed lifts the spirits.The coffee tables look great, the wooden tables work as well as the wall of homemade shelving units and we’re happy with our homemade outside LED lighting.Ana’s done an incredible job with the interiors which look amazing – so much time and effort has gone into choosing the furniture, the finishing touches and the style and now we’re plumping up the beds ready for their first proper photo-shoot.Once those are taken we can launch our new website, and that comes complete with booking engine so we can start lining up some guests.We’ve been doing some tours for friends who visit, so we thought we’d record one to give you an idea of what we have done with the place so far.We’re obviously itching to get open and it’s been a frustrating time with the goalposts moving and different documents being variously needed or not needed.We have been stalking our architect and our structural engineer to the point that the latter complained he feels like we’re holding a gun to his head.After months of waiting for his particular piece of paper we have occasionally considered it...although his draftsman assures us that this won’t be necessary and it’s “almost ready.”There seems to be some movement at the town hall as well...with a request coming in for a final payment...and then of course there’s the tourism license to come...but we’re quietly confident.The Post-It Note wall is back and is filled with ideas for retreats and packages to bring people to Vale das Estrelas.We’ve decided the best way to get started before we can advertise accommodation to the general public is to run specific events at particular times.The notes on the wall include writing and storytelling workshops, art and photography classes, making ourselves a base for long distance walkers on the Rota Vicentina trails...all interspersed with wine, local food and a bit of yoga and massage.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.We’re thinking of astronomy stays and events based around our own personal solar system (and water system), to encourage people who might like to follow in our footsteps either off the grid or into an entirely new direction in life.Would you, or someone you know, be interested in partnering with us and getting something fun up and running to bring people together in Portugal?We’re open to all sorts of ideas so please get in touch.Wine is going to be at the heart of what we’ll be telling stories about, so what we can get on with in the meantime is some events to bring together friends from here with visitors from overseas.We hope to host something new next month, so if you’re interested in coming to see us in the last weekend of November to hear more about Portuguese wine, do get in touch.We’ve learned so much about Alentejo wine over the past few years and the Wines of Portugal marketing body seem keen to help publicise our podcasts worldwide.It was amazing to attend the opening party for our closest local vineyard’s brand new beautiful winery.Vicentino has invested in a cutting-edge winery just a few minutes down the road, and owner Ole Martin Siem toasted its opening with their first ever Espumante – or Portuguese champagne.Vicentino is the first stop on our podcast wine journey and we had even had a sneak preview of the new winery a few months ago.I’ll be writing more about that on the wine blog soon, so do sign up for updates and new podcast episodes.Our friend Luís Martins also made a big step recently – leaving Vicentino to launch his own wine-tasting business, and we’ve been happy to host him for an introduction to some local wines we hadn’t come across before.The Gledsons were back in town for some dog-sitting duties while we ran some errands and did some DIY on our flat in Lisbon (which we do rent out on AirBnB!).There’s still a load to do, but finally the momentum is starting to switch from the construction, to constructing thoughts about how we make a success of Vale das Estrelas – particularly during the winter months and our first proper season in 2025.We hope to see you here very soon! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

Today I’d like to start with an apology.You’ve been very patient with me as I’ve bumbled and grumbled my way through the past few months, mostly moaning about DIY, crossing the Valley of Death, Losing Perspective and treating my despatches more like therapy sessions.You didn’t sign up to be armchair psychiatrists, so I’m sorry...but thank you.After a bit of self-reflection and a little “enough already” advice from people whose opinions I trust, I would like to announce the official end to my searing negativity.I’ve been leaning this way for a little while, but a piece of important news this week has lifted a heavy weight from our shoulders.Like the magical morning mists that sometimes shroud our valley, the doom and gloom has been steadily lifting – burning off to reveal the blue skies.And of course they were always there – I just couldn’t see them.But now it’s time to stop looking down at overwhelming to-do lists and obsessing with the small things, and to look up and see the big picture – the picture we fell in love with when we first came to this valley.And it’s also time to stop looking backwards, but looking forwards to the next step in our career transition through builders to proprietors.                 Our friends and VIPs (Very Inspiring Proprietors) Vera and Cam went through a similar construction project and have quickly grown a really successful tourism and retreat business up the road at Quinta Camarena in nearby Cercal.“Oh, the building work,” Vera told us, “I remember that – it sucked,” she said...just six months after their hugely stressful race to get everything finished.Of course the pressure has mostly, but not entirely, been self-inflicted.Years in journalism have left me obsessed with deadlines and the desire to throw myself into something, get it mastered, get the story told, and move onto the next thing.But of course not everything works like that.Since the building work began a little over two years ago we’ve had a singular aim in mind: to get the lodge finished and open to paying guests this summer.A year ago we were confident that we’d be ready by May, and even after the winter rain we still thought June was do-able, while the builders, engineers and every artisan in earshot said: “what, you’re planning to open this year?”