She Made Me Buy a Mountain

00:00 — David:
Hello. This is episode three. And this is Alison. Hello. Alison is the one who made me buy a mountain in Portugal, aren't you?

Alison:
I didn't make you do anything. I plant the little seeds and just let you make it happen.

David:
Okay, so we had a lovely pub in Kirkheaton in Huddersfield. And it paid all our bills and gave us a very good standard of living.

Alison:
Working seven days, wondering when we were gonna pay all the bills, how much the electric was gonna be.

David:
Yeah. And it was a fantastic way of life. We got to meet lots of exciting people. And then Alison decided, nope, I don't want any of this. I want to live on a tiny little plot of land in Portugal.

00:57 — Alison:
Can I just say? When we took on the pub and you decided we were going to do the pub, you'd said, “Yeah, let's do the pub,” and I said, “Yeah, cool.” How long were we supposed to be living in that pub?

David:
I don't know. A couple of weeks.

Alison:
Yeah. A couple of weeks. How long did we stay in that pub?

David:
Seven years.

Alison:
Seven years. And from after those two weeks, I've been trying to get you out of that pub for those seven years. Until eventually I had to suggest leaving the country to get you out of the pub.

01:51 — David:
Well then I suggested Italy.

Alison:
You see these things popping up, don't you, with “buy an entire village for a euro” and stuff like that. So you click on those and live the pipe dreams through those offers. Then I saw Portugal and thought, this looks all right. It was during lockdown and we just thought, what are we waiting for? Let's just make a change.

02:22 — David:
Boy have we made a change. We are now living, as you can see, in a beautiful static caravan because we're currently in Scotland where I'm working. I'm on my third day of an eleven-day shift. It is now half past twelve. I got in early tonight, about quarter to eleven. Nearly an eleven-hour shift. Living the dream.

Work have given us this lovely static caravan to live in. The kids are stomping around because it's a bit more room.

04:11 — David:
Getting back to Portugal, we decided during lockdown that we wanted to get some land and move somewhere.

Alison:
It makes you realise how much you rely on the system and the infrastructure that's in place. We just thought, like a lot of people, we need a backup plan. Not quite into prepper territory, but it would be nice to grow our own food and be a bit more self-sufficient.

David:
Yeah. So we bought a mountain with no electric, no water, no toilets, no nothing.

Since we've bought it, I've learnt a lot about solar. We've got solar ready to go. We use Starlink, which is fabulous for us.

05:05 — David:
We've tried surviving on mobile phones and doing everything on those but finally blew a gasket last week and said, no, that's it, we'll fire up Starlink.

We had to buy a new cable and pay sixty-five pounds to activate it again. By the time we'd paid everything it was about two hundred quid to get it back on.

06:50 — David:
The notes say: who's the sensible one? Compare how each of you approached the purchase.

Alison:
Don't follow us for any advice.

David:
I didn't want a tiny plot. To me the mountain being huge was the attraction. I'd have been bored to tears with a house and nothing else.

07:20 — David:
We flew into Porto, rented a car, stayed in Porto for the first day and then drove towards Vila Velha de Ródão.

We pulled into the area and the first thing that hit us was the smell from the paper-processing plant. We started calling it Stinksville.

08:49 — David:
We met the estate agent in Castelo Branco and explained what we wanted: somewhere with water, shade, trees and a building.

The first property they showed us was basically a forest clearance. No trees, scrubland, hardly any shade and a puddle being presented as water.

It was only around two or three thousand euros, but it wasn't what we wanted.

10:16 — David:
The second property was in a place called Pardo. It had two pieces of land with a road through the middle.

One side had a building, grass, a stream, olive trees, orange trees and figs.

Alison:
I liked that one.

David:
That was around nine thousand euros and about three acres.

11:31 — David:
We've got four children, so we live in a campervan with four kids and a dog. We did have three mice, then two, then one. And we've got a turtle.

12:27 — David:
This year we'd have been back in Portugal through the hottest part of summer. With the fires raging across Europe and last year being so difficult, we decided not to do that again.

It was regularly forty-four to forty-eight degrees. So we decided I'd work in Scotland for the summer instead.

