A Birthday and a Bulldozer

The downs and the ups of an overwhelming week

Like most of us, I’m glad January’s over...but not for the usual reasons.

There wasn’t anything particularly dry about it...neither in terms of rainfall nor alcohol (but it is my birthday month and so the no booze thing never really works out to be honest).

I can’t really blame the cold darkness either...there’s been bright sunshine for the last two weeks, we’ve had a couple of unseasonably warm days over 20C (sorry)...and we even went to the beach for a dip and a clifftop fondue party.

January sunrise over the valley: what exactly am I complaining about?

But the stress caused by challenges on the building site, boring bureaucracy and a particular pipe intervention have made it one of the worst few weeks of off-grid living so far.

And that’s despite the fantastic birthday celebrations, which were extremely cheesy, cakey, sandwich-y and soaked in sunlight, sauvignon blanc and single malt.

So what am I complaining about?

Clifftop fondue: a fabulous birthday surprise

The heavy rain not only ground everything to a halt around our three new buildings, it also created even more work...and messy work at that.

The flooded holes and trenches gave a classic “First World War movie set” vibe and the overwhelming sense it was going to take a very long time to get everything finished.

The newly repaired submersible pump (with thanks to German Paul) was working hard to empty the trenches and holes in the clay, so pipes and cables could be laid.

But the whole place was a mud bath, with grumpy builders swearing out hundreds of metres of pipes and rolls of heavy electrical cables.

Pipes & Cables: the trenches carry water and electrical to the houses…and thanks to the drone I now know where they are

Nudges from our engineer about another newly-built tourist lodge nearby whose owners have been “waiting more than a year for a license to open” didn’t help our growing sense of doom and January gloom.

José’s intention was to warn us that not prioritising bureaucracy could cost us dearly.

But with a relatively simple part of the process already trapped in the town hall, it sent us into a spiral of negative thinking: “if we can’t open, how do we start paying back our loan...”

I discovered another landslide on the hill in front of our house courtesy of the heavy rain, and our biological treatment plant remained a pile of upturned tanks languishing in a hardening mass of mud, while we waited our turn for bulldozer time.

Digging it: our turn for bulldozer time: filling the reed beds-to-be with gravel and sand

Various workmen were occasionally dropping into the site and thanks to some good advice from friends, we discovered the plumbing outside our buildings had not been done to code.

All the out-coming water pipes had 90 degree bends in them – meaning that if they were ever blocked we would never be able to clean them and the floors would flood until we could dig everything up.

Normally the maximum angle of a bend in a pipe should be 45 degrees, so that a drain cleaning wire can be pushed through and any blockage cleared.

Our contractor Sr Manuel didn’t think there was any need to change them, despite us pointing this out.

But our water consultant Rui was due on site to plan the tank refit and so we thought we’d ask his opinion.

An opinion which was very much in line with ours, but one expressed surprisingly aggressively...by shouting down the phone, grabbing his angle grinder and cutting through all the pipes so they would have to be replaced.

The first cut is the neatest: Rui vandalising some dodgy work

This was our first major diplomatic incident in the Valley of the Stars!

Although Rui made the point, there were no doubt going to be consequences and so that led to sleepless nights of searching for the appropriate paragraph in the building code to be prepared for a confrontation.

The 15 working day town hall deadline was also ticking down for us to submit an unknown document signed by we weren’t sure who...something else to lie awake worrying about once Ana found the right section of official drainpipe building code and discovered we were right.

And when I did eventually get to sleep it was only to enjoy the recurring nightmare of me having forgotten about something in the infrastructure plan (one which may still come true!)

Site inspection: Garfie was as pleased as we were to see water flowing into the pillow tank

All of this came alongside a lack of water flowing from the canal into the new 200,000 litre pillow tank, silence from the unpolished concrete people and our continuing inability to find where the current electrical cable enters the original guesthouse...to integrate it into the new system.

So it was a great relief to see our architect Gonçalo on site to talk documents, and hear about his plan to start applying for permission to use the buildings well ahead of them being finished.

Digging in: covering up the trenches made all the difference and it was great to see our architect on site

Individual frustrations piled up on each other, but the daily ups and downs translated into a weekly line graph heading kind of up and to the right.

Our friends once again stepped in to help advise us and keep us sane.

Vera & Joep with advice on pipe angles, Ola on how to diplomatically approach the builder (“is it worth upsetting him?”) and Niels and Sybille through a 1980s metal detector, a pan of Swiss cheese bubbling on a clifftop, and a tide clock which tells us the best time to visit the beach.

The surprise birthday clifftop cheese fondue picnic accompanied by Portuguese Brut and Niels’ hand-crafted sauvignon blanc made for a fabulous day which blended seamlessly into an entertaining night with new friends Tim & Trish.

Just like me, Tim used to run around with a camera getting shot at for a living...but he would spend months embedding with rebel troops or the under-reported sides to a story, freelancing for all the big news networks.

An American, he decompressed in New York State through wood & metal working and boat building before meeting and marrying Trish and deciding to move to Alentejo.

They’ve bought a place not too far away from us, sensibly On the grid, and are looking forward to moving in very soon after months of house hunting and living out of a suitcase.

Birthday picnic on the cliffs near Vila Nova de Milfontes

The detectorist intervention came as Niels and I tried to find the centimetre thick cable linking the solar control room to our guesthouse which is buried up to a metre deep.

Some old Northern rugby club friends in a “Banality” WhatsApp group made many suggestions, including turning to Twitching Justino or one of his ilk – the guys who found us water – for more divining inspiration, but I think we’re going to take the classic prop-forward “route one” and search for a cable with a bulldozer.

A line traced out by the feint hum of a metal detector and some creative thinking has given us the best-guess place to try, and what could possibly go wrong?

Power play: we might not have found the cable but I now have three screws and two nails which I had no idea I’d lost

I shall report back...and yes, I’ll make sure the power’s off before letting Justo go mad with a large metal bucket.

But with a large intake of breath while taking a couple of days away from the madness, things went pretty well in the end.

The expected confrontation over sawn off pipes fizzled into brought agreement, the carpenters put in the hours to install the pergolas, the electrician started drilling boxes to everything and the pipes and cables were buried with sand and clay.

The war is over and the trenches are covered and levelled – it all looks sooooo much better – and while I’m sure there are other minefields ahead, in one big bulldozer day we managed to remove, clean up, refit and bury the bio-treatment tanks ready for the next rain.

Getting in line: there was a sense of déjà vu when we dug out the tanks, refreshed the holes and placed them back…and this time we hope it’s for keeps

The towering 15 cubic meter water tanks were lowered onto sand in a deep pit behind the container/water treatment station to be and the pebble-pool people agreed to a more realistic installation date than two weeks’ time.

This was never going to be easy, and while we’re still loving the lifestyle we’re hoping this is the last big bump on the race to the starting line...for the next stage of opening our doors (when they’re delivered) and welcoming guests.

All in all we’ve ended the week very firmly up – still having the nightmares and worrying about the timeline, but at least not overwhelmed by it all.

But sadly the best laid plans to get Albie, the Little Black Dog, some training at Dog Whisperer Emma’s place in the Algarve were dashed by my efforts to get him into a harness which sent him heading for the hills.

Albie gone again, but sooner or later – hopefully – Albie back.

Birthday cake, coffee and special sandwich from my fabulous Ana: of the three dogs featured I ate Garfie first (as he was made from Swedish lamb)