“August for sure” we told ourselves, each other and anyone else who’d listen.But it wasn’t just a hope – it was a need.We’ve taken a big loan to do this project, and although most of it is zero interest courtesy of the tourism authority – to promote growth in remote and traditionally poorer parts of the country – it still needs to be paid back...in just 10 years.The capital repayments were due to start next month – just in time for the winter tourism lull – but thanks to our bank manager’s confidence in our project and lobbying on our behalf, Turismo de Portugal have agreed to postpone payments.We don’t yet know for how long, and this certainly doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels (or the succulents we are busily planting), but it gives us a bit of breathing space.In a few short weeks, even the dreaded DIY has been transformed into a series of “craft projects” and thinking about it that way has completely changed my approach.I’m not sure why it all became so overwhelming, but I’ve done a full 180 and have started really enjoying tinkering with some wood, creating a couple of coffee tables and pondering how to turn railway sleeper screws into coat hooks.Thanks to both Niels and Ola for their advice on proposing a solution to attach the heavy metalwork into the wall.I’ve had so much encouragement and advice from my crowd-sourced therapy – thank you one and all – but as I sat down to write this despatch, Bernard from beautiful Marvão up in the Alentejo hills, made some time between his own DIY projects to send me a note:“DIY is a skilled undertaking and like gardening requires a lot of attention and organisation and you get better and faster at it. In rural Portugal it's there for life,” Bernard noted with a smiley-face.He put my moaning into perspective – remembering a time before my mate Leroy (as in Leroy Merlin, the French B&Q/Home Depot) had even made it to Portugal...and how much harder it was to find the things needed to do the job back then.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.“DIY is underrated, regarded as trivial, especially in Britain, so you may think it's a frustrating waste of time, especially when in competition with seemingly serious tasks like getting stuff through the [town hall].”Well that process does continue – we’re still wating for our licenses, but each we we get (hopefully) a step closer.My decision to embrace “craft projects” began with two planks of our fallen cork oak tree, some epoxy resin, an electric sander and a pot of varnish.Rather than rushing to finish and move on to the next job I did a little every day – filling in the cracked wood, carefully rounding it off and sanding it smooth and I now have two beautiful benches for the mezzanines for guests to drink at or to work over.The next job is only harrowing because it involves two old Portuguese wrought iron ploughing harrows which need feet and a glass top to become coffee tables.I can’t wait to get stuck into the wine label project, and my new relationship with wood makes The Clubhouse bookshelves sound like an adventure.But the clearing mists have also made me realise we’re coming to summer a little late this year.The whole point of this crazy adventure was to design our lives so we could live here – in the beautiful Portuguese countryside with our amazing views and the wild beaches and golden sands just a short drive away.We love the fresh fish – I’ve spent a long time perfecting my grilled fish, butterflied and braai-ed – and we’ve not been to our favourite seafood restaurant in a while.We haven’t even dropped by the Crabstraunt (as Oda calls it), or tried wine at our local Vicentino winery’s beautiful new tasting roomPart of that is due to what our friends in the Algarve Richard & Pauline call the “Agostinis” – the tourists who rock up with their outsider demands every August (but also perhaps could be the name of a noble and serious new martini cocktail).The beaches are already starting to thin out, the ocean water is warming and our summer sidles onwards while everyone else goes back to the office.We have managed to sneak out to the beach once or twice for planning meetings, and the occasional working lunch picnic.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it.Alongside the ongoing craft project, our office currently includes Ana’s series of rockeries under construction, experiments with LPWAN technology for monitoring and automating our water supply, and gradually getting everything ready for a photoshoot for our website.The pressure over opening may have been released a little, but we still need to make some money – attract some late summer visitors and try and run our first retreat.Our villa will be toasty all winter thanks to the underfloor heating and my mind is already wandering into water collection for when rain eventually drops by.In the last couple of weeks I had another countering-disinformation trip to Nairobi (we now officially have enough Maasai blankets to keep a full house of guests nice and warm in the evenings), and I’ve just finished narrating our friend Joanna's book for Audible...it was the first one I’ve done and it was tougher than I expected!It’s an amazing book for western CEOs though – Chinafy by Joanna Hutchins: Why China is Leading the West in Innovation and How the Rest of the World can Catch Up.Once the audio book goes live I’ll post a link, but it is a brilliant insider’s account of just why China’s economy will soon be top of the world.I’m not sure our little business is going to change the world, but it’s certainly changing our world, and with the challenges, the things we’re learning to do...and about ourselves...it’s certainly change for the better.Especially now we’ve emerged from our summer of stress, newly invigorated to take on the bureaucracy battles which will allow us to open, and with a nice number of craft projects to work away at. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

