田舎暮らしポルトガル

Tuna! On sale at the early morning fish market at Numazu port, Shizuoka prefecture.

From a skiing trip last season to Zao Onsen, in Yamagaga prefecture. This is one of the free council-run baths in this hot spring resort.

Brushes used to stencil dyes onto silk at a workshop near us here in Shinjuku, Tokyo -- originally a working factory but now a museum.

This one was also taken back in the colder weather. Steamed buns for sale on the street in Yokohama Chinatown. One of my favourite winter snacks!

A view of Mount Fuji from the seafront at Numazu, in Shizuoka prefecture. We came here for a weekend in late July.

Tomorrow we fly to Portugal to finalise the house purchase. We are both really looking forward to it, although undoubtedly we'll have some problems with Portuguese bureaucracy as we go through all the legal procedures.

The owner will be in Tabua from September 17th, which is a little later than we expected. Sometime after that we should be able to do the final transfer of the deeds, and then the keys will be ours. Meantime, he has assured us that we can enter the house (his mother-in-law next door can give us the keys), which means we can take a closer look and begin discussing details with the architect, Paulo. Thus far, Paulo has been a little slow at responding by email and we haven't been able to make as much progress as I'd hoped. Of course, Portugal hosting Euro 2004 earlier in the summer didn't help... the whole country seemed to shut down for a month. Then there were the Olympics?

Anyway, with luck he'll be able to come up with some suitable plans within a reasonable time, and these will have to go to the town administration for approval. Apparently it can take 3 months to get a response, so we want to get them in as soon as possible.

So, the priorities on this trip are simply to complete the transfer and make enough progress with Paulo that he can finish up without us being present. We'll see if we get that far!

We completed the contract -- after a slight delay to sort out document problems -- in front of a public notary on September 23rd, so the house is now ours.

That didn't stop the owner using the alembic (still) in the garage to produce his local grappa in the days that followed! In fact, when we left Tabua on September 26th he was still beavering away at the task, while at the same time removing his huge collection of junk from the house and storage areas. But all that is alright, as we can't do anything with our new property until we return in January to start renovation work. Meantime, the owner is keeping a set of keys -- which will give the architect access over the next month or so.

Saturday evening, October 9th, outside Yokohama Station. We were a little surprised to be met by a cascade of water down the stairs into an underground shopping area as we attempted to reach street level. This is the sight that greeted us when we did find a reasonably dry exit -- floating cars and a Starbucks knee-deep in water!

So what's the weather/climate like in and around Tabua?

Haven't a clue really. We've spent at most a month in the area -- so the other 11 months are bit of a mystery! Still, I think we can expect it to be reasonably warm, perhaps quite hot in August. Olives and oranges grow in our garden, so we assume it won't get that cold during the winter -- though the neighbours have told us many times that it gets quite frosty. The nearby mountains get snow; there's skiing. According to people we've met, the winters can be a little damp and windy. So it will be a real contrast with Tokyo, where our winters are cold but bright and clear, while the summers are hot and humid.

Anyway, to check the current weather in the nearby city of Coimbra, try here at Weather Underground. We think Tabua is generally a little cooler and less humid than Coimbra -- we are a couple of hundred meters higher in elevation.

Here are a couple of elevations from Paulo, our architect.

First, from the south. This is the "road" side, so the main view -- except that it's almost impossible to get a good view from the lane because it's so narrow and has a steep rocky bank on the other side...

And this is from the east. This, in fact, is the elevation that most people will see as it's the view from the approach up the hill.

OK. So here are a few photos from the past week or so...

We are still living without hot water, and certainly without an Internet connection, so it is taking a bit of time to get things together...

Ours is the white house in the centre. Behind, you may just be able to make out a little snow on the mountains. That is Portugal?Ls only ski slope!

Our first crop -- a bowl of oranges! The three orange trees must have a ton of fruit on them. Unfortunately it is going to waste -- much ruined already by frost. (Marmalade, anyone?)

Our second day here; one of the local shepherds brought her sheep to a neighbouring garden. We are planning a lawn, and sheep may be cheaper than a lawnmower...

This is the ski slope in close-up. With a Sunday afternoon free, we went for a look. The snow is artificial (no precipitation here for the past four months!) We guess that in a normal year there is more snow and back-country skiing should be possible...

Well, it's the first of April and it may be an April fool, but it looks like we finally have our ADSL Internet connection. It's been a long saga. What should have taken "5-8 days" got held up first by an error on the line (according to Portugal Telecom). I must have spent many hours on the phone to them ("Push 1 to speak to a customer services representative, 2 for....", etc., etc.), and somehow managed to keep my calm! Finally, the day before yesterday, the ADSL link was made -- but we couldn't complete the sign-in process because of some registration error or network problem. I finally talked to the engineering supervisor this morning -- after the call-center employee said it would take another working day (ie Monday) to fix -- and he seems to have made it happen. Of course no one told us we were ready to go -- I just tried it on the off-chance, and here we are -- up and running. So expect more regular postings to this blog from now on....

It's over a month since my last update here because of the difficulties we've had getting an Internet connection. But now we've cleared that hurdle, I can bring things up to date.

The basic situation is that we are still waiting for approval of our plans from the local authority. However, as much of the work we want to do is renovation, this shouldn't necessarily prevent progress. At this stage, though, we are still talking to builders and trying to obtain estimates for the work. We've seen the work of two builders recommended by the architect, and both seem competent. They have done some nice renovations. We are hoping to get quotes this coming week, and are expecting them to be way more than we can afford; the idea is to then cut down the work -- leaving some parts of the house unfinished -- until we reach an affordable price. Builders seem quite open to that kind of negotiation.

At the same time, though, we are hearing of difficulties with builders from people we meet around here. There seem to be problems with cheating (like quoting for fully insulated walls, but then stuffing a little insulation around door and window frames to make it look as if it has been done...), as well as simply with getting the work done at all (delays of years seem common). We are hoping that our architext Paulo has weeded out builders who might operate like that, but we really don't know.

Anyway, we will wait for these quotes. If we are not happy with them, we are thinking of contracting the work in smaller parcels -- perhaps the walls and roof first, windows and doors separately, etc., etc. That way each contracted step is smaller and if the builder just doesn't show up -- or keeps promising to come "next week" -- we can soon find someone else to do the work (or take it over ourselves).

For the moment, though, we are still expecting to get as much work as we can afford done by one builder. We are hoping to start sometime this month, and it seems that a typical project is finished in one work season (ie by the autumn or early winter). Here's hoping....

Meantime, we ARE progressing with the garden. I'll start a separate category for that... Coming soon!

Well, we have heard from Paulo that the local authority has granted planning permission for our building work. This is good news, particularly as there were no conditions attached! Apparently, we also have a quote from one of our builders -- senhor George. It's slightly higher than what I expected, for the whole job -- but not way out of order. The problem now is to negotiate down to something we can afford for work that is meaningful; our aim is for at least part of the house to be livable. It remains to be seen whether that's possible.

Last week we aired our various concerns about builders with Paulo. He seems pretty confident we'll have no major problems with either of the builders he's selected. Maybe he's right -- we'll just have to see. At least it is looking likely that we will be able to parcel out a large part of the work to one company in one piece; this will be much easier than trying to manage lots of separate contracts....

Neither of us have ever had a garden before, nor attempted to grow anything aside from the odd carrot or herb. Now suddenly we have over a thousand square meters of land and a desire to become mostly self-sufficient in vegetables. Where to begin?

Well, the good news is that the land has been cultivated for many years and has been reasonably well looked after. There are grapes and a number of fruit trees as you can see on the rough garden plan, here. The rest has been used for potatoes, cabbage, kale, beans and other vegetables common around here. That's quite a lot of land, so the first thing we did was set about turning part of it into lawn (or perhaps rough meadow might be a better description). That should reduce the area we have to worry about!

Our bible is a book given to us by my sister Barbara: The Royal Horticultural Society book of Organic Gardening. This publication is an advocate of the no-dig bed system of vegetable production -- and the "no-dig" bit sounded good to us! So in March, we set about gradually creating beds in three areas to allow a three-year rotation system. We fixed on a bed size of 1.2m wide by 4m long, and will try to stick to this as much as the topography allows. So far we have three beds planted or sown, plus one and a half seed beds (not very successful). We are gradually taking the land over from the previous user, our neighbour Alice. She's had kale on much of it through the winter, and after a spring crop it is now coming to the end of its cycle.

We began by planting just small quantities -- we don't want huge gluts of produce! Lettuce, capiscum, tomato, salad kale, and beetroot came as seedlings from the market. We are also attempting to grow rocket, tomatoes, and various herbs from seed. Also some Japanese vegetables -- daikon and gobo (Greater Burdock) so far. These latter are going great guns, while local seeds all seem to be struggling. It seems we may have sown many of them too early. As I've already implied, we have a lot to learn!

Everyone has told us we need at least three quotes, but we've only had two. But all the same we seem to have settled on a builder to do our renovation work....

The business is run by two brothers. One is friendly and accessible, and we felt after first meeting him that we could develop a good working relationship. The other is, well, quieter and not so communicative -- but he was friendly enough as he showed us around a property they have been working on. Altogether, we were impressed; and pleasantly surprised when their estimate came in almost 20,000 euros less than the rival company. From the cost breakdown, we realized we could probably reach some kind of compromise -- the minimal work we need doing to make the place (semi) habitable for a price we can afford.

Today, we had a meeting with our architect and the (communicative) brother. Without much ado, we managed to go through the work and cut it down to something he seemed to think would be close to our budget. Along the way we discussed bathroom fittings (he's budgeted for good quality stuff), windows (aluminium or wood frames), the round window that Megumi was determined to include (can we afford a granite surround?), and the pros and cons of installing the central heating pipes later. What I expected to be rather difficult negotiations were actually a rather pleasant discussion session. We are going to meet again next week, when we'll get the revised estimate. If it's acceptable, we are assured that a start can be made in the first week of May....

So, we reached agreement with our selected builders and they are threatening to make a start on the house tomorrow!

Their final quote was more than we can really afford, but we like the quality of their work and decided to somehow find the money. The plan is for them to complete most work on the first floor, but leave the ground floor as just a weatherproof shell. We'll have to work on that later when we have the money.

About a month after sowing, the grass is beginning to look like a lawn...

There are lots of weeds, and some big bare patches where heavy rain washed away the seed, but at least it gives us hope that we will end up with a decent area of grass. Soon after this photo, we cut the grass for the first time.

We are in the top floor apartment above the shop with a blue sign.

This is one of the local pubs that we've visited a few times. Once a month, they have an open Djembe (african drum) session on a Friday night, and as our yoga teacher plays we go along. But last Friday night should have been just an ordinary evening when we popped in to meet a friend for a drink. It was ordinary until the drugs squad turned up -- a number of police in quite a few cars, and with a sniffer dog in tow. It seemed an odd time for a drugs raid, but that's what it was. Nothing was found among the dozen or so customers and staff, and after half an hour (with the doors sealed) the police moved on.

But what an odd experience, here in the remote Beira region of Portugal! We've heard that there is a drugs "problem" of sorts in the area, and it may be that there is some drugs related crime. But this flood of police seemed like an over-reaction in such a small town.

If they don't stop soon, there won't be anything left of the house!

Ume-shu is a wonderfully simple Japanese liqueur made (usually at home) by steeping small green plums and rock sugar in sho-chu (a Japanese spirit similar to Vodka made from rice, barley, sweet potato, or anything else to hand). After maturing for at least 6 months (and sometimes up to decades), a delicious, mature, and slightly tart flavour develops. Great straight, with ice, or in the summer with soda water.

One of the trees in our garden is an ancient plum. The neighbours tell us the fruit is not that great. But this year it is laden with small green fruits -- so much so that a couple of branches have split off under the weight. Not wanting to waste the immature fruit, I thought I might try a local form of ume-shu. So we now have two large bottles of green plums steeping in local "agua dente" (lit. hard water), which is basically a grappa made from the grape skins after pressing out the juice for wine. For sugar, we had to use ordinary granulated white -- but that shouldn't make a great deal of difference. In a year or so, we'll be able to report on the success or otherwise of this Portuguese ume-shu.