13:26 — David:
We're living in this static caravan while I'm working. We don't have to pay electric or gas. It's got a kitchen and, luxury of luxuries, a flushing toilet.

13:53 — Alison:
Then we went to see Melanie from Home Key Portugal. She showed us a nice little plot of land that I was sold on, and then she said there was just one more to see.

David:
I'd already decided. I didn't even need to see it. We were having it.

14:36 — David:
We met her at the base of the mountain. She wouldn't let us drive our hire car up there, so we got into her four-by-four.

15:48 — David:
We drove onto the mountain and I said, “We're having this.” The more I saw, the more I wanted it.

We saw olive trees and went down towards the river. The water was beautiful.

16:46 — David:
We tried to get further up the mountain but there was a tree down.

And that was the selling point to me. I said to Alison: how much would you pay to wake up here and have a cup of coffee in the morning?

I immediately thought retreat or camping. The place was stunning.

17:57 — David:
One of the nicest surprises since buying the land has been the people.

To get to the mountain we drive through a small village called Zimbreira. It's an old village and a lot of the younger people have moved away.

We started talking to one of the older residents, Delia, who speaks no English. My Portuguese isn't brilliant and I tend to say yes to everything.

19:24 — David:
We went to a cheese festival. If you like cheese, go to Portugal. There is cheese everywhere.

Alison:
And when we've got a sheep, you can make cheese and I can make wool.

David:
We're not having sheep.

Alison:
Why?

David:
I'm trying to have goats.

Alison:
Rabbits then.

David:
Can you milk rabbits?

Alison:
Why would you want to milk a rabbit?

David:
For cheese.

20:41 — David:
This is the kind of weirdo that I fell in love with and had to set up a family with. And now we live in a campervan travelling around.

21:09 — David:
At the cheese festival I bought far more cheese than we could store. Then the fridge broke.

We'd spent about 140 euros on cheese, so we gave some of it to people in the village. From then on every time we saw Delia she gave us food from her garden.

22:06 — David:
At the village house we've got around ten orange trees, grapes and olives. Everybody grows things and everybody gives you things.

22:36 — David:
Over three years of going backwards and forwards, we've got to know so many people. We've felt incredibly welcomed as a family with young children.

24:23 — David:
There's never really been a point where we've thought, “What have we done?” The negative part is the bureaucracy and the visa process.

Opening a Portuguese bank account took us about six weeks.

24:52 — David:
For the visa we needed a Portuguese bank account. Compared with opening something like Revolut from your phone, the Portuguese process felt archaic.

Even paying the water bill involved going into an office.

26:09 — David:
Paperwork is probably the hardest part.

On the mountain we have a house, two caravans and solar equipment. One caravan is used as a lounge, dining room and kitchen, and the other as a bedroom.

26:37 — David:
We started with cassette toilets and absolutely hated them. They smell, they're awkward and you're limited where you can empty them.

27:20 — David:
In Scotland we sometimes had to drive to Glencoe and pay to empty the cassette toilet. With six people in the van, that's a lot of waste.

We switched to a separating composting toilet and that's been much easier.

28:45 — David:
On the continent it's much easier to deal with because they're set up for it. In Britain it's harder unless you're staying on a campsite.

29:14 — David:
We can't afford a campsite every night. You might as well be renting a house somewhere.

Even cheap campsites can be around forty pounds a night.

29:29 — David:
We once pulled onto a campsite near Kendal late at night with tired kids. We were stuck at the far end of a windy field and charged fifty-six pounds.

30:28 — David:
That's one of the tricky parts of van life, but I love the freedom. Where do you want to go? Seaside? Mountain? We can just go.

Living in the van with four kids is a challenge. This static caravan feels like luxury.

30:55 — Alison:
We're plumbed in, we've got an oven, and I've missed being able to bake cakes. I've realised I like existing in a kitchen environment.

31:25 — Alison:
With wildlife, you take for granted the animals you're used to. In Portugal there are lizards in your living room, which feels exotic to us.

31:55 — David:
There are spiders, big insects, praying mantises, huge stick insects and centipedes. We've seen all sorts.

32:41 — David:
The first year on the mountain we had to clear a safety area around the house.

I started doing it myself, didn't really know what I was doing, and eventually we got three local guys to help.

They turned up with heavy strimmers fitted with metal blades and showed me how it was done.