With all the talk about gender at the Olympics I’ve been reassessing how I identify.I’ve spent the last few years trying to move towards something approaching the Oxford English dictionary’s definition of handyman: “a person able or employed to do occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations.”I’ve slowly being moving towards the “Mr Fixit” label my mum used to have for my dad when I was growing up – I’m actually still using some of his tools from the 1950s box with his initials on it.But my attitude towards our project recently is making me reconsider.Now I think I identify as “unhandy man” or a “Mr Fixit-NOT”I am so totally done with D-I-Why. I’m so over it. I don’t want to Do It Myself anymore. I’d like someone else to do it.Hours spent trying to work out how to do stuff has allowed me to ponder the alternative meanings of this TLA (Three Letter Acronym):* Died Inside Yesterday* Dammit. Idiot. You!* Done? Isn’t Yet.* Drilling Incomplete. Yawn.* Daily Incompetence? Yes.* Don’t I Yearn...to do something else? Darn It, Yes.Hopefully this is just a passing phase...given the amount of tinkering time, drill-skills and general knowledge about our solar and water systems I am going to need to keep this show on the road.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.But right now I really can’t face putting up any more lights, filling the remaining gaps between the skirting boards and the wall, or faffing about with wood and hinges.I’ve thrown everything at a long running battle with the kitchen sink, hopefully have found the final solution to a leaking industrial dishwasher, and we have secured all the headboards.But then there are the coffee tables and the wooden benches to make and varnish and fit and finish....I make almost daily trips to the nearby agricultural supplies store and the hardware place because I haven’t bought enough nails or the right sized pipe or the correct tap.But a lot of what we need involves a day trip.The local DIY superstore down in the Algarve is Leroy Merlin – pronounced in Portuguese with an odd fake French accent: Leh-roh-ah Mare-lahn.But I’m now comfortable just calling him Leroy – not even Senhor Merlin, or O Leroy – we’ve spent so much time together we are definitely on first-name terms and converse in the tu form.I almost know what all the different silicones are for, what kind of paint you use on what and where everything is in most stores.I even felt let down when one of his people refused to let me buy an air conditioning unit for the adega (wine cellar) because I didn’t have the name, licence number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and inside leg measurement of the person who was going to install it.It’s the law apparently...presumably thanks to a well-connected and strongly lobbying AC Fitters’ Union (perhaps known as the “AC-FU”?).The car happily drives itself the hour and a quarter cross-country to visit the Holy Trinity of IKEA, Leroy and Makro.I’ve overdosed on Swedish meatballs and hotdogs and burned hours pondering different sized parafusos (screws...up there on my list of favourite Portuguese words with rodapé or skirting boards...why use two words when you can do it in one?).We’ve bought so many flat-pack things which need assembling, that we have spent hours just putting waste cardboard into recycling bins.The annoying thing is that after all this I am still rubbish at it.Lists of things to “just finish off” take hours – many of which are spent walking from one building to another searching for missing tools or drill bits which I’m sure I left somewhere.The place is looking great – and every day it gets a little closer to being “finished” – a technical definition indicating “the placement of essentials allowing the rooms to be habitable” while other things are gradually added and finessed over time.Of course to be officially habitable we need a licence...and little happens here once you hit August.Businesses close, people head off on holiday and the town hall kicks the can down the road by asking for some additional signed piece of paper which we were categorically told by our architect we didn’t need a month ago.Endless regulations, high taxes and several six-month long delays – which have twice been resolved with the official response of “oh, I forgot” – have left us financially and emotionally drained.Both the town hall and key professionals have been unresponsive for months throughout this process. The lack of accountability from all sides is far more exhausting than we could have imagined.Ho-hum. Let’s just hope the tourism authority are generous when they read the letter our bank manager sent on our behalf asking if we could put off payment of the loan capital until we are actually allowed to open.We were hoping to make money this summer to get us through the more fallow winter months so are hoping to put off repayments until next Easter when tourism picks up again.After all, compared to others in the area we’ve done things very quickly for Alentejo, but so very frustrating to spend so much time and effort to do things above board, when many people here take the approach of asking for forgiveness rather than permission. It’s often faster and cheaper.Friends and visitors are generous with their praise for what we’ve achieved in the four years since we arrived here in the Valley of the Stars.That’s quite an important number for me, because for all the years spent bouncing from country to country I have never lived in one place for more than four years since the 1980s when I left school in Newcastle.Breaking an adult-lifelong nomadic habit hasn’t been as hard as I might have thought, probably because we’re so busy I suppose.But I am happily settled in the place where we have settled and am looking forward to the next four, by which time I hope we will be running a successful business...ie one that brings in more money than it spends (very much against the current trend).A thousand boxes of linen arrived the other day, the cutlery is on the way, you can never have too many vacuum cleaners and Ana hitched a lift north with our generous neighbour Daniel to order the crockery which we picked up a day later (at 6am) at one of the monthly markets in the area.We’ve had a few friends road testing the facilities this weekend and while we grabbed a bit of downtime.Ed, Rachael & Daisy were back for a week...officially our best return guests (we think it’s nine trips so far); Tim & Trish came with a camera...but we aren’t quite ready for the glamour shots just yet.Their water was cold – but that’s just because I forgot to turn on the heatpumps – and it smelt a bit plastic-y, so I need to run a lot of water through the system.But the pool was “amazing” and the clubhouse has the seal of approval as a great place to hang out.And we had the first visit of our sommelier/acrobat/dancer neighbour Candace and her husband Geoff, who arrived generously armed with some wonderful wines for us to throw into the mix for a lovely wine tasting dinner with endless views over the hills.For those of you wondering, yes the wine podcast has been on hiatus in lieu of all the other stuff we’re trying to do...but the next episode is almost finished and is coming soon. If you haven’t heard the first half of the season check it out:I just keep remembering things and panicking about not getting them done...the LED lights in the bathrooms!...the website!...the fan system for the adega...the woodwork!We have achieved a huge amount against the odds: out lack of experience of building, of Portuguese bureaucracy, of knowing how to do things...but we are so nearly there.While the place will never be finished, it will be nice to be able to have time to think again...and to plan the vineyard, the marketing, the retreats...and learn how to run a lodge.But for now, I suppose I need to haul myself up the hill, try to gather all the possible tools I could need today into one shopping bag and try to spend more time doing it myself than looking for missing tools myself. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