At the same time, I found on the net a suggestion that steeping in wine vinegar would produce a concentrated plum juice. So I made one bottle in that style too....

Megumi spent most of May back in Tokyo, sorting out various papers for her Portuguese residence permit and other chores. I left for Tokyo later -- on May 12. Unfortunately, that was just the time when the black cherries were ripening. As a consequence, of the dozens of kilograms on the tree, I only managed to pick some 5kg. As I was going away, the best I could do was freeze some and make jam from the rest. Too bad, really. They were so good. But at least our builders enjoyed them!

The good news is that we have another cherry tree -- a different variety -- that is ripening as I write. I've already collected some 4kg, and we've probably eaten another couple of kilos straight from the tree as we worked in the garden. This tree is not as large as the black cherry, but still harvesting from the upper branches is problematic. We hope to borrow nets and ropes later today, in the hope of being able to shake some down! Pruning is the long-term answer to the problem; we'll begin work on it once the season is over.

Tondela is a small market town about 30 minutes from Tabua. It doesn't give the appearance of anything grand or particularly cultural. But our Portuguese teacher Ana, herself a saxophonist, told us about a jazz festival there this weekend. We decided to go on Friday evening just to see what was going on

We arrived just before 9pm (having been told the evening's concert began at 10pm). It would have been easy to miss the venue (Culture and Recreation Association of Tondela) or mistake it for a closed and dilapidated school. But in fact, behind the boarded up school on a minor back street was a modern complex with an open-air cafe/restaurant space, chic art shop, and a buzz of people. We had something to eat, then followed the crowds to the stage -- a rather nice outdoor affair. The first band were a local Portuguese quartet (Luis Tapa T4) playing a specially written piece that I would characterize as contemporary/experimental jazz. In the interval, we were entertained by a Dixie jazz group from Belgium. The second band of the night was the Fab Trio, a peculiar but brilliiant mix of bass, percussion, and violin. Though we were pretty tired by this time -- as country types we now tend to go to bed early and rise at the crack -- we spend the whole set on the edge of our seats. It was an excellent, exhilarating performance. And especially good for being outside in the cool (cold?) mountain air.

Without being told about the festival, we would never have found it on our own. We get the feeling that's true of a lot of interesting things going on around here. And in fact perhaps that's true of Tokyo, as well: if you don't know where to look for information, so much could remain hidden. Anyway, we were glad of the hint given to us by Ana, and will look out for the 3rd Jazz in Tondela (Jazzin' Tondela) next year.

The floor of our new kitchen and dining area, as well as the balcony, is to be of standard Portuguese construction. It's a little different from what I am used to.

The area to be covered is spanned by T-section reinforced concrete joists. In our case these are going to be cast into the concrete of a "ring beam", a ring of reinforced concrete that will be poured at first-floor height. The joists are spaced at just the right intervals to allow special concrete "breeze" blocks to fit down into them. Once the blocks are in place, the whole lot is covered in concrete to form the floor/ceiling.

Floor joists being placed into position

Joists in position with concrete infill blocks also laid

Water should be no problem on our land -- or so we have been told. Unfortunately. we appear to have run the well almost dry, leaving us with little water to keep the vegetables irrigated.

It looks as if there was some kind of leak in the water system last Sunday night. Or perhaps some kids had opened a valve or something. Anyway, we found an unexplained damp patch in one area of the garden on the same day that the pump started trying to pull up air. The water level had gone down to the level of the inlet pipe. Of course, we might have expected something like this. It's been the dryest period on record, we have builders taking large quantities of water, and we are watering our vegetables daily. Still it is a bit of a shock to find that we are short of water, and may have to choose which parts of the garden survive. Unfortunately, the grass which has taken so much effort to get going may be the first victim, as it's hard to justify such a purely ornamental element in the garden in a drought....

The well is about 2m in diameter. Today we plumbed it with a length of string and a weight (a large spanner). Total depth is about 14-15m, but there is only 1m of water in the bottom! (We had been told that there's always been many metres of depth in the past.) Part way down the well is a concrete platform; our neighbour Alice said, perhaps seriously, it was a great place for a picnic on the hottest days of summer! One of these days we'll venture down for a better look. For the moment, though, we are hoping for a period of rain that might raise the water table a little and refill our well!

My ginger beer has proved quite popular over the years on Tokyo, particularly during the hot, steamy summers. I've just started the process of making some here in Portugal -- in the expectation of some very warm days later this summer!

There's actually not much to it. I start the process in early summer by generating a ginger beer "plant" (as they were called when I was at school; they were often handed around among friends, much to the delight of mothers I'm sure...). Grate some fresh ginger -- about a couple of teaspoons. Add a similar amount of sugar and water. Then throw in any type of yeast you have handy -- I've used a few grains of dried yeast in the past, but more usually just take a speck of my sourdough bread yeast. Within a few hours, the mix should be fizzing away as the yeast does its work. Now, every day feed the mix with another small amount of grated ginger, sugar, and water (a teaspoon of sugar, a couple of teaspoons of ginger, and a similar amouont of water is enough). After a week or so, you should have a fair amount of fizzing liquid. Half to one litre is about the right amount.

When you are ready, boil up a couple of litres of water. Turn off the heat and add anywhere from 500g to 1kg of sugar to taste; I like to use brown cane sugar for its flavour. You could also add some lemon juice if you like. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then wait for the mix to cool a bit. You now need a container that will hold about five litres -- in the past I used a glass bottle usually used in Japan to make ume-shu. Add a litre or so of cold water (I do this to protect the glass in case the sugar water is still quite warm). Pour in the sugar water, then strain the yeast mixture into the container. (A piece of muslin is useful for this.) Squeeze as much juice out as you can, leaving only the ginger fibres behind. Now make the mix up to five litres of so using lukewarm water. Out a lid on the container, and wait until fermentation begins!

The remaining ginger fibres, which still contain some yeast, are the ginger beer "plant". Take half of it, add the usual amounts of ginger, sugar, and water, then continue as before adding on a daily basis. Give the remainder to a friend (with his/her mother's approval!) along with these instructions!

After some time, depending on the temperature, your container of ginger beer will begin to form bubbles as it ferments. I can usually see some evidence of fermentation within 12 hours or so. You now need to leave the fermentation to proceed until a suitable point. What point is that? Well it depends on how much alcohol you want in the result! If this is for kids, 12 hours is probably enough. I tend to leave it for 3-5 days depending on ambient temperature. By that time, the mix is noticably less sweet.

When the time is right, I simply decant the liquid into used PET bottles that have contained fizzy drinks. We don't drink Coke or similar teeth-rotters, so we generally use sparkling water bottles. I find they can be used a number of times before the caps wear out. The ginger beer will continue to ferment in the bottles -- unless fermentation was complete before bottling. This means you need to watch the bottles carefully -- fermentation generates carbon dioxide that can cause the bottles to burst if it builds up too much! The ginger beer will be ready to drink from the second day onwards -- and again, the longer the fermentation continues, the more alcohol there will be. If you leave the bottles more than a couple of days check occasionally for excess pressure by picking up the bottles and listening to their "ring" as you tap them. If pressure seems extreme, you can just crack the seal slightly to let out some gas.

The result should be a refreshing summer drink. If it is too sweet/alcoholic to drink straight, try adding soda water or tonic water and ice. Enjoy!

As we came out of a supermarket near Oliveira de Hospital yesterday, we saw a thick plume of smoke in the air...

The supermarket is right on the N17, the main road from our area up to the Serra de Estrala mountain range. It runs high along a ridge for much of its length, and the forest fire was deep down in the valley below us. Driving a little further along the road, we found an excellent vantage point for the fire and were able to watch its frighteningly fast development.

You can just make out a volunteer fire engine (all fire fighting appears to be volunteer in Portugal) on the left. There was another group of fire-fighters even closer to the flames, but not visible in this picture. Soon after we arrived, they pulled back as the flames leapt towards them.

As we watched a helicopter turned up. It landed nearby -- perhaps to pick up a water bucket -- then began making circuits to a nearby water source, taking only a couple of minutes to get back each time with another load. We were quite impressed at the efficiency of the operation, and at how effective the helicopter appeared to be.

Shortly later, two small planes joined the fire-fighting effort. These had inboard tanks, and presumably had to return to base for refills. Even so, as we watched (for perhaps an hour or so) they made a number of round trips. We imagine they were flying into and out of Coja airfield, judging by the direction they came in from.

Ultimately, two helicopters, two small planes, and two larger float-planes (no photo, I'm afraid) joined the effort. In an hour or so, the fire appeared to be mostly under control, though still burning fiercely in a couple of places.

It's very difficult to judge just how big this fire was. My guess is that it burned 2-3km of trees from west to east (the wind direction), while it might have spread up both sides of the huge Alva valley (something difficult to verify from where we were). My map shows a large number of houses in the area; whether any were lost or not I have no idea. However, it seems the fire didn't make the major newspapers, so I have to assume it was a small one. For us, standing a few hundred metres above and to the north, it was quite frightening. At times the flames were invisible; hidden behind thick, billowing smoke. Then sometimes they came closer, and we could see they were towering over the trees -- probably 2-3 times treetop height. In the strong wind, they whipped around unpredictably, and we worried for the fire-fighters whom we could see on the very edge of the conflagration.

After seeing this, I must remind our friends who have large areas of woodland to get on with their fire-protection work -- most importantly clearing flammable undergrowth....

Since my last report on our vegetable growing, things have come along quite well. It seems we do have green fingers (or perhaps greenish fingers) after all.

For over a month, we've been eating lettuce from the garden, as well as rocket and some other salad leaves. We started off simply plucking a few leaves rather than pulling whole lettuces, in the hope of prolonging the harvest. In this we may have succeeded to some extent, but we've also succeeded in allowing lots of the lettuce to bolt and run to seed...

Just coming ripe now are tomatoes. I originally bought seedlings of some unknown variety at Tabua market. Not knowing much, I planted them far too close together, so now we have a jungle of tomato plants growing up a pyramid of canes. I also grew two varieties from seed -- Roma V and another. At first I thought they wouldn't survive, but after some time in seed modules I planted them out -- also too close together -- and these now are beginning to produce fruit. A couple of days ago, we picked the first tomato from the seedling-grown plants. Today three were ripe. I suspect we'll be inundated within the week...

The bell peppers (piman) have been very slow, and for a long time I doubted that they would do anything. These were also seedlings picked up at Tabua market. Finally, though, they flowered, and we now have some tiny (but growing fast) peppers.

Courgettes (zucchini) are another seedling-grown vegetable. They are going great guns, and we picked the first couple this morning. They were great in salad at lunchtime and also in a pasta sauce for dinner.

Snowpeas (at least that's what I think they are; they are developing more like ordinary green peas...). I sowed a couple of short rows from seed, along with edamame (a great Japanese snack bean).

Aside from the vegetables photographed, the onions are doing fine, we've harvested one beetroot and a couple of Japanese daikon, while we've been enjoying greens from an odd white variety of beet for a month or so. I've also picked some of the root; it tastes like beetroot, but is very odd because the taste of beetroot is so closely associated with the colour red.

Finally, the potatoes are perhaps best not talked about. We've got Colorado beetle, and also failed to water well enought. Fortunately, though, our neighbour Alice has enough potatoes to feed an army, so I doubt if we'll go short....

On Tuesday, Megumi was taking the second day of an African dance workshop at Quinta de Mondego a few kilometres from here in Povoa de Midoes. During the lunch break, we'd been to a restaurant with friends and I dropped her back at the Quinta before heading home and then on to our friends Guido & Mariluz. On the way down the dirt track to their place, I saw smoke on the horizon -- not an unusual occurrence just now, as we see at least one fire almost every day.

