Another year or so has passed and no blog, so as a New Year resolution I am going to try to resume some posts.
I hope it is not like many of my resolutions that get broken quite early in the year, just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, there was a new paint job to the house last year, and I think she now looks jolly smart.

Come Saturday the 20th I shall be off to John Lennon  Airport for a flight down to Faro and the drive up of some 250 miles. From Lisbon its only about eight miles, but there are no flights there from Liverpool from October to April.As the flight will not get in until 7 pm, the plan is to stay in Almadova, about an hours drive North and quite inexpensive off season, just 20 euros for the night ,and will complete the journey after a meal, some local wine and a good nights sleep.Going north on the Motorway is quite stress free and quite pleasant until you come to pay the toll at Santarem and you get hit for approx 22 euros.But thats life.

Casal De S.Simao

We first visited the village in march two years ago and were fascinated by the single street with its picturesque and tiny houses. Well that was the first impression, some are a good size on a more detailed look.

The restaurant was in course of being erected at that time , and the shell was up, but it seemed at odds with the area around it, and in my opinion did little to blend with its surroundings.

So just to see how things were going, and in the hope of having lunch in the new restaurant with the promise of fantastic views was decided to pay another visit.

The restaurant is finished. but was not open, and more to the point I could not find the hours of opening, but I would have thought that the weekend was a fairly safe bet.

The second look was if anything better than the first. This time it was not looking around in wonder trying to take in everything at once, but a more detailed and leisurely look, and all the better for it.
The story goes that there were some 21 houses and that over time the houses were abandoned and the people left, houses fell into disrepair and people moved to pastures fresh and paid work.

Then some fifteen years ago Anibal Quinta came across the village as he used o pass it on his way to work on a regular basis. He fell in love with the village and its location, bought one of the houses and renovated it. Then a friend did the same thing and slowly the village was restored and improved , and the work continues today.

This one is on the edge of the village, and I suppose that this one doorway was kept so that it could be said its not a new build, its a renovation.
A bit far fetched, but anything that keeps the village alive is welcome , but this one is not even Xist.(yet).

This is an original and I just love the little "drawbridge" from the top of the steps to the doorway on the left.

At the time of doing this blog, the house at the bottom of the street, overlooking the valley and with the dog cart under the window is on the market for €99,995.

I get the feeling that this may be one of those "chic" places to have a house in the future, somehow a bit far removed from its original state.


However you look at things, with a jaundiced eye, or just doubtful, what has been achieved here is really worthwhile, and mostly a labour of love.

You can happily spend an hour or more here pottering around admiring the individual houses and the view.

For the more energetic there is a "signposted" ramblers trail of 5 Kilometres around the area, and should take about two hours.It has just got to be worth the effort if you have the time.Just down the road by ten minutes is Fragas de S.Simao, a fluvial beach in a river that runs through the mountains

At the top of the cobbled street by the restaurant, there is a sign with the maps of the walks on it and some useful information about Flora and Fauna in both English and Portuguese.



The distance from Carregal to here is about 15 Kilometers and would take approx 15 minutes by car.
Close by you have more river beaches Aldeia de Ana Aviz which is a little further on than Fragas de S.Simao.
If you are into activity holidays there are a number of clubs in the area that offer mountain climbing, kyaking, paragliding and cycling. A brief search on the internet or perhaps emailing the Tourismo would get you the info.



Another alternative is to go to this blog by the village owners association wich gives the full story of the development of this village and other Xist villages in Central Portugal.
www.refugiosdepedra.blogspot.com.

There are more places to visit and enjoy at
www.carregal.co.uk which we keep improving to offer information about the area.

Rustic stairs in carregal

This is one of the local carpenters fitting the stairs in 2004
This is all about stairs and the local rustic way of making them.
The Portuguses rustic staircase is simplicity in itself.
To start with you need two lengths of timber approx 75 X 100 mm to act as the bearers for the treads and risers.
These are fixed securely at the top and bottom of the flight.

Then you fix the treads and risers.They are spaced out evenly over the length of the bearers as shown in the diagram.

The risers are approx 21 cm and the treads are 22cm with one cm as a nosing or overhang.
The tread has a rebate the one cm from the front to allow the riser to slot into place thus avoiding any slipping out of position.
The rear of the tread is angled to sit on the bearer which then gives the riser a flat horizontal plane to sit on. This is then spiked 0r nailed into position.
The process is started at the bottom and carries on up to the top where it meets the landing.
To finish off a handrail is added to give some support for going up and down the flight of stairs.And that is the basic construction .Wonderful.

However our stairs developed a creak quite early on and so to give the flight additional stability and to eliminate the ceak, I fitted triangles of wood between the bearers and the treads and risers. This should not really have been neccessary, I think another couple of mm in the thickness would have made all the difference but that said it did enhance the stairs to some degree..


Being so pleased with that result I then decided to add some spindles and replace the handrail and put in some meaty newel posts.

The finished product is as seen on the right, a good solid set of stairs ,still with the rustic charm, but a little more robust but then I am predudiced, apart from which the cost was in the low hundreds of euros, rather than thousands which had been quoted.

If you wish to see more. you can go to the website, www.carregal.co.uk and even book yourself in for a week,£199,00 throughout the year for two, but has sleeping for five.

Living off the land at Carregal

Carregal in Central Portugal is very rural, and most of the people who live in the village live off the land, as did their parents and Grandparents.

It is changing, the younger people tend to move away to the city , to places where there is more and less arduous work with better pay and better conditions.
Some travel abroad to "make their fortunes", a practice greatly encouraged by Salazaar before the Velvet Revolution, others just go to the cities.

Whatever their choice , the population of the "County"Alvaiazere is going downwards, seemingly irreversibly,and has been since 1960 when there were 13583 inhabitants and down to 8112 in 2004.

Land is in small parcels, no big fields here, and if someone is judged to be wealthy or just to "have a few bob" the measure is the amount of land you own.

Cultivating the land starts early in the morning and just goes on and on with a break at mid-day until evening, seven days a week. Even if yoiu are not totally reliant on the land , you will have a chicken shed at the back of the house with chickend , ducks, geese and