“Well, now you just need to get through the valley of death, don’t you?” was the unexpected message of encouragement from one of our recent guests.I met Professor Eric Lambin at Stanford University in northern California where Ana and I spent a fabulous (albeit COVID-interrupted) back-to-school journalism fellowship year.He might be a world-renowned geographer, a member of the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors and a Blue Planet Prizewinner, but he was also one of the three students rocking up for beginning Portuguese classes every weekday morning.All of us wanted to learn European Portuguese, but with more than 200 million Brazilians out there, that wasn’t an option and so we were learning to say the word city (cidade) with a swagger as “sid-AD-gee” rather than “sid-ad” and speaking virtually “shush”-free.There’s quite a difference between the two versions of Portuguese and every evening Ana would make me rewrite all the verb tables adding the “tu” form (second person pronoun) which is largely ignored in Brazil, where você is favoured for everything.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.And the letter S is often pronounced as a “shh” in Portugal at the end of a word or before a consonant – it’s why it sometimes sounds like Russian...and while the Portuguese can understand spoken Spanish it doesn’t work the other way around.You’ll get a better idea if you listen to the audio version of this despatch, but here’s an attempt to explain what I mean through a few words and a Portuguese tongue-twister:Three plates of wheat for three sad tigers (Três pratos de trigo para três tristes tigres) is pronounced Tresh prAT-osh duh TREE-go pah-ra tresh trish-tesh tig-resh)Festa meaning party is pronounced FESH-tahRatos meaning mice is pronounced RAT-ooshOh, and hashish is spelt haxixe!But I digress...Eric’s disturbing talk about death in the Valley of the Stars was taken from his knowledge of Silicon Valley and a pattern which leads many startup companies to fail.As a geographer myself, graphs and maps always help illustrate a point, but Investopedia describes “the Death Valley Curve” as “the span of time from the moment [a company] receives its initial capital contribution until it finally begins generating revenue.”In other words having spent almost all our money we need to keep going and finish everything until we officially open and guests start providing us with income to pay our costs and pay off our loan.Now, I know this is not world-changing tech we’re developing: we’re not trying to train drones to swarm, or reinvent The Facebook (interestingly pronounced FacEY BOOK-ee in Brazilian), we’re just trying to build a few houses to rent out.As regular readers know, there’s a bit more to it than that – building a totally solar-driven off-the-grid eco-luxe lodge is very challenging – although the only world we’ll be changing if we don’t make it through death valley is our own, but you know what I mean.We’re nibbling away at the to-do list a bit slower than we’d hoped, but every little thing left to do by the builders needs to be done by us...and there are still a lot of projects.Connecting the new Starlink to our ethernet network was a nightmare – I mean have you ever tried to wire up a fiddly little ethernet plug? Madness. Is it A, is it B...there must be an easier way of doing it?Skirting boards remain un-fitted and un-sealed, headboards aren’t putting themselves up and the remaining furniture is slowly being assembled.Next is to rename our buildings in a snappier way. For two years we’ve been using the arbitrarily labelled names from the architectural project: E, F and G.Building E is the “main building” or the “pool house,” F is the villa and G is the row of en suite rooms. Maybe we need to name them after wine grapes...or stars...hmm.Senhor Manuel the builder returned for a final run through of what still needs to be finished or tweaked and he brought an unusual warm glow and broad smile on his face...which could be either relief or perhaps pride?After nearly two years he’s transformed this hilltop from a tatty, overgrown eucalyptus plantation into a stunning tourist lodge...and the only big part of the job left to finish now lies with the electrician who hasn’t been well.What’s the problem with the occasional live wire sticking out here and there? Hopefully he’s feeling better and will be back this week.We’ve been helped hugely by the surges of activity provided by visiting skilled friends, and hosting our first sardine and wine dinner at our main building gave us a real boost.Our Portuguese winemaking friends Mauro and Rita stayed with their kids for a few days, road testing the pool and bringing a small lake of their own wine and some much needed help and advice.They make amazing wines and are just starting on a similar tourism project in Cuba, Alentejo which claims to be the original Cuba.They’re naturally putting natural wine at the heart of that project and I’ve written about them in a previous wine blog – it’s in the Vidigueira region famous for Alentejo white wines and talha or amphora wine made the way the Romans made it.They’ve put us in touch with someone who might help us navigate these last crucial stages of the project, and have proposed a little arrangement that will allow us to have our own house wine this year...watch this space.Ana’s old pal Joanna is the third person we’ve lured to buy a house in this still-undiscovered part of Portugal, and she was here to get to grips with what needs to be done to the new place.She has a Wine and Spirit Educational Trust (WSET) diploma in wine as well working in Greenland (I