I realized the smoke was somewhere in the direction of Quinta de Mondego, but didn't think much more of it. But as we sat around talking on the verandah, it was clear the fire was a big one. Here's a photo I took at 5pm:

That's a pretty big cloud of smoke! (Povoa de Midoes is the community on the horizon just to the left of the large tree in the picture; Quinta de Mondego is in the valley beyond.) I was beginning to wonder whether I should call Megumi to say the fire was nearby and possibly coming closer; I could see it was moving quite rapidly from west to east -- in her direction. But she beat me to it; a few minutes later she called to say the dance workshop location was almost surrounded by fire. Things were beginning to sound quite serious, as they had 15 workshop participants plus teachers, musicians, children and others on the property. Megumi was concerned that the firefighters hadn't shown up, but I said we'd already heard sirens and I thought I'd heard a plane or helicopter already. We hung up while I decided what I could do, and agreed to talk again soon.

Next time I called, it was clear that the only route down to Quinta de Mondego (I say "down" because it is on the south bank of the Mondego River) was blocked by the fire. I had a choice of a long drive around to the other shore, or staying put. At the time, the dance group had decided they could use a kayak to begin evacuating people across the river for safety.

Megumi and I talked over the phone quite regularly over the next couple of hours; she was keeping me up to date with firefighting activities and the progress of the fire towards the house/property. In the end, I decided I needed to do something and drove around to Povoa de Midoes. There I had to get through a road block (which I did by saying my partner was down in the fire!), then talked to fire fighters at the point where the dirt track leaves the paved road. They waved me through and said the road was just fine. Which it was, for their huge vehicles!

I found it rather hair-raising, with small trees down across the track, fires still burning, and thick smoke in places. I could feel the heat of the fire as I drove, and was happy to be in a 4WD vehicle, albeit our small Suzuki. I engaged four-wheel drive and raced down the track faster than I would normally attempt it -- which may explain a scratch down one side that Megumi found the following morning!

By the time I arrived, just before 8pm, it was reasonably clear that the house and guesthouse had been saved. In fact, in the end, the fire hardly encroached on the quinta at all. Still, there was a smouldering mass of burnt trees and undergrowth no more than 25 meters from the main house. On the riverbank I met a family from another house who had fled to the river, and still didn't know the fate of their own property. When I told them I'd come down the track, they decided to go back and take a look. I learned later that their house was fine. Lucky them; I saw at least two houses that had been burnt out, as well as a couple of abandoned farmhouses and a number of cars.

Elsewhere, the fire was still raging and there was a continuous noise of helcopters, planes, and sirens.

Here's our local volunteer brigade (the Tabua Bombeiros) in action on the Quinta:

Coming along.... The builders are still coming every working day, and they are getting on with the structure.

Here's the south of the house as it was a few days ago. You can see how the gable has been taken down and replaced with brick/concrete. In fact, the roof ridge is now about a meter higher than the original one.

Here it is from the north (garden) side. The kitchen/dining room is on the left.

Here's the view through the main doors of the kitchen/dining room.

The next step is to pour the reinforced concrete beams around the walls, then put on the roof. I would expect the first stage of closure -- the concrete roofs -- to be in place in a couple of weeks...

The house is coming along. Finally we are getting a feel for how it will look when finished.

Here's the SW view with the gables replaced (in brick and concrete) and the roof going on.

This one shows the inside of the attic as the roof is being put on.

Finally, here's the view from the 'back'; the garden side. The round window was Megumi's idea. It really adds a bit of character to this elevation.

It's over a month since I last posted here, and summer is just about over now. August was hot and dry, with temperatures up to around 40??C and no rain whatsoever. The fires continued to burn, though later in the month there were fewer; we are not sure if that's because the weather was a little cooler, or people had learnt not to be quite so stupid with fire, or all the most vulnerable forest had already burnt. Anyway, we now seem to be through the worst of the fire season, and we've even had a little rain in September.

Mornings and evenings are already surprisingly cool, though it can still get quite hot in the middle of the day. With the cooler weather, we've started doing more in the garden -- though we haven't got much growing at the moment because of the lack of water. It's going to take a lot more rain over many months to restore the water table (and our well). At the moment, with the grape harvest coming up at the weekend, we will be happy if it doesn't rain for a few days. But after that we'll be praying for some more wet days!

One interesting 'find' in the past month is a shiitake producer in the next hamlet to ours. They are the only one in Portugal, and sell mostly to health food shops (in the major cities). Shiitake is definitely not something we expected to find here, so it's a real bonus. We both find we are missing Japanese food. We can of course make certain things, but authentic tastes are not that easy to create. Best we've come up with so far is somen and an avocado donburi (with wasabi, soy sauce, shiso, and nori topping). The shiitake adds one more ingredient to our available list, so the repertoire may broaden in the future!

Well, the time has come for our first grape harvest. The grapes are apparently good this year (who are we to tell), and everyone seems to be expecting fine wine to result.

We are planning to start the picking tomorrow (September 15th). It should only take a few hours, especially if the neighbours come and give a hand as they've promised. We don't yet know what quantity we have; it has been suggested that in a good year, with the vines well looked after, we can produce up to 800 litres of wine (which equates to around 1,000 kg of grapes). We are sure the harvest won't be that much this time, but I suppose it could be around half. Which is plenty to be going on with!

Our neighbour Orlando is allowing us to use his equipment to produce wine. We need to get the work finished before Saturday, when he'll be doing his own.

First, we'll run the grapes through a manual press (a hand-turned thing a bit like an old-fashioned laundry mangle with two large rollers) into a large concrete vat. Lifting 500 kg or more up into the hopper, then churning it through the press, should give us a good bit of physical exercise! The mass of liquid and pulp will then sit in the vat for a day or so -- longer would be better, as it is the fermenting in the vat that brings out the red colouring from the skins -- before the liquid is drained off into a wooden barrel (or more than one, depending on how much we can extract).

Our grapes are a mix of red and white. This year, for simplicity, we are simply going to mix them all together to make a red wine. Perhaps it will turn out more like rose! The wine should be ready to drink in a month or two, so come on over and try it!

Here are some of the ripe grapes, covered in bloom and ready to harvest!

After a two-week summer holiday (which they didn't tell their boss about), the builders have been working with a vengeance this month.

Since starting back at work a couple of weeks ago, they have knocked out all the holes (in the old stone walls) for new openings, put up the main structure for the new outside steps, built some interior walls, and finished most of the roofing. Within a couple of days, the roof tiling should be done -- at which point tradition seems to insist that we take the men (they are all men) out for lunch or bring them some wine or port. Since we've been providing a regular supply of beer already, the lunch seems an appropriate way to celebrate.

Here's a view of the house from across our little valley (in which flows the mighty Tabua River, currently dried up).

And this is the structure of the outside staircase (the main way into the house from the street) before laying the stone stairs. The ragged hole is for a new door. (It's been sitting like that for a week; I'll be happier when they get a lintel in there to hold the rest of the house up...)

For a bit of Portuguese ambience, this cafe is hard to beat!

Built into part of the Igreja de Santa Cruz cathedral in Coimbra, it offers standard Portuguese fare (great coffee, pastries, cheese and ham rolls, etc.) in surroundings that are anything but standard. Vaulted stone ceiling, ancient leather-upholstered furniture, and fine people watching in the square. It is a delightful place to while away an hour.

The grape harvest is now complete and our wine is coming along.

It took us a few hours last Thursday to gather in the grapes from our vines. Altogether, we collected 26 large buckets (of about 25kg each), 18 of white grapes and 7 of black (tinto). The hardest part of the job was carrying the buckets up through the garden to our neighbour's cellar, where we were to make the wine. Once gathered there, they had to be run through a press (a bit like an old-fashioned mangle, with two rollers turned by hand) into the large concrete vat where first fermentation takes place. The neighbour, Orlando, had already decided that the grapes would be mixed this year (unlike last) to simplify the process. As a result, we'll end up with wine something akin to a rose.

After crushing all our grapes into the vat, we hardly seemed to have wet the bottom; someone reckoned perhaps 200 litres. In fact, it might have been more like 300 litres. Still, nothing like the 800 litres of wine (not crushed grapes) that has been mentioned as the productive capacity of our vines. But we are not complaining -- it's a dry year anyway (which reduces the harvest) and anyway there's a limit to how much wine we can drink!

Anyway, over the following two days, we harvested from Orlando's vines as well, completely filling the vat to overflowing. In the end, we had to draw off about 400 litres of the liquid into plastic barrels to accommodate all the crushed grapes. Within a couple of hours, the mass of liquid and crushed grapes was fermenting; a lovely bubbling sound accompanied by foam rising out of the vat. This initial fermentation is allowed to continue for a few days; it is during this time that the colour of the wine develops (from the skins of the black grapes).

During these few days, the barrels are prepared. They have to be washed, then soaked so the wood expands and tightens everything up. The access doors in the ends are sealed up, and airlocks prepared. Today, we filled the first barrel -- a large 500 litre one. Tomorrow the remainder will be filled -- perhaps another three. Filling is another manual process. The wine is drawn out from a tap at the bottom of the vat into 20 litre jugs. These have to be hefted up and into a funnel atop the barrel. It's hard work; 500 litres means lifting up the jug 25 times.... Half a ton of wine lifted up to shoulder height and poured in.

When the barrel was full, Orlando announced that it was 'ours'. Very kind of him, as our contribution was in reality less than 300 litres of liquid. But it does reflect the glut of wine in this area; everyone makes their own. If Orlando doesn't give wine away, what is he going to do with 2,000 litres a year! There's never a shortage in our village, and everyone offers us bottles all the time. So, we chalked the words 'Quinta da Meg' on the end of the barrel, and when the wine is ready we can go in and decant off a bottle (or ten) whenever we want to. Lovely!

Tiling the roof has proved to be one of the most time-consuming tasks so far. But finally it is done -- after about three week's work.

The main reason it took so long is that we insisted on replicating the original ornate tiling. In fact, the result is somewhat different -- the original tiles are no longer available. Still, we are pleased with the results:

Note the ornamental edges, with tiles laid perpendicularly at the gable ends. The roof is just waiting for some finishing touches -- three finials to go over the gables. These also were not original, but somehow got included in the design.

We brought in the last of the tomatoes a few days ago. Quite surprising really -- I thought in this warmer climate we'd keep getting tomatoes longer than in my dad's garden, at least. But in fact the season seems to be shorter here.

The plants are already withering now, along with most of the other summer vegetables. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we have the first morning frost in the not too distant future; already (and quite suddenly) we can see our breath in the mornings.

Anyway, the final tomato harvest went to make green tomato chutney. Here are the tomatoes being washed:

Aguadente is the local fire water. It's a form of grappa -- made with the grape skins left after extracting the juice for wine.

Everyone around here makes it, usually in a home still located in the garage or a storeroom. I helped our trusty neighbour Joao make his in mid October.

The mass of grapes skins and pulp left after draining the liquid (for wine) is left to ferment for some time. It becomes a dense, quite dry mass that smells strongly of alcohol. At the apppropriate time. it is loaded in batches into the boiler of a copper still.

This is Joao's still, or 'alembic'. It's set in a brick firebox, and here the main boiler has been crammed full of grapes. To stop them burning, a small quantity of aguadente is added; apart from that it is mostly solid material in there. Joao is putting on the top -- it has a long outlet spout (not visible in the photo) that sends the distillate through a tank of cold water to condense it. As soon as the top is in place, the fire is built up and the precious 60?? alcohol starts dripping from the condenser.

The result is a fiery but surprisingly tasty spirit. Some people age it in wooden barrels, so it gains a little colour like a whiskey. It is often used to steep fruit, producing a kind of fruit liqueur. In our village 'cafe', an order for a cup of coffee usually results in one espresso, a sachet of sugar, and a bottle of local aguadente coming to the table. The aquadente goes in the coffee (along with the sugar) creating what we like to call 'Portuguese Coffee' (a reference to Irish Coffee, which similarlly takes a shot of the national drink...)

It's been raining! The change in weather began just about two weeks ago, and since then we've had mostly cloudy skies and quite a few days of almost solid rain.