33:38 — David:
When it was first cleared it looked like a war zone. I'll put some pictures on the website.

34:07 — David:
But the following spring the wildflowers were absolutely stunning.

Removing the thick rock rose gave all the plants underneath a chance to grow.

34:36 — David:
We've got lavender everywhere. For six or seven weeks the mountain seemed to change colour every week: yellow, pink, blue, purple, white and red.

35:11 — David:
Future plans. What are our future plans?

Alison:
We're not coming back to Scotland.

35:20 — David:
If we have to leave Portugal again because of the ninety-day rules, we're thinking Morocco. Maybe Africa, maybe Egypt.

37:36 — David:
It's now ten past one in the morning and Alison's yawning.

This will be Episode 3, and it's basically Alison refuting everything I've said in Episodes 1 and 2.

Alison:
Not really refuting. More corroborating that you've occasionally been factually correct.

38:19 — David:
If you've got any questions, send them in. Have we had any questions from listeners?

Alison:
No.

David:
We've had one listener.

38:46 — David:
I haven't advertised it anywhere yet. I thought we'd get to four episodes and then start promoting it.

I've been sorting out the RSS feed. We're now on Amazon, Spotify, Apple and various other podcast platforms.

39:49 — David:
End with one disagreement: should we have bought the mountain?

Alison:
Yes.

David:
Do you think so?

Alison:
I don't dispute that we should have bought the mountain. I don't think we should have bought the house.

40:19 — David:
We bought a house partly because it had a purple bathroom suite.

We also needed an address for the visa and thought owning a house would make that easier than arranging a rental.

40:49 — David:
We could have bought something much cheaper. The house has turned out to be a distraction from what we should really be doing.

41:18 — David:
We've now got a plan. Written in stone.

Should Dave stop buying essential gadgets?

Alison:
Essential gadgets.

David:
I do buy a lot of shit.

42:43 — David:
Recap on Portugal. Do we like what we bought?

Alison:
Yes.

David:
Firm yes. The only thing we probably shouldn't have done was buy the house we did. We should have bought something much cheaper.

43:13 — David:
Don't listen to us for advice. We read all the advice online and then confidently bulldozed our way through it.

Alison:
We did everything you shouldn't do.

43:41 — David:
We had one very squeaky night after transferring around sixty thousand pounds to the estate agent.

We'd read advice saying never transfer money directly to an estate agent, and then that's exactly what we did.

44:11 — David:
The next morning we arrived at the office early. Nobody was there. The appointment time arrived. Nobody was there.

Then the sellers arrived. Ten minutes later Melanie arrived and we realised we hadn't been victims of an elaborate scam.

45:09 — Alison:
We'd been there, we'd seen everything and we'd got a good sense of things. That's different from doing everything remotely from Britain.

45:39 — David:
The actual purchase process was really straightforward. You go through the property details, deeds and paperwork with a translator. Everybody on the deeds has to be present.

46:05 — David:
We knew we were buying fixer-uppers. We weren't buying beautifully finished houses.

46:35 — David:
At the village house I pulled back the carpet because we knew there was some woodworm.

Alison:
How big were the woodworms?

David:
Like snakes.

46:44 — David:
I've got a video. I'm poking my finger through the floor, put my weight on my knee and then go straight through it.

The floorboards were so rotten I could punch through them, grab hold and pull them straight up.

47:41 — David:
Anyway, are we calling it a day?

Alison:
Yeah.

David:
We'll keep doing these. We'll get a bit more organised about what we're talking about.

48:11 — Alison:
If I'm doing this for you, I should do a Teach Dave to Crochet episode on my channel.

David:
Bollocks.

48:41 — David:
If you've enjoyed the episode, drop us an email with any questions you want us to talk about. Anything about Portugal, van life or anything else.

Nothing's really off topic. It's The Van Table. Wherever the van parks, we're gonna talk.

49:11 — David:
AI threatened to rip my head off if I said “smash that button”.

Alison:
We should ask people to send us their worst cassette-toilet experiences.

David:
Yeah. Send us your horrible van-life toilet experiences and we'll read them out.

49:41 — David:
Anyway, I'm gonna end it now. Thank you very much. See you later. Bye.