mean how cool is that...quite cool apparently...well actually pretty chilly, but stunning)...and so we’re trying to persuade her to run wine training courses at Vale das Estrelas.Thank you for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal. This post is public so feel free to share it.Her partner Paul also arrived from Shanghai to take a first look.Paul’s very handy. As well as working on their place he spent some time helping us out, creating an amazing storage space and daybed headboard for one of the mezzanines (in just one day), and helping bring an added bit of Irishness to some sports watching.He could have been slightly more sensitive during the final of the Euros, but did put in some hanging lights above the bar while Ireland beat South Africa in the rugby and stepped in with a drill when the new braai inexplicably needed installing.It was chaos in the kitchen as Mauro and I tried to fit the taps and U-bend before people arrived (ultimately unsuccessfully) and it took an age for the coals to fire up.But with the pink sky of a sunset over the valley, a mountain of sardines sizzling on the table, and with Mauro and Swiss winemaker friend Niels’ wines flowing we began to realise that we really have created something special.This was just the first of many fun-filled al fresco evenings of wine and stories ending under a dark sky crammed with stars and the Milky Way flowing across the valley.It was a great reminder of that first night here when we decided on the name Vale das Estrelas, or Valley of the Stars.Maybe we’ve climbed up the steepest side of the valley of death, or maybe it’s a false summit...but as I never used say at the end of a BBC report (because it’s a terrible cliché) “only time will tell.”We’ve decided that encouraging people to visit with a lure of a package, or some form of retreat is the best way forward.Prof Eric may have scared us a little using the phrase “Valley of Death” in the Valley of the Stars, but he and his wife Régine also greatly inspired us with their project in central Portugal.They bought an estate house, spent a few years doing it up beautifully and now run a successful business at Qunita da Marmela and run cultural tours and horse-tours...packages of things to do...reinforcing our idea this is a good way forward.They wanted to hike some stretches of the Rota Vicentina long distance trail and loved it – despite the summer heat.Rather than walking to a new guesthouse each day, they used our place as a base and balanced time on the clifftops and beaches with the pool and the serenity of our countryside.“This could easily be a five day package,”  they agreed.So there’s the first idea...then there’s the wine...and perhaps a painting retreat...and something involving exploring Europe’s last wild coast.* And if you have any ideas about “content” to fill a week while enjoying an undiscovered part of Portugal - or experience of leading retreats - and would like to explore a collaboration...do let us know! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

I’m sitting on a plane in the skies over Africa trying to put everything we’re doing into perspective.It’s silly o’clock in the morning here, but recently we’ve been no strangers to sleepless nights, recurring dreams about buried pipes bursting and cold sweats over finances and licencing.Big things are happening in the valley, but they’ve been wearing us down.I lost perspective last week on one of the most difficult days on this crazy journey so far.Another no-show from our architect and another week-long delay was the final shove towards the realisation we weren’t going to be fully open this year.There have been many challenges, pressured decisions and self-reflections on whether we would ever have started this madcap scheme if we knew how it would unfold.Now there are even deeper doubts about what we can do before the debts are called in and expenditure starts to spiral above the lower autumn and winter income.But landing on a sunny June evening in Amsterdam after a short hop from Lisbon, traversing the chaotic airport terminals and now sitting here in the dark, wedged between the two other biggest blokes on a flight to Nairobi, I hope some of that perspective is returning.At the very least it’s giving me some quiet reflective time to think about what we’ve done, how far we’ve come and what we’ve still got left to do.The workload has been relentless – my precious early morning thinking hours to get podcast episodes published and blogs written have been cut short before 8am when workers and machines arrive and the firefighting begins.The days are long and we have been using the light and the time; bedtimes are early, but bodies are sore and minds are busy.Thank you for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal. This post is public so feel free to share it.Planning...we try...there are pages of re-written and slightly updated to-do lists in notebooks, but something always comes along like a water leak or an unexpected artisan to throw a spanner in the works.Extra screws for the patio covers, materials to order, emergency trips for vital components...more things to do than we have time for in a day or even to get through in a week.I’m good at the firefighting, but not so good at the big picture; I push things through by force of will, but don’t properly prioritise; I immerse myself in the technical details, but am overwhelmed when faced with an onslaught of competing demands.Thank goodness Ana is better at that...if only she could have more space to do it.Ana deals with all the angry conversations in Portuguese and the old-school mansplainers, and has to manage the pressure of me pushing demands to the brink of destruction.It really is one of the most difficult and stressful things we have ever done, but the hardest part is all the things that are out of our control.And the process of licensing – the town hall bureaucracy – is certainly out of our control.Our architect has been absent for long periods and different people are telling us many different things about how a changing process works – what we need and what we don’t need.Expensive acoustic inspections, energy certificates that could take a year, six months or just a couple of weeks...depending on who you ask.We pushed hard for our final architecture project to be submitted, but it wasn’t accurately done. Now it needs to be withdrawn and then re-submitted.The topographic survey was done quickly to keep us ahead, but now we’re told our recent spurt of