Our stream (actually not ours; it's in the valley below our house and runs through our neighbour's land) has begun to flow again, although it hardly warrants the rather grand name Tabua River. What's more, the landscape has gone from being tired and dusty (and burnt!) to lush, green and vibrant. What a change! As a result, we've been busy in the garden again, preparing vegetable beds for autumn and winter sowing.

Unfortunately, I've been too busy taking pictures of all the wiring and piping currently being installed in the house to take pictures of our newly rejuvenated countryside. But I'll try to get some up here as soon as I can.

It sounded like a good idea to me -- growing vegetables without digging!

In fact, it's the method recommended by the Royal Horticultural Society in their books on organic gardening. Not really having the slightest idea about vegetable growing when we arrived here, we decided it wouldn't harm to try this relatively new idea. We started by simply digging rectangular beds of appropriate size -- we chose 1.2m wide by 4.0m long -- and that's what we grew most of this summer's produce in. But I wanted to build edged or raised beds in the end, as also recommended in our various gardening books.

The large number of tiles taken off our old roof seemed to cry out for a use -- particularly the slightly damaged ones. I thought I'd see if they will work as edging for the beds. The picture shows the prototype.

Conveniently, the tiles are 40cm long. That means I can build a bed with 26 tiles -- 10 along each side and 3 at each end. I set out leveling strings to mark the bed borders, dug into the soil to about half the depth of a tile, and set the tiles on edge (holding them temporarily in place with stones, clods of soil, or anything else I could find around the outside). Our terraces slope slightly, so keeping the beds level means that one end is set deeper into the ground than the other; because the tiles are not that large (20cm in that direction), this type of raised bed will only tolerate a very slight ground gradient.

I didn't want to create anything too permanent -- after all we may want to abandon the beds after the trial period -- but on the other hand I don't want the tiles moving too readily. So to fix them in place, I dry-mixed cement (4 shovels full), sand (4-6 shovels full) and soil (about 6 shovels full) to backfill to a depth of a few centimeters around the outside of the bed. After covering the cement mix with soil to restore ground level, I watered it gently to dampen the cement-soil. After a few days, and a little rain, the tiles seem to be reasonably well fixed in place.

We expect to end up with around 16 beds altogether. That ties in well with the approximately 400 damaged tiles we have, so I may have to go into a kind of mass production! However, with some beds in use all the time, the reality is that I won't be able to build them all at once. But I hope to get them built gradually as time and opportunity permits.

I took a couple of photos in Porto last weekend, when we were there to pick up my mum and dad.

This is the Dom Luis I Bridge, taken from the Gaia (south) side. The top deck is now used by a new tram/transit system. A long way down below is the road deck.

Taken from the upper deck of the bridge, this is part of Ribeira, a maze of little lanes and buildings tumbling down to the Douro river at the centre of Porto. It's a UNESCO world heritage site.

１０月３日の午前、ポルトガル北部を皆既日食が通る。隣人にモモの世話を頼んで、私達はキャンプをしながら北部の町・ブラガンサに行くことにした。

一泊目９月３０日はビラ・フロールの市営キャンプ場。年中無休だが、夏休み後で閑散としている。すぐ隣りにさびれた動物園があった。オリの中のイノシシと鹿は、誰も来ないので飽き飽きしているようだった。２泊目は国境の町ミランダ・デ・ダオン、３泊目はブラガンサの郊外にテントを張った。ミランダ・デ・ダオンはスペインからの買い物客を意識しているのか、古城がきれいに整備されている。この辺りはテラ・フリア（凍てつく大地）と呼ばれるだけあって、風が強く、夜は冷え込んだ。

２日は朝から強風。地図で目星をつけたブラガンサ郊外の丘でキャンプして、そのままそこで皆既日食を見る予定だったが行ってみると、遮る物がない丘の上ではもろに強風に晒されて、寒いし、吹き飛ばされそうだ。もうちょっと居心地の良いキャンプ地を探して丘を下った。道路脇に丁度良さそうな場所があった。車はあまり通らないし、灌木と背の高い雑草のおかげでテントも車も道路からは見えない。

丘を挟んで２ヶ所、遠くに煙が見えた。森林火災である。９月初旬に２日ほど、雨がぱらついた。気温も下がり秋らしくなってきたので、森林火災の季節ももう終わりだろうと思っていた。が、そうではなかった。気温は低くても、極度の乾燥は解消されていない。この強風では燃え広がるだろう。こんな日はあまり外をうろつきたくない。放火する場所を探している不審者と誤解されたらどうしようと心配するのは妄想だろうか。

暗くなるまで時間があったので丘に戻ると、風はさらに強くなっている。２ヶ所の森林火災は風にあおられて広がりながら移動していく。暗くなりかけた頃、丘を下ってキャンプ地へ向かった。灌木と雑草の間にテントを張る。澄み切った星空である。テントの中は暖かくなるが、外は寒い。高空で渦を巻いた空気が落下してくるような強風が吹き荒れた。竜巻が真っ逆様に地上に叩きつけられているようだった。十分離れていたので大丈夫だろうとは思ったが、山火事も少し心配だった。

朝になっても風は収まらない。丘の上でキャンプしなくてよかった。寒かったのでブラガンサに戻って、城壁から日食を見ることにした。城壁の回りは皆既日食を見る人で一杯になるだろうと思っていたが、いるのは数人の外国人だけ。スティーブと私は城壁の見張台に陣取った。日食が始まった。人が集まる様子はまったくない。通りは閑散としているし、空を見上げる人もいない。側で屋根瓦を修理している職人は、日食にまったく無関心で仕事を続けている。屋根に座ったネコだけがナットクできない面持ちで空を見上げていた。

日食は８時半過ぎに始まった。９時５０分頃に皆既日食。皆既とは言っても、太陽と月の距離が離れているので太陽の輪郭は隠れない。思ったよりも暗くはならなかったが、空気は冷たくなった。

始めて皆既日食を見たのは８０年２月、ケニアであった。この日は快晴で、月が太陽と完全に重なると、太陽は黒い巨大惑星のように見えた。９９年８月には皆既日食が通過する英国・コーンウォールにいた。２０世紀最後の皆既日食だと、マスコミが何週間も前から騒ぎ、まるで民族大移動のように誰もが南を目指した。当日は雨模様で、厚く垂れこめた雲の上を皆既日食の陰が凄い早さで通過していった。

皆既日食を見てから昼過ぎにブラガンサを出発し、ビゼウを経由してタブアに帰った。この日、そこら中が燃えていると言っても大げさではないくらい、あちこちで山が燃えていた。森林火災の黒煙は活火山が吹き上げる黒煙に似ている。

タブアから５０キロほど離れたビゼウを出ると、前方に黒煙が見えた。地平線の３分の１以上が煙で覆われている。．．．タブアの方向である。近づくにつれて、それがタブア周辺だろうことがはっきりしてきた。スピードの出ない車のアクセルを床まで踏み込んで、スティーブが運転する（それでも９０キロがせいぜい）。借りているマンションが燃える心配は先ずない。何しろ、消防署のすぐ裏なのである。家も火が迫れば、大工の３人が何とかするだろう．．．。大丈夫だと思ってもやはり心配になる。

タブアに近づくと道路脇の森林が焼けこげているのが目についた。黒く焦げた木々の間から白い煙が上がっている。タブアの入口である橋に来ると、数日前に散歩したペドラ・デ・セ（直訳では石の教会、実際には大きな岩）が火に包まれていた。野次馬が橋の上から火事を見物している。私達も、車を停めて写真を撮った。

タブアは燃えてこそいないが、煙に包まれて真っ白、灰が舞っていた。燃えているのはコニーの農場の方向である。運良く焼失は免れたが、コニーはこの夏、３回も森林火災に見舞われた。彼女の住む地域ではこれでもか、というほど何度も森林火災が起きた。燃えるものが残っていることが不思議なほどであった。放火だろうと、誰もが推測した。

後で聞いた話によると、ビゼウ周辺で始まった火災は強風のあおりを受けて数日間燃え続け、何十キロも移動したと言う。ペドラ・デ・セを燃やしてさらに西に移動していった火災は、ビゼウで出火したこの火災であった。ポルトガル全土が炎に包まれているようだった。

では、実際はどうだったのだろうか。パブリコ紙インターネット版から拾ってみた（ポルトガル語はまだおぼつかないので、正確さは不明）。

１０月２日。「ビゼウ周辺で午前６時４５分頃森林火災発生。火災は４ヶ所に広がった。現場への接近が難しいことと強風で、消火活動は困難」「ビゼウでは消防士１４９人、消防車３８台、消防飛行機とヘリコプター各２機が出動」「昨日発生したポンバルの森林火災は今日午後２時、鎮火に向かう」「フィゲイラ・ダ・フォズでは森林火災のため、キャンプ場から５０人のキャンプ客が避難。消防士１３６人、消防車３６台、消防飛行機２機が出動した」　この日、ポルトガル本土全土に森林火災警報危険度５（１から５まであって、５が最も高い）の警報が出されている。

１０月３日。「今朝７時２２分現在、１１ヶ所で森林火災が続いており、ビゼウでは１８人が救助された。火災はコレガル・ド・サル（モンデゴ川を挟んで、コニーの農場の向かいに位置する町）まで広がった。全国で消防士１、５８０人と消防車４６３台が動員された」「ポルトガル北部及び中部では５ヶ所で消火活動が続いている」「２２時５０分現在、ポルト及びビラ・レアル両県の３ヶ所で消火活動継続中」

１０月４日。「森林火災７件のうち５ヶ所がまだ燃えている。消防士１、０７０人と消防車２９２台が出動。ビゼウで出火した火災は消防士４２２人、消防車１１１台、消防機３機にもかかわらず、コレガル・ド・サルは燃え続けている」「３地区４件の森林火災で消火活動が行われている」

９月末にスペインでは、シエラ・ネバダ国立公園で遭難した英国人とフランス人が救助隊に自分達の居場所を知らせようとして起こした火が原因で、２、６００ヘクタールが焼失した。二人は無事に救助されたが、救助後、即逮捕された。また７月にはスペイン中部でバーベキューから出火したと思われる森林火災で１２、０００ヘクタールが焼失、消防士１１人が死亡した。

９月末にポルトガルで選挙があった。森林火災対策は選挙の争点にはなっていないようだった。選挙活動の一環で、タブアでは候補者がライターを配っていた．．．。

１０月半ばになって本格的に雨が降り出すと、一週間もしないうちに山野は緑に覆われた。ポルトガルでは毎年４月になると焚き火が禁止される。この雨で焚き火は解禁になったのだろう、夏の間燃やせなかった（燃えなかった？）下草などを燃やす煙が曇り空の下で何本も立ちのぼっている。

With friend Allan visiting, I wanted to get started on our project to build a new retaining wall in the garden. After a week of effort, both of us have a renewed respect for the wall builders of old!

The garden consists of three main terraces below road level. The upper two are separated by a nice granite retaining wall that probably dates back to when this land was first cultivated. The lower two terraces are simply separated by an earth bank, with a row of vines extending along part of it. We thought it would be nice to add a new retaining wall along the centre section, where there are no grapes. This would allow us to level the lowest terrace, which we plan to leave as natural meadow, while also backfilling the upper terrace by 20cm or so to give deeper topsoil (for some of our Japanese vegetables). Fortunately, there is a large pile of granite resulting from the building work (though I'm not quite sure where so many stones came from...) so we are not short of material.

The first problem to work out was how to move the stones across the top terrace, over the retaining wall, and into position for the new wall. Having decided on a length of about 4m that would comprise the Phase I work, we moved the foundation layer stones down in a wheelbarrow. Some were quite heavy, but by tilting the wheelbarrow on its side and rolling them in, we were able to get them into place.

The foundation layer is complete, and infill material is ready in the wheelbarrow.

We then chose some larger stones for the second layer, and realised they were too large even for the wheelbarrow. We borrowed a low four-wheeled trolley from the neighbour and laid down planks across the terrace. With this arrangement, we were able to move quite large stones -- though getting them onto the trolley required some thought (and some good levers). Keeping the trolley on track was also not easy; the consequencies of going off the boards into soft earth were sometimes messy!

One of the larger stones we've managed to move so far.

We've tried to avoid shaping the stones as much as possible, but occasionally it has seemed expedient to get to grips with the hammer and chisel.

In the photo below, Allan is working to fit the large stone (shown above on the trolley) into place in the second layer.

After a few days, we'd picked up a few good techniques for moving stones. Levers are our friends! But rolling (particularly over planks) also works well. It is surprising how easy it is to rotate a very heavy stone that is lying on a plank. A stone or wood block makes an even easier pivot point.

This stone just about moved itself into position once we reached the edge of the earth bank.

Here's the large stone (seen above on the trolley) in position. The second layer begins to take shape!

We estimated that this one probably weighs 250-300 kg. Here it is sitting on the edge of the retaining wall between the first and second terraces; the wall is about a metre high.

Almost certainly the biggest stone we've moved to date, it didn't go over the wall very cleanly. In fact, it took the trolley with it...

This is where we learnt to respect the wall builders of yesteryear! In this area, there are countless granite walls built to form terraces on steep hillsides. They range from a metre or so high up to monster structures, sometimes 3-4 metres in height. Some of the stones used must weigh several tonnes. Having moved some large stones, we have some ideas about how it might have been done, but the effort involved (just to create a terrace for a row of vines and a few potatoes) still defies imagination.

Here Meg and I take a break on the completed second layer. We now have to put a final capping layer on top. Unfortunately, the stones we like the look of are even heavier than the ones we've moved so far, and we feel that heavier equipment is needed. Tomorrow we are off in search of a suitable winch and pulleys...

So you thought Portugal was warm? So far, November has been quite cool and autumnal here in Tabua. The evenings, in particular, have often been much like the cold, misty November nights I remember from my schooldays in Rickmansworth. Then last Monday, November 15th, we woke to see snow covering all the nearby mountains.

The previous day, Sunday, had been cold and wet here in Tabua, but I didn't expect to see snow so early. Not only was there a thick blanket on the Serra da Estrela (Portugal's highest range), but all the ridges of the much lower Serra de Acor were also white. (This is the range of mountains that burned so badly last summer.) Not content to simply see the snow from our apartment windows, we decided to go and experience it first-hand.

Up at around 1800 m, it was blowing a gale and still snowing. Very cold indeed!

Not enough snow yet for skiing, but I do have high hopes for some back-country ski trips (if I can get my skis over here from Japan!)

Local people have often said that snow in the Serra da Estrela is key to our water supply. I don't really know how that works -- we and other people who have heard the same tale live on high ground well above the valleys of the large rivers that the snow melt must drain into -- but if it is true, then I'm very happy to see the beginnings of a snow build-up. Last winter, when we arrived in February, the mountains were mostly clear of snow. It was only after a large storm in early March that the mountains looked briefly wintery.

With render beginning to go on the exterior, the house is beginning to look more complete. Finally the rough brickwork is disappearing!

A front view. The rendered areas will eventually be painted. We still haven't made a firm decision about colour, but white (just like the original house) seems most likely at the moment. The painter himself disagrees -- he's suggesting a sand-yellow colour.

These are the exposed stones on the west wall. The workers have been displaying their artistic talents -- carefully shaping the mortar and adding small pieces of granite in the larger crevices...

We went for dinner at one of our favourite restaurants tonight. I can't tell you its name; in fact I'm not sure it has one. There's no sign outside, and no clue at the turn-off from the main road (except a signpost for the village cemetery). In fact, you wouldn't know the place existed if it wasn't for word of mouth. And that is probably as good a recommendation as any.

What we like about the place is that it feels like a restaurant. It still has the wall-mounted TV without which no Portuguese restaurant would dare open its doors. But missing are the flourescent lights, plastic chairs and tables, and complete lack of atmosphere. This is a place someone has thought about, with smart stone walls, lovely woodwork, and arty lighting. Aside from that, the food is good (if limited in range) and the price right (a fixed 7 euros for dinner -- drinks, soup, main course, dessert, and coffee).

Anyway, tonight we turned up ten minutes before the friend we had planned to meet. The waitress presumed (rather than asking) that we would wait for our friend before starting into the wine, olives and bread that usually appear as soon as a customer sits down. And we soon learned why she was determined not to waste time serving us immediately -- there was work to be done in the kitchen. We heard the sqawks a couple of times before we realised that chickens or ducks were being done away with just beyond the drinks bar. When we did catch on, we had to laugh. What a welcome! Some kind of aperitif!

We are such city-dwellers that we couldn't in fact tell if they were ducks or chickens being butchered; I suspect ducks, but only because I had a brief glimpse of legs held tight as the throat was cut. Anyway, as a semi-vegetarian, I was quite surprised at how matter-of-fact the whole business felt. Probably it is the down-to-earth environment of rural Portugal with its smallholder culture; somehow I can't imagine a Tokyo restaurant openly dispatching livestock in the kitchen, nor me putting up with it!

Incidentally, we chose the sardines for dinner, and very good they were too!

Well, after some weeks of work, Allan and I have finished the first section of our dry stone wall. It is quite an impressive structure; or at least, it appears quite impressive to us because we know what a task it has been!

In fact, in pictures, it may not look like much. About 80cm high and perhaps 8m or so long, it is not a huge thing. But with the stone weighing around a ton per metre of length, that's a lot of weight we've shifted into place by hand. Here's some of that weight on the move:

Actually, that's not part of the wall, but one of the stones making up the sitting area we constructed in front of it. Like this:

I like to think of it as a miniature cross between Stonehenge and a stone circle like my favourite one at Castlerigg in Cumbria. We look forward to eating out here in the warmer weather...

１１月１１日は聖マーティンの日。今年のワインを試飲する日である。数日前から大工職人の３人がこの日にはバーベキューをやってワインを飲むのが伝統だから、そうしようと言っていた。ワインはもちろん、家のワインである。

昼前に家に行くと職人達は既に焚き火を焚いていた。買い物も既に済ませたという。見てみるとポークとパンの山。スティーブは風邪で、遊びに来ている（或いは労働しに来ている）友人のアランは連日の石壁作りで疲れて、二人とも家で休んでいる。だがこの様子では延期というわけには行かない。電話すると顔だけでも出すという。

１０センチ四方もありそうな豚肉を次々と網（サンマを焼く網を１０倍くらい強くしたようなもの）に乗せる。６０センチ四方ほどあるその柵が豚肉で埋まった。ドアを使ったテーブルの上にパンを切って乗せる。アリスのアデガからワインを５リットル入りの瓶に入れて持ってくる。スティーブとアランも来て、８人でバーベキューパーティとなった。何の野菜もないのがいかにもポルトガル。パンに焼けた豚肉を乗せてワインで流し込むのである。もっと食べろと進められてもそんなに食べられるものではない。食事の後、職人はそれでもちゃんと仕事に戻った。

仕事の合間に職人は何度も私達に、ポルトガルでは聖マーティンの日には焼き栗を食べてとワインを飲むのが伝統なんだよと言いに来た。最初は「へえ、そうなんだ」と言っていたが、結局スティーブがスーパーまで、栗を買い出しに行った。

職人の一人が松葉の山に栗を入れて、火をつける。それだけである。下火になるとまた、松葉を乗せる。皮が真っ黒に焦げた栗を彼らは手で拾い上げるとテーブルに乗せた。アリスがジュルピガを持ってきた。白ワインとアグアルデンテを混ぜた飲み物である。砂糖も入っているのだろう、甘い。これがまた栗とよく合う。夕方になってやってきた電気工も一緒に栗を食べた。

職人達は栗まで食べてやっと、伝統行事が終わったと安心した様子だった。

Last Thursday night it rained. "Cats and dogs" as my students used to say in Japan back when I taught English for a living. (Yes, I know it is a perfectly good English expression, but who ever uses it except in jest?)

Anyway, the cats and dogs came down horizontally all night and into the morning. Later on Friday, up at the house, the workers showed us the huge wet patches on the inside of the west wall (which is the 'weather' side of the house). "Problem" they said, and left us to worry about it. As a result, we've spent the weekend thinking up possible solutions. There are three main ones -- as they told us on Friday: render the wall, seal the wall (on the outside), or build a waterproofing wall inside. The only attractive option, we thought, was the second. But do sealants really work? How long will they last? What kind of nasty chemicals are involved? And finally, can we afford that kind of process?

Well, today (Monday) we were up at the house early. Met our builder there -- he was waiting for his monthly payment cheque -- and he was almost put out that we should ask about it. The job included spraying on a penetrating sealant, and that work will be done soon. Evidently quite a common procedure here -- as we'd expect because there are a lot of exposed-stone houses! Depending on who we ask, it seems the seal will be good for anything from five to twenty years, which seems reasonable.

So that's one less thing to worry about. Next? Getting the patterns right for the kitchen and bathroom tiling -- which is supposed to start tomorrow or the next day. So progress is being made -- even though the December 23 handover date is looking a bit unlikely.

In the absence of any big news on the house, here's a little incident that gave us a laugh...

This evening, we headed up to Viseu, a nearby city that we like very much and where Megumi takes a dance class on Mondays. I often go with her -- to save her driving, which she hates, and just to enjoy the change of scenery.

Today, arriving about 6pm, we were walking towards the old medieval lane that winds up to the cathedral. We heard drumming -- a marching band that sounded much like a volunteer fire brigade band. It turned out not to be so; rather it was a group of drummers obviously involved in campaigning for next Sunday's presidential election.

They were blocking our way, so we simply kept out of the way behind other onlookers until they moved off up the lane. We followed discreetly behind. Noisy election campaigns are not our favourite kind of entertainment, but the drums and flags made for an interesting sight. Anyway, the drummers soon turned and started heading back our way. Immediately it was clear that they were accompanying someone; an older man who was shaking hands and waving to people on the street. A walkabout? It certainly seemed so. I guessed he must be a presidential candidate.

We were, as I mentioned, discreet. But not discreet enough. He noticed us behind a couple of other people, nodded at Megumi, and asked if she was Chinese. He appeared to be asking me, so I responded in my best Portuguese that she was Japanese. He asked about me, so I said I was British. We all shook hands. "Living in Portugal?" Yes. And that was about it; I just told him we were living not far away in Tabua. Obviously he was someone important -- a TV crew were recording his every move (and ours) -- but we really didn't have a clue. I did think I recognised his face from TV, but that was about all.

Later, I noted posters with the name Soares in large letters. On getting home a while ago, I discovered that indeed he was Mario Soares, ex-president, ex-Prime Minister, and ex-thorn-in-the-side of the Salazar dictatorship. We are rather pleased to find that we had shaken hands with someone we wouldn't be embarassed to be associated with!!

Nanban-zuke is a marinaded fish dish popular in Japan. Bit of a surprise then to find something almost identical in Vitoria's restaurant just around the corner...

Or perhaps not so surprising. While the Japanese 'zuke' (???) means marinade, 'nanban' (????) literally translates as southern barbarian. The term comes from China, where it refers to peoples lacking culture -- barbarians, in other words, or all non-Chinese peoples. The character for 'ban' includes the element of a snake -- of which you can make what you wish. In Japan, the meaning is somewhat different. Somehow the term came to refer to people from the Iberian peninsular (and who arrived in Japan from the south), or more particularly the Portuguese (the first recorded Europeans to make it to Japan). So, in effect, nanban-zuke means marinade in the Portuguese style.

Here's a photo of Vitoria's nanban-zuke. (Sorry about the picture quality -- see my previous entry for an excuse.)