landscaping also needs to be marked on the map and the survey needs to be redoneWe’ve done some extreme gardening before, but the last couple of weeks has been all about landscaping – cleaning up after the builders, levelling the land and putting in a few degrees of slope here and there so rainwater flows between the houses and down into the valley.We know water lingers in the clay at the top of our valley, and as soon as the soil is saturated, any little indentation can become a lake.Hopefully it will be managed by the long drainage trench cut between the future vineyard and the houses, and the new roadside ditch filled with drain pipes and gravel.We bought many cubic metres of material – carefully calculating the cost of different colours and qualities to try and stay within our trimmed budget.With the builders’ cabins gone the area in need of prettification required before welcoming guests, was a lot larger than we expected: hundreds of square metres.Thankfully we had Helder from the material supplies and plant hire place up the road – he smooths and levels piles of gravel using the tractor buckets like extensions of his own hands, flicking here, patting down earth there.The list of things left to do is overwhelming, but with Alan & Margery Gledson staying again we got the final building’s concrete floors sealed and all the wooden bathroom sink tops and bowls installed.The marble kitchen tops arrived – they’re beautiful – and slowly but surely the electrics, the metal safety railings and the water system are being completed.The beds will be the last things to go in...once the workman boots have moved on.Even a beautiful Portuguese paradise can become a millstone of pressure and worry.But retuning to Africa, meeting some Ethiopian journalists who live their lives in fear of the police knocking on their door in the night, helps bring some perspective.I’ve been doing some work on the side countering disinformation and that’s what brings me to Nairobi – our old home – for the first time in five years.A vast concrete overpass – the lauded Expressway – now flies above the city.It took just a few years to build...a little more than our lodge which pales in scale.High-rise buildings have sprung up, development is everywhere...but so is protest – five years on, different voices are now being silenced by the same water cannon, riot police and teargas that were so familiar I owned a gas mask.These are the voices of the youth facing down a tumult of new taxes.Maybe it’s time for me to mix the morning classical music listening with a little more news again, to read those Economists, to re-engage in that big world beyond the valley.There are books waiting to be read, there are beaches ready to be visited, there’s calm to be restored and chaos to be tamed.Balance needs to come back into our lives – we need to be running this, and not letting it run (or ruin) us.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It’s time for a reset, a plan, a strategy...to be ready for guests as soon as we can and to get ourselves rested and ready for themAfter all, this is just the beginning of something that will never be finished, but will just get better and better.Spread the word, help us get this soft-opening year off to a good start. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

In the end they left with a whimper rather than a bang.Almost un-noticed, things on the building site gradually started disappearing until suddenly there was nothing left – except for a large pile of building rubbish and some unfinished digging work.We’d agreed to pay for some of Justo’s digger time by the hour, and just as I was stressing about which work we needed him to do in what order he started loading it on the back of the truck.“Broken” he shrugged and headed off to the mechanic.He came back with an empty truck and as if by magic the last builders’ cabin disappeared. We haven’t seen them since.I suppose that’s when we realised it was up to us now, and that all the things that still needed to be done...need to be done by us.And there’s quite a long list.The gradual departure of the builders passed us by because we were just so busy.Cleaning the land with a strimmer within 50m of every building needed to be done by the end of May, and having prioritised other things I found myself facing quite an uphill (and downhill, and uphill, and downhill again) task.With huge thanks to volunteer helpers John Rourke and Hugh Jennings who took some good chunks out of the work, I have been rising at dawn to get out on the land before the heat really hits.Thank you for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal. This post is public so feel free to share it.(Although I wonder if there’s a connection between John’s Scottish roots and the propensity of remaining thistles? I do hope you’re recovering well John!).Summer has arrived and strimming after 11am quickly becomes a very energy-sapping endeavour when there’s so much else to do after the work out.Weed-whacking might be a great weight-loss programme, but it steals my thinking and writing time.This is the longest I’ve left between delivering despatches from Vale das Estrelas since I began, and the early morning exercise along with the bi-weekly podcast episodes have nipped my creativity.By the way, if you haven’t started listening to the podcast yet please go over to our other Substack page – or search on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. We’re up to Episode 5 already!Help us, part 1…The first way you can help us is to rate the podcast and leave us a review to get the algorithm working for us…and getting more people listening.The other big deadline was saving the lives of our 250 olive trees, scattered citrus and newly planted rosemary and lavender bushes in front of the new houses.They were all starting to seriously sag and even though we started the process of replacing a broken irrigation pump early it was a close call.We decided to install a submersible pump in the lake to provide all the irrigation water for now – until we have a full house at the lodge and the waste treatment plant starts providing us with ample nutritious agua.The brilliant Cristiano and his brother Eduardo built an island out of an old pallet and four second-hand blue barrels bought for the occasion, but sadly the island sank and we had to switch it for a bright orange buoy.The guys laid out the 300m of pipes in the blink of an eye, because they are experts in what is an undervalued, but hugely valuable skill.Then the thief of time became the drippers.