Anyone in Japan will recognize this. Small fried or deep fried fish (not sure what they are) marinaded together with onion in vinegar, chillies, and oil. In Japan, there'd probably also be soy sauce and mirin, but otherwise we are talking about almost exactly the same dish. I'd say Vitoria's flavour is milder (less vinegar, less salt) than is typical in Japan. But otherwise it is quite remarkable how alike the dishes have remained in the two countries for hundreds of years. In fact, it's almost incredible they haven't diverged further unless, perhaps, there has been some kind of ongoing exchange of information between the two lineages.

There are quite a number of foods that Japan and Portugal have in common. Even bread (pao in Portuguese) was first taken to Japan from here, and the Japanese word (pan) reflects this. But no dishes I have come across so far are quite so similar as nanban-zuke.

The draw of the city lights proved too much, so we headed off to Lisbon at the end of January to catch a film festival.

Our friend Miguel invited us to come, stay and see some of the documentaries in the Panorama festival. Since his film Documente Boxe (about Portuguese professional boxers) was being shown, we even got free tickets.

Aside from seeing a handful of documentaries, we had quite a fun-filled weekend. For a start, it snowed on Sunday morning. Not that exciting -- just a few flakes, really. But it turned out to be the first snow in Lisbon for 52 years. So in a way our trip away from Tabua to the supposed warmth of Lisbon turned out to be a wild goose chase. But it was also a food chase; we found a Chinese supermarket that stocked quite a lot of Japanese food items and carried our rucksacks back full! In our area, the most we can find is soy sauce and perhaps, in Coimbra, a few things like tofu and nori.

Finally, we went out on Saturday night for what Miguel told us was the best 'baccalhau com natas' in Portugal. We found this quite a claim, especially as Megumi has become quite an adept at this particular dish, even making it a few times in Tokyo before we came over here. (Baccalhau is Portugal's national ingredient -- salted cod. It's an interesting story in itself, but I'll leave that for another time. Suffice to say that the dish would probably be called something like 'salted cod in cream' in English.) We headed off to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in one of the back streets not far from Miguel's place in Anjos. It's the kind of place that we'd be very unlikely to stumble across in the normal course of things, and even if we did we'd probably not go in because it would look so empty. (We were the only customers the whole time we were there and got the impression the place was only open because Miguel had called....)

As with most Portuguese restaurants we've experienced, the place didn't have a huge amount of character. Flourescent lights, TV, plain decor. But it was pleasant enough. And the amazing thing was, the food was excellent. I'd say it's perhaps the best baccalhau com natas in the country.... Certainly it's the best we've had, and we consider ourselves something of experts already.

Tram in a Lisbon street after the snow turned to rain...

It seems our builders have gone onto Portugal Time. Work is still going on, and the house is far from finished -- almost two months after the supposed completion date.

We can't say we are happy about the situation, and we desperately want to move into the house -- not least because the gardening season is fast approaching and it is a real pain living away from the land. On the other hand, we are very pleased with the work that's being done. The stonework has been cleaned up inside and out, weatherproofed, and otherwise made ready. Tiling in the kitchen area -- walls and floor -- has been beautifully done. There's now a stone hearth in one corner with our woodburning stove sitting on it. Most of the interior and exterior surfaces have been painted. Most work on the new main (pine) floor is complete. In fact, in some ways there's little left to do. But there seem to be problems getting windows delivered. Same with floorboarding. With those two things in place, we'd be almost there with just a few fittings (and an interior wall) left to do.

Here is the west wall being weatherproofed. It's some nasty chemical they are using; I hope we don't need to do it that often. I guess it's some kind of PVC concoction in water, so in fact it doesn't seem as bad as I feared.

This is the southwest corner of the house. The stonework is looking great, and most exterior paintwork has been done. But as you can see there are no windows...

And this is the rear of the house. Not quite as complete on this side, but getting close. WE JUST NEED THOSE WINDOWS!

My guess is that the problem is simply poor organization. It certainly isn't a problem with the amount of work -- the workers are almost clicking their heels some days, and sometimes there are only one or two of them on site (whereas they have averaged three or four since May). The boss is busy with other jobs, and I feel he just isn't getting around to organizational details soon enough. Basically he is being reactive rather than proactive. On the other hand, he knows he doesn't get the final installment of his money until the work is done; I'd have thought that is good enough incentive (at this stage) to keep things moving...

I've been lusting after a Triton workbench since I first saw one many years ago on display in Tokyu Hands, Tokyo's first and preeminent hardware/DIY/hobby shop.

The Triton display was backed up with a video in which someone was turning out amazing pieces of woodwork with little apparent effort. I wanted one, even though I was not really much of a woodworker. Unfortunately, a Triton saw bench in my small apartment would have left no room for my futon. And think of the sawdust!

Moving to Portugal, and getting ready to move into a house with a bit more space, I reckoned I had an excuse. Plus, I have lots of work to do in the house (beginning with another kitchen -- following the one I made for our apartment in Tokyo) and anything that makes it easier will be a bonus.... So I sent off an order to the European distributor in Holland.

With the delays on our house, the thing has been sitting in boxes here for several months. But the other day I decided I just had to get it out and begin work on the kitchen.

Setting everything up proved to be more of a chore than I expected. It took best part of a day to put together the kit of parts and then align everything. It was a learning experience, though, and made me very familiar with all the components and their functions. In general, everything went together as in the instructions. Using the Triton brand circular saw helped; I would imagine there may be a bit more work involved in aligning a different manufacturer's saw, even though the workbench is supposed to be universal. Indeed, I actually purchased the triton saw because my existing Skil saw does not fit.

Anyway, by last weekend I was ready to start on some real cutting. I managed to cut boards for all our kitchen base cabinets in a couple of days -- despite torrential rain. Given that I was new to the tool, I found that quite impressive. Work proved particularly quick where there were multiple identical cuts or multiple pieces of the same size. All of the cabinet ends (12 of them) are the same, so those were done very quickly.

(For my previous kitchen project, I had to work on the kitchen floor. I had no saw bench, so every cut was done with a circular saw against a manually clamped fence. Setting the fence was tricky, particularly for narrow pieces. I'd sometimes spend 10-20 minutes setting up for a single cut.)

So far, I'd say my experience with the Triton comes up to all my expectations. I'm looking foward to working with it much more and, in future, getting more sophisticated. I hope in the end to be producing nice pieces of furniture -- as oppposed to the simple boxes that make up a kitchen. Still in boxes, I have other bits of Triton kit: a router table, jigsaw/router top mount, and a proper dust collection system. There's enough to keep me out of trouble for quite some time!

There are some fantastic fish dishes here. We often have fish when invited to lunch with our next-door neighbours. And occasionally we find something good at a restaurant. Here are a couple of photos.

One of my favourites is deep-fried carapau -- little mackerel. The best are at one of our most-loved restaurants -- the one I've mentioned before where we enjoyed the murder of some chickens before our meal. But this photo was taken at a place we went to last night in Figueira de Foz, down on the coast:

And here's a part-eaten dish in our neighbours' kitchen. The fish are sea bream, or 'tai' in Japan -- where they are a celebratory dish reserved for weddings and other special occasions. Here they were cooked deliciously in the oven with potatoes and tomatoes:

Kodo came to town! These drummers are just incredible, so we just had to go and see them last weekend when they played in Figueira de Foz, down on the coast.

Actually, Kodo mean quite a lot to us. Way back in 1994, a cycling/camping trip to Sado Island (in the Japan Sea) taking in the annual Earth Celebration percussion festival that Kodo organizes was our first major trip together. We had a fantastic time then -- performances, workshops, food, drink and then a good cycle ride around the island -- so we consider Kodo part of our togetherness (our two-ness). Earth Celebration comes highly recommended by the two of us!

In all, seven of us went to the concert. They included Conny, the local djembe guru, Tita (our yoga teacher), and our Portuguese teacher.

I'm not sure how the djembe players found it. For me, the first couple of drum beats raised goose-pimples and sent a shiver down my spine. The Kodo sound is primeval but deeply connected to human existence. It can't be ignored. And although rhythm is a constant in human culture, it is also peculiarly Japanese -- the sound and energy of festival, a time when all Japanese are able to release and let their hair down. I love it, and sat engrossed through the two-hour concert.

No pictures, I'm afraid. And no recordings either. I bought a CD/DVD set (to complement a CD I've had for years), but I'm sure posting tracks here would infringe something. All I can suggest is that you wait for a Kodo concert near you -- they tour every year!

Rain, rain, rain!

When we first saw our house, almost two years ago now, the stream down below (actually the mighty Tabua River!) was in full flow. Everything was green. And I thought we were moving to a sort of England-but-with-good-summers area. Then, when we finally moved here last February, the land was parched. There'd been no significant rain for a year. And nothing much changed until the late autumn, when we began to have a little rain. By Christmas, the land had recovered to a degree, but it was clear we still needed much more water.

Into the new year, and we've had regular rain. Which fell as snow higher up -- sometimes only a little higher than Tabua. Here's a shot of the Serra da Estrela taken around the end of last month:

As a result of all this precipitation, the Tabua River has recovered. Just down below our house, the stream was looking like this a few weeks ago:

Just today, I went down to the stream and saw that ancient irrigation channels -- leading off the stream above the mill weir -- are full and taking water uselessly into nearby fields. Uselessly, because no one around here grows the corn and other crops that used to be nourished by the water down on the small flood plain.

The wet weather has made everything green. Particuarly spectacular are old terraces, now mostly tree covered, that suffered fire last summer. With the trees partially burnt, the terraces are very visible. And with emerald green grass now growing, they are quite a sight:

Another solar eclipse? Yes, that's right! I'm sure you heard about it -- totality visible from Africa across central Asia on March 29th. We had about 20% or so here. I'm not really sure as it was cloudy and wet at the time... We had a nice (short) picnic, though, despite the rain...

Can you identify this? It's a beautiful deep blue/purple colour.

Grows in woods around here, particularly against rocks. It seems to like the sun.

...at the end of the tunnel. The house is just about closed, with most windows in place, and we can finally begin to think about living there.

The past six weeks or so have been really crazy. First, some of the windows were delivered and fitted. The rest were due a couple of days later -- but never came. Some time after that, we had a real battle with the builder, Fernando. One day, after the windows had been promised but failed to turn up again, we sat in his car and forced him to drive us to the window manufacturer. There we found that, contrary to what we'd been told, the windows were not complete and ready to go. Rather, they were laying around on floors and benches in various stages of completion. Meg got in his car and said she would stay there until he got something moving. At lunchtime, he got quite violent and started throwing around (and threatening me with) the wheelwrench from his car.

The first windows in place; pretty smart looking but pretty slow coming!

By a fortuitous coincidence, we'd been to a solicitor the day before to discuss the situation and what we could do to get the work finished. He'd agreed to send a letter giving a deadline -- and Fernando must have received this soon after the wheelwrench incident. The letter indicated that we would take further (unspecified) action if the work wasn't finished. It seemed to do the trick -- work sped up, though the windows still didn't come. Until today...

Rear view of the house with most of the windows in place. We are still a couple of panes short; one cracked during installation and the round one is due in a few days.

So things are coming together. It's time for me to get on with building the kitchen. We'll soon forget the trouble we've had getting this far. But perhaps I should write a book on the story -- much of which I haven't posted here for fear of boring everyone.

The terrace with kitchen windows in place. We are also working on the terrace railings; they should be finished this coming weekend.

An update is in order. Once again, we've had a busy time and only now do I find time to write anything. So what's happened?

Here's a summary -- I may try to fill out some of these points into fuller entries later:

- I had to return to Japan for a couple of weeks to get a new re-entry permit -- without which my Japanese permanent residence would be taken away next time I try to enter the country.

- While I was away, the last windows were installed in the house and Meg began living there. Before leaving, I set up a temporary kitchen, camp style, with a couple of gas rings and a sink.

- The final electrical problems were resolved and we also arranged for an on-demand water heater to be installed in what we have dubbed the 'boiler room'. So we have elecricity and hot water now.

- Delays with the internal telephone wiring and certification (a long story and worthy of an essay in itself) were resolved and Meg obtained the certificate (or perhaps more correctly prised it out of the electrician's hands, because he wanted to hold it to ransom until he was paid by Fernando) that the telephone company (PT) requires before installing a line.

- As soon as I got back from Japan, we moved most of the major appliances and furniture to the house -- washing machine, fridge, sofabed, etc -- and began living there (here, actually!). We were returning to the apartment only for telephone/internet and showers (because we are having problems getting a shower cabinet to fit the base we installed in the small bathroom...)

- The very last contracted work was finished -- some bits of carpentry and door lock adjustments. We told the builder, Fernando, that we considered the work finished and have arranged a date with our lawyer to work out the accounts and make the final payment. That's Tuesday of this coming week, July 4th.

- Last Friday, on their second visit and having put up two new poles, PT connected the new phone line and moved our service from the apartment to the house. Meantime, I had to dig an 11m trench across the garden from the house to one of the new poles to lay in an underground conduit for the line. Then yesterday, Saturday, we finally tested the Internet (ADSL) service, determined it was working, and moved our computers up here to the house. Now, finally, we feel as if everything is settling down and we have everything we need at the house.

- Also on Friday we took delivery of a stone countertop for the kitchen. Pleasingly, my measurements were just about spot on and it fits perfectly. Getting the stone into place was somewhat nerve-wracking (80kg, and with the large hole to take the cooking hob leaving perilously narrow margins of stone). But now it's there, fixed down, hopefully never to move again...

Lots of tomatoes this year, too. But with a freezer downstairs in the boiler room and intense sun on the terrace, we can handle them! Megumi has been busy with the drying -- and doing it very successfully. We've got bags and bags of the things ready for a winter reminder of summer.

The kitchen is the center of the house. At least, it's the place where people always gather wherever we live. So we are pleased to be working on our new kitchen at last...

The space is quite large -- actually it's the biggest room in the house. In the end, about half of it will be taken up by the kitchen itself, with the rest forming a dining/sitting area. The first priority was to get some basic facilities into place -- sinks, cooker, cabinets.

We imported the two sinks from the UK. They are old butler-style sinks that came from a school in Amersham -- where my sister's children were pupils. With a bit of engineering (they are VERY heavy!), they fit in very nicely. One is for washing, the other for draining. At least, that's the current plan.

I've previously mentioned the granite countertop that we ordered. Here it is going into place:

The big hole was filled up with the hob/cooktop, like this:

So now we are beginning to feel quite comfortable in our new workspace, though there's still quite a lot to do...

The rest of the house is beginning to feel like home, too.

And I'm getting on with some work downstairs on the ground floor, such as this tiling in and around the utility room:

All local ingredients, with salad from the garden. Looked and tasted great!

Here are a few of the photos I've taken recently.

During a visit to Lisbon, I took this photo of the wonderful old trams. I was on a tram waiting for the two coming uphill to clear the narrow single-track section. A very nice view that really captures the narrow lanes of Lisbon.

A rainbow seen from our verandah. On a clear day, we'd see Portugal's highest point just about where the pot of gold should be...

One of many villages in the Serra de Açor mountain range -- just south of here -- that was lucky to escape being burnt in 2005. The fire completely surrounded it, as can be seen by the stunted or dead trees nearby. But at least the black colouring of last winter has given way to green.

Night scene (taken on Boxing day or St. Stephen's Day) in Aldeia das Dez, a lovely little village in the Serra de Açor.

Elaborate terracing, now apparently disused, in the Serra da Estrela range. In our area, there is an incredible amount of terracing. Tiny terraced fields have been carved out of rocky hillsides everywhere. But this is the most spectacular and sophisticated example I have seen; it almost looks like part of the garden of a large residence, but there is no house nearby...

Autumn colours as seen across our little valley just a few days ago. The mighty Tábua River (actually flowing now after all the rain we've had) is between us and there.

It could almost be Japan. Rice fields on the other side of Coimbra from here, towards the Atlantic coast. In this colder weather, they have a bleak, wintry feel -- emphasized by the white birds, which are presumably a kind of egret.

In recent days we've had a lot of hazy weather, perhaps not helped by smoke from all the wood fires. This sunset is seen between two of our orange trees.

Megumi's mother is a high-ranking teacher of the tea ceremony, in the ura-senke tradition. She was here in Portugal over the holidays, so our living room was transformed into a tea house on a few occasions.

We weren't quite sure how our friends here would take it. The tea ceremony isn't something you can get much out of by dabbling in it for a few minutes and, although anyone who has lived in Japan for a while is likely to get a feel for what it's all about, it can be difficult to get any insight at first glance. Still, we decided to try it on a few people who seemed interested, as well as with a few friends with some connection to Japan. Pleasingly, everyone seemed to get something out of it and the people who came have all thanked us for arranging it.

By next time, I hope we'll have somewhere more suitable than a rug on the living room floor. A nice little tea room out in the garden would be nice, but I doubt if we can stretch to that. But perhaps a Japanese-style verandah around the studio might come about and I'd love to plant some bamboo to add a bit of Japanese texture to the garden.

In contrast to the olives, it's a good year for oranges. Our three trees (actually one orange and two tangerines) look just as they did when we first arrived here in February 2005 -- loaded with fruit heavy enough to break branches. This contrasts with last year, when there was almost no fruit at all.

This time around, we are determined to make the best use of the harvest that we can. Both the oranges and tangerines are of fine quality: large, juicy and sweet. But in fact, at this point in time, I can see we are going to be overwhelmed. Using all of the fruit would require almost industrial-scale equipment!

What actually can we do with it? Well of course drinking fresh orange juice whenever we want it is our favourite way of diminishing the citrus mountain. We really do have an almost endless supply, even considering that some of the fruit will happily stay on the trees until summer or later. In fact, at the present moment, we are picking up 5-10kg of fallers every day -- plenty for our juice needs! (We find it takes about 2kg of either the oranges or tangerines to make a litre of juice.) We've squeezed quite a lot of extra juice for freezing and will continue to do that -- until the freezer is full. I've been making marmalades of various types -- tangerine, orange, thick chunky batches, more refined jelly-like batches. But still we have piles of oranges around and we are fast running out of jam jars to preserve the marmalades in...

So if anyone has other ideas as to how we might use these fruit, do let us know. In particular if anyone knows anything about the manfacture of orange-based cleaners, we'd be very interested....

I've been waiting for some decent snow up on the Serra da Estrela in the hope of getting my back-country skis back on some snow. Last year, my skis were still back in Japan so I missed the chance. So far this year, there hasn't been much snow at all. This weekend it's been raining. Anyway, for future reference (mine!) I'm putting this forecast here for the area. The site (snow-forecast.com) is quite interesting... You too can find out where it's snowing today!

I've been baking bread regularly for more than 15 years. For the past 12 of those years, I've been using the same yeast culture -- originally taken from a bottle of Tall Ship Pale Ale. (The Tall Ship Ale Company is another story -- way outside the scope of this blog. References to this business that I was involved in can still be found on the web -- the fossilized remains of a great but doomed brewery... Here's one.) But until coming to Portugal one of the things I'd never done, but always wanted to, was bake bread in a wood-fired oven. Well, here, every other house has a bread oven, so...

Actually, I haven't been able to take advantage of all these ovens that much. The weekend before last I had my second real experience with one, at our near-ish neighbours' house. It didn't work out perfectly -- first it was pouring with rain and second we didn't manage to control the heat very well -- but at very least it can be considered a learning experience.

It was a big oven. You could probably bake 20-30 loaves at once with a bit of organization. Of course, we didn't want to do anything like this number -- more like eight -- so they were a bit lost in such a huge structure.

Here's the oven itself. Stone portal. Brick and clay dome. Steel plate door!

Getting such a large oven hot enough requires quite a lot of wood. One of our problems is that we probably did not heat the structure up enough; ovens like this are known as retained-heat ovens because the baking is done after removing the fire; the bread cooks with the heat retained in the walls of the oven, which is radiated back into the dome. In fact, because we wanted to bake pizza after the bread (it would be more normal to do the pizza first, as it likes higher temperatures) we didn't rake out the fire, but left the embers burning around the edge of the oven floor. This caused too much direct heat on one side of the bread, which burnt slightly.

Now one of my books on bread ovens notes that, when the oven is at the right temperature, the inside of the dome turns from sooty black to white. We got this part right; at a certain point, we looked inside and sure enough the roof was white.

That's me, placing bread into the oven. One problem we had was that the floor of the oven has worn so much that bread (and especially pizza) doesn't slide nicely over it. Also, it was impossible to swab the ash out from all the cracks and crannies on the floor -- the result being rather ashy pizza. But somehow that just added to the experience!

Here's the bread baking in the oven. I've turned it once, so you can see the burned crust. This was because of the embers left burning in the back and to the sides of the chamber.

We'll try again sometime. And also, I hope, move forward with plans to build an oven (or two) on our land. I'd like to try a stone/brick oven of this type as well as an earth (clay) one. But that's for the future...

Another year passes and it was time to bottle the wine again.

This time around I chose March 6th for the job. With much less wine (100 litres of red and 100 litres of white), it was an easier task than last year.

Why did we mix the grapes in 2005 but make separate red and white wines in 2006? Well this was not our decision, since all the processing was done in our neighbour Orlando's adega (wine cellar). Until we get our own space and equipment for producing wine, we will be at his mercy. So far, it has been interesting for us to see (and taste) the difference, but we prefer having separate white and red wines. One problem, though, is that the majority of our vines are white grapes; the only way we got any red to speak of is because Orlando is so generous with his grapes...

Bottling was also easier this time around because I borrowed a different (newer) corking machine. We ended up with around 100 bottles of each and a few of the 5-litre demijohns,

As I mentioned previously, we bought the two barrels in Tabua, where there's one little coopering business still making them in chestnut (and perhaps other woods too). Two 100 litre barrels cost me well under 100 euros. I wonder how much longer they'll be available; most people around here seem to be moving over to stainless steel.

One of the many large strides in knowledge I've made in the couple of years since moving here is in the field of compost. It sounds simple and rather dull, I know, but there's a lot more to compost and composting than meets the eye (or the nose).

Of course, well-managed compost should not assail the nose at all, and most of the time mine doesn't. Occasionally, though, one of my piles might get a little waterlogged and that leads to anaerobic decomposition. This can be a bit smelly, to say the least. But most of the time I have bacteria working away aerobically, turning our food waste, weeds and other garden materials into wonderfully fertile soil. Earlier this year, I started making a set of bins for the compost and for storing materials that I accumulate prior to composting.

I ran out of old planks, so stopped after two bins -- but in the end I hope to have six. Plenty of capacity for a future in which we may start composting, um, 'humanure'... (Since we don't keep any animals at the moment -- bar a cat -- we have a real shortage of nitrogen-rich materials in the compost. The best source I can see at present is ourselves...)

Cistus ladanifer (gum rockrose) grows wild in the woods around here. The mostly white flowers are quite arresting seen among the dark greens of the pine, oak and (unfortunately) eucalyptus.

We've had a break from wine making this year. Our grapes were completely ruined by the weather -- the cool humid spring led to mildew, then there wasn't any really hot weather to ripen any that might have survived the mildew. Other people managed to salvage some, but in our case the harvest was zero. So instead of wine, we thought we'd have a go at cider...

Well, we only have one apple tree. So we pooled our apples and muscles (quite hard work chopping up the apples then pressing them) and ended up with around 100 litres altogether...

That's Megumi hiding behind the esmagadeira (crusher). Friend Glynis is doing the initial cutting with a shovel. The emsagadeira proved almost useless; we ended up cutting the apples with the shovel until the pieces were small enough to put into the press (which is the round unit below the esmagadeira).

The results of all this effort are now sitting in a barrel and a couple of plastic containers. Fermentation seems to have stopped. There should be a secondary fermentation next year, I suppose when the weather warms a little. And the cider should be ready for drinking in the spring. Until then, it's a waiting (and worrying) game. Will we have cider or vinegar when we crack the barrel?

All from the garden -- except the noodles.

That's the text on an old factory wall in nearby Santa Comba Dão. I suppose it would translate from latin as "Work conquers all".