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.You can buy ready-to-install systems with a connector to the main pipe, a tube and then a spiked dripper which you push into the soil near the tree or plant to deliver water directly to the roots.My decision to buy the constituent parts rather than the whole thing, and then put them together ourselves was meant to be time saving not money saving, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.It took us hours and at the cost of blisters and holes in our fingers which have still not recovered.And then after Ana connected them all, they didn’t work - water was just flowing out and not reaching half the plants.We realised we were supposed to have installed regulators as well so each plant receives a certain amount of water and everyone gets their share.That took hours more of blistering bother.Irrigation systems do need regular care and attention and there’s a lot to monitor, but despite a few losses they’re broadly doing well.The calçada guys know all about working under an unforgiving sun – it took four days for the white limestone blocks to all be carefully chipped and placed by hand and tightly tesselated. The result is stunning.The pool, the deck and the calçada all look amazing, we put some wooden poles in to stop people falling (the protective glass is under construction), and after weeks of looking at the water we finally found the time to take the plunge. Lovely.The lack of Sr Manuel’s builders doesn’t mean everything is finished – a long line of his and our contractors are still coming and going as the deadline for “finishing” drifts ever into summer.The electrician occasionally drops by with complaints about his worsening gout while his mate takes up the slack; Rui the water guy pops in for a few hours here and there to keep our plate spinning while he juggles 70-plus other jobs; and the carpenter, plumber, glass people and metal work guys still have a few things to finish.We’d brought in some help in to hammer in wooden posts, cover the pergolas with willow and waterproof roofing, and to make our old water tanks drinking-water ready by emptying them and scrubbing them clean (much harder than it sounds).Then things need doing NOW:* get LED ceiling lights after the Amazon delivery never turned up (drive to the Algarve, realise later we didn’t buy enough)* pick up finished handmade sink basins from Monchique (drive to the Algarve, realise later the plug holes aren’t big enough)* fight with angry cork furniture delivery guy (he actually knocked me over with his van as he left)* pick up new Starlink dish because the old line-of-sight internet providers unexpectedly pulled the plug and left us on EDGE (rather than fibre or 5G) pretty much overnight* deal with a dramatic water pipe leak here, a demand for a big decision thereBut all efforts are currently focussed on the landscaping – the literal moving of mountains...of earth and gravel.The removal of the construction cabins revealed just how huge an area we have on the top of the hill behind the houses. We need trees, but can’t now plant much until the autumn, so we need ground cover to beautify our eco-luxe lodge.The process involves breaking up the already baked-hard soil with a giant tractor, then moving and levelling and rolling it with enough of a slope to help water runoff next winter.At least three truck loads of 23 tonnes of white tout venant were delivered – a mixture of gravel and rock dust which compacts well and will surround every building, make paths and the pétanque court.Grey tout venant will follow with some gravel, wood chips and mulch...and felled pine trees and white stones for edges.And with every machine hour - and truck-load of material - our landscaping budget has a big chunk excavated out of it.The payments have been flowing out as the spending curve accelerates to the end of the project, and amid it all the tourism authority who has given us the loan blocked our final (and pretty significant) block of funding.“No money until the work is finished” they said.“We can’t finish until we get the money,” we replied.After weeks of back and forth, our legendary bank manager Wilson worked some more of his magic and secured an agreement...the cash should arrive this week.Even with the rest of the loan, we were worried about whether we had enough money to make it over the line.We’ve thrown all our savings into this, and I’d been putting off the full audit because I was scared about what I might find.But with a strict landscaping budget to define, we needed to know how much money is left.I’m glad to report that despite some big and unexpected hits like a broken borehole and spiralling water system costs, the figures just about add up. It’ll be tight, but we should make it...as long as we can welcome guests this summer.Help us, part 2…So, for those of you who couldn’t make it here to volunteer...please help us by coming to stay.With our last burst of helpers expected soon, everything should be open-ready by the end of June, and while the online booking engine is still on the really-must-do-now-but-haven’t-got-time list, please let us know when you’d like to come and stay as paying guests.It’s a soft opening year, so the prices will be good! Come and visit and claim your free bottle of Alentejo wine...with a story. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

“So when do you open?” is a common question as everything on our hillside starts to look a little more finished.“Last Saturday” is my current response – because that was the original plan.Great friends of ours from our Bangkok days...and their friends...had booked last year to come and stay when the finish date on the building contract was optimistically set for the end of February.