The building happens to be across the road from the birthplace of António de Oliveira Salazar, who led the authoritarian regime here from 1933 to 1974. I have no idea if there is a connection -- but I'd guess that people in his home area were broadly supportive of the dictator and showed it in this and other ways.

The old dictator still stirs up passions around here. A few months back we heard there'd been quite a confrontation between a group who are pursuing plans to set up a museum to Salazar and others totally opposed to the idea of celebrating his life. Of course, there are always two sides (at least) to a story... It seems pretty clear to me that, for most people, Salazar was a nasty piece of work. At worst he used the usual violent techniques of authoritarian regimes to keep down dissent. At best, he was a Mao-like figure who kept the peasantry in glorious poverty while enriching close comrades. But a quote from a 1958 travel guide to Portugal (by one Iris Merle) is interesting: "It is now almost a quarter of a century since the quiet but brilliant economist, Dr. Oliveira Salazar, a professor at Coimbra University, was called to put Portugal in order and on her feet again. While remaining always the quiet, austere-living professor, Dr. Salazar has achieved the almost impossible task which his country set him and ahas already become somewhat of a legend." People I've met who lived through the revolution in 1974 (26 years after this quote was written) would not put his achievements into the same words...

Most remarkable to me is that the coat of arms and text still remain. I wonder how much longer it will stay? The factory, whatever it produces, still seems to be operating but in these days of EU membership I'd say its days are numbered...

In a similar vein is the following picture. It's the entrance to the Communist Party offices in Aveiro, a coastal town north of here on the way to Porto. The wonderful tile work is typically Portuguese (and called azulejo). The depiction of a labourer hard at work digging a hole (at the top of the stairs) seems to owe more to the Soviet Union.

Most towns of any size in Portugal seem to have a prominent Communist Party office. Posters are also quite common ("Health is for All" and the like...). It's good to see really; I don't know if it's a sign of real political debate but certainly it must be causing the major parties to think a bit.

Weather wise, it's been a great year (for me, anyway). The spring was long and cool with quite a lot of rain -- quite different from the other two years we've experienced here. Then summer came -- in a sense. It never got very hot, at least not for weeks at a time, and we had occasional rain to keep the garden in good order.

April, May and June were great months, with flowers everywhere (wild ones -- we haven't had much time for anything ornamental so far!) and a mix of sun and showers.

The sea of yellow flowers is our 'meadow', an area of rough grass and weeds that we cut with the lawnmower. Later in the year it becomes a bit scrubby, but in the spring there's a series of wild flowers of different colours.

A misty morning in early summer.

Set up for a party... We put the tent up for Meg's birthday bash in July and it's been there ever since. The days are still warm enough to enjoy a lunch of wine and cheese out there...

Finally we get Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin)

We've been improving the entrance to the house a little. Up till now, it's looked pretty much like a building site. Now it looks like a building site with some pretty touches...

First we laid a large quadrant of granite at the bottom of the steps. Cut granite is relatively easy (and cheap) to come by here. Then we put down a concrete slab in front of the ground floor door -- first digging down deep and putting in a waterproof membrane against the house to prevent water seeping into what will eventually be our bedroom. The gravel top layer is temporary; in the end we'll probably lay some nice Portuguese-style paving stone over the whole area.

Mixing concrete; not Meg's favourite job (nor mine), but satisfying in its own way!

While we had some men in to extend the chimney upwards (don't ask; I might write about chimney design sometime...), I built a small porch roof. Sounds easy -- but it took me a while to get my tiling methods down, so this was quite a few weeks in the making. I'll post a 'finished' photo later...

For many people, Portugal conjures up images of sun, sand and sea. But the reality of this central region of the country is that winters are cold, very cold. We often get frost between October and March, with temperatures sometimes as low as minus 6-8??C at night. Thick stone walls help to keep the cold at bay, but once winter really sets in the stones cool down and it feels as if they are sucking heat out of the rooms after dark. So a good heating system is essential for there to be any kind of comfort during the colder months. But what kind of heating?

Well, we started off with a wood burning stove in the kitchen. Despite its failings (it's a rather inefficient local design with a very poor flue), it got us through our first winter. But by autumn of 2007 we were hoping to get some kind of central heating. The pipework was already in place, so really it was simply a question of paying for radiators and choosing a boiler. But what kind of boiler? Was there any way we could reduce our carbon dioxide emissions?

Gas is a simple, low maintenance choice. But we would be contributing to global warming and also at the mercy of future price rises. Wood is logistically awkward for us because (a) we don't have our own supply and (b) we didn't design the house to have a conveniently located wood-fired boiler. So we'd have to purchase wood. And firing the boiler would probably entail running downstairs and out to the 'boiler room' every hour or so. Not ideal

In the end we decided on a wood-pellet boiler. Wood pellets are a form of biomass derived from forest waste, sawdust or cut wood. They are formed under pressure, using the natural oils in the wood as a binder. They are reasonably convenient to handle, and boilers offer the advantage of having auto-ignition (using an electric igniter) and regulated pellet feed, so they can be run on a timer and controlled with a thermostat. Here's the boiler we chose in action:

We have to fill the unit with pellets and clean out the ash (once a day or every couple of days), but aside from that there's almost nothing to do. After more than one season of use, I can say we are pretty happy with it.

Does it make our heating carbon neutral? Well no, not quite. The pellets cost energy to produce ?Eprobably electricity. Then they have to be transported here, though fortunately we have now found a local producer so they only have to come about 10km. Then, most importantly, the boiler requires electricity. When running, it consumes something under 100W to run the hot water pump, the draft fan, and the electronic circuitry. With an output of 25kW, this is a fairly small amount of electricity in comparison. But it is certainly not negligible. It would feel good to have a solar system capable of supplying this power in the future...

We use, currently, about 15kg (one sack) of pellets per day (and that amount will rise when we start operating the Japanese bath from this heat source). That means we have to store quite a lot of pellets. So, I had to build a store for them...

Here we go... "Sakuragi-an" under construction:

Quite a lot of firsts in there (for me). I've never really built any kind of structure before; previously the closest I got was the wood store. Certainly I've never made a tiled roof. (We used tiles removed from the old roof of the house.) Nor fitted doors and windows (also re-used from the original house). Rendering the interior was also fun :). Yet to do is the exterior rendering; I'll probably get around to that once the bath is finished.

Our next heating question is what to do about the wood burner. It's good looking, but has some serious problems. Currently we are considering ?\ with the help of friends ?\ the possibility of designing and building some kind of tile/masonry stove. Our ideal would be something that burns super-efficiently (which means fast-burning, hot fires), provides immediate heat (such as when we come in later in the evening), stores some heat (so it doesn't have to be fired continually) and offers the possibility of heating water or food while burning. This could be a tall order and some compromise is going to be needed. But we should be able to come up with something better than what we have now. More news in future ?\ perhaps in time for next winter.

Three new doors. One too short. One warped. All good in the end...

Two custom made by a local carpenter to match the existing ones. These are for the ground floor -- one leads into the ground floor 'bedroom' and the other from there into the JAPANESE BATH, which is finally coming to fruition.

The one at right rear leads into this ground-floor space from the stone stairs. Custom-made to fit the narrow entryway, it in fact didn't at first attempt ?Eit was about 10cm too short. Bit of a blow. In the end, they managed to salvage it and gave us bit of a discount because it doesn't look quite perfect.

Here it is from the other side.

And this is the third one ?Ewhich finally closes the utility/storage space off from the studio. Note the cat door; this is Momo's route out into the garden. I made this one from tongue-and-groove, and unfortunately it warped by about 2-3cm. I haven't managed to get it quite straight yet...

And here's what's behind the bathroom door... This outer area of the bathroom is pretty much ready. Progress on the bath area itself will come in a separate post.

One of the first things we did after arriving here was to remove a wall of piled up rocks that closed off the land to the left of the house. (You can see it in this picture.) Since then, that small area has served as construction site and car park and had the aesthetic appeal of a sand pit. But we've finally got around to starting what we originally planned, which is to rebuild a proper stone wall across the opening and build a garage behind.

In the past, there was actually another small house on the land and two of the walls were still partially standing. We've had them built back up to first floor level, added a wall across the front, and created an opening for the garage and another as a foot entrance.

Here we go ?Ethe first stones go into place for the front wall. Note how simple it is to build a wall from a rough pile of stones...

A tractor with a simple lift is useful after reaching a certain height. Not that the people who originally built our house ?Ewith walls up to about 8 metres ?Ehad such a luxury. How

did

they do it? I don't know...

"The garage and pedestrian entrance would look great with antique wood as lintels," said one of the builders. And how to get large enough pieces of antique wood? Well, there's the ruin of a rather nice house across the road from us and there happened to be a few enormous chestnut beams in reasonably good shape. By asking around I found someone related to the owners and, a couple of days later, gained permission to take them out....

Nice pieces of timber! Cutting them down (without bringing down the walls) was quite precarious, as was dragging them out between some neighbours' cars. But then, with a little judicious chain sawing, they went into place beautifully.

And this is as far as we've got. No further progress since this picture was taken in April or May...

Here are just a few photos from the many taken over the past few months...

First, beautiful golden vines in the November mist. This vineyard is near Bobadela and Oliveira do Hospital, perhaps 10km away from home. We'd stopped here to check out an ancient burial mound by the road and the vines just happened to be over the fence...

Back in September we went on a guided eco-walk around the village of Chão Sobral, in the hills between the Serra da Estrela and Açores mountain ranges. It was an early start and we had a couple of downpours during the drive over there. But when the sun poked through the clouds as we descended into the valley of the Alva River, I had to stop for this shot. The village across the other side is Aldeia das Dez, a lovely place with a rather fantastic hotel/restaurant overlooking the mountains.

Snow has come early this year. This photo of the Caramulo range (with Tabua in the foreground) was taken from our terrace a week or so ago. Since moving here we've seen snow up on those hills only a couple of times.

This is something we've been talking about forever – getting a Japanese-style bath built. Finally we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Our plan has always been for a large stone tub with a recirculating hot water system. It's to go in the ground floor bathroom, which until a few months ago was just an empty shell of a space. Here's an account of progress so far.

First, I worked on the outer 'dry' area earlier this year – tiling, installing WC and washbasin, etc. No great difficulties there. This is what it looks like (from within the 'wet' bath area):

Then, the first thing to do in the 'wet' area was the drains. Here's the plan:

The large stainless drain unit is from Japan; I couldn't find anything equivalent here or in the UK. The left-hand branch of this drain will be for the bath. You can see it in this photo, where I'm building the formwork for part of the concrete tub structure:

I didn't feel comfortable attempting to pour the whole of the complex tub shape in one go, hence the formwork and concrete pouring was done bit at a time over a period of a few weeks. The concrete is reinforced with a mixture of steel bars and chicken wire. Here's that same section (hollow, to allow the drain out and also to take the recirculation pipes) after pouring:

Next the seat section at the other end of the bath; this was a little more tricky because of the sloping seat back:

Note the double thickness of foam insulation that lines the inside of the tub. We hope to retain most of the heat in the bath water from one day to the next. The final concrete pour was the whole front wall of the tub. (I tied the various poured sections together by extending the reinforcing bars out beyond the poured concrete and tying bars together with wire.)

Here it is with the formwork removed and most of the insulation in place:

I've already installed the pipework for recirculation and have just been working on underfloor heating for the area outside the bath (the shower area). Taps and shower head units have been ordered from Japan, so we are getting close. We are hoping to have the whole thing finished by the end of the year.

What's left to do? Well, I have to seal the inside of the tub. The plan is to use a thin layer of epoxy resin and glass fibre matting. By including some fine sand in the resin, this will leave a key for later fixing slate tiles in place using tile cement. In the shower area, the mortar for the heated floor is almost done, so the next step will be to tile it – and that will be it. The only possible holdup so far is the slate; we haven't sourced slate tiles yet.

The Roman bridge over the river Dão at Ferreiros do Dão.