“Yes, this February,” was my common response (often to the builders) while we prepared for a group of 28 people – half of them children, but we felt that even if it slipped a month or two we’d be all set by May.It was a very generous offer to help us with a soft opening – to give us the practical experience of running a retreat for a large group with varying demands – safe in the knowledge they are friends and would understand...and give great feedback.As the year began, and the combination of heavy rain delaying the construction and the growing realisation that we are not super-human led us to suggest they book the larger and more established Pé no Monte hotel nearby.We are so pleased they did.Their slimmed down early-arrival group of 20 came over to see us for a tour, a wine tasting and a sardine supper.The ratio was the same: ten adults to ten children.Obviously diggers make great climbing frames, rock dust is perfect for sandcastles and “don’t go close to the precipice by the pool” translates into child as “we must go over there.”The electricity is now connected to all the buildings and the spaghetti water system is working – including to the toilets and showers – but the sinks aren’t quite there to help the water to its final destination.All but one of the outside doors and windows are now in, the interior doors are ready to hang and the metal safety railings for the mezzanines will go in this week (they could have plunged off those precipices too).The wine tasting went well, the sardines feast was saved by our friend Adam Cooper’s quick intervention and we ended the day having learned a lot of lessons about hospitality...and health & safety.Our wonderful daughter Oda has been staying with us – en route to managing the emerging American indie rock artist Taylor Sackson for her first UK tour.Check out the dates and if you’re local, drop in and show some support for Oda and Taylor (she’s got an amazing voice).Oda knew it was going to be a busy time in the Valley of the Stars, but none of us anticipated just how manic the last couple of weeks were going to be – it was a proper case of spinning plates while juggling (or a combination of the two).She arrived in the middle of our filling-the-pool water crisis which I wrote about last time, a task made much more difficult by a broken borehole.After trying everything he could first, the ever impressive Cristiano and his brother Eduardo set about hauling the pump 120m out of the ground to discover it needed to be replaced...along with its cable, pipe and rope.Thanks for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It was another unexpected cost which merely contributes to my active avoidance of checking the accounts to see if we actually have enough money left to finish our project.My former BBC colleague and audio-genius friend Peter Emmerson helped us through the first two weeks of the podcast launch.Episode 2 went live yesterday – please head over to the wine blog and sign up if you haven’t already...or just search for Ana & Al's Big Portuguese Wine Adventure where you get your podcasts or have a listen here:You’ll remember our friend John Rourke from my last despatch: the Scottish strimmer and cork floor fitting fiend who dragged his pal Tony over to cork click-floor our mezzanines.John said he’d be back to finish the job after a short trip home, but decided to have a heart attack in Scotland instead...I mean, as far as excuses go that’s a pretty good one.Thankfully he was just 10mins away from Glasgow hospital and out a few days later struggling more with the regime of enforced rest than anything else.Wishing you a speedy recovery John – all that strimming made him as fit as a butcher’s dog which should help – and in terms of places to keel over I’d certainly choose Glasgow over the hills of Alentejo for speedier emergency care, rather than the scenery.Most items on our post-it wall of ambition are proving stubborn to shift, but my old university pal Hugh Jennings was also on hand this week to help us make some impact.“Finish the cork floors” was high up on the running order, and Tony insisted on coming back and giving us a masterclass in click floor installation as we fussed around him trying to help.Hugh and I moved a lot of heavy things around, unpacked the entire restaurant kitchen, assembled some furniture and conquered a lingering gutter which has been staring at me for weeks, begging to be installed (just in time for the next drought).And we certainly couldn’t have prepped our sardines and wine tasting day without him...thanks so much again for coming Hugh!I dropped Hugh off at Faro airport and picked up another old friend Ciaran for the return trip.Our Algarve adventures always involve big shops and pickups, and after negotiating Cassie the Hilux and a trailer through the narrow streets of Faro, Ciaran was treated to Leroy Merlin DIY store (twice), Makro, a large metal factory, and although spared Ikea, was dragged to the irrigation pipe place.The sudden arrival of summer means all the trees we have planted need regular watering – all 300 of them.The irrigation pump failed last year and so we’ve upgraded to a submersible pump for the lake to feed the citrus and the olive trees down in the valley and up on the hill.Thank you for reading Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal. This post is public so feel free to share it.This requires 500m of pipe, scores of fiddly drippers to install and the construction of a small island out of wood and plastic barrels to support and power the pump in the lake.Then there’s Ana and Oda’s dresser re-decoration job to finish, sealing material for the concrete floors to buy and spread, skirting boards to install, more interiors to order, bills to pay, accounting to put off...and that’s just today.It really has been one of those times when a week feels like a month...when there’s not enough time in the day or space in my brain.There’s not even enough space to cram it all into one despatch (but I’ll keep trying).Oda, Ana, Ciaran and I did all enjoy a night away at the stunning Tróia Design Hotel on the sliver of Alentejo that points at the Setúbal Peninsula just south of Lisbon.It was work rather than play, as I’d been asked to do a couple of turns at a conference known as the Sleeper Sessions – a high-end networking event for top hotels and international designers.Matt Turner, editor in chief of Sleeper Media which publishes the influential Sleeper Magazine (among others) invited me to run a couple of their “Sustenance Sessions” after hearing the radio pieces I did for the BBC on off grid living (which you can listen to here and here).It involved hosting a tasting and talk about Portuguese and Alentejo wines, some background on the kind of madness required to build an off-grid eco-luxe lodge with no prior experience, and stories from my previous war-reporting life.It was great fun – thanks to Matt and to moderator Guy Dittrich for the invite and for giving me the chance to meet so many real hotel and design people. Hopefully a few of them might even come and stay.It also inspires me that perhaps the wine tasting/live storytelling part of our business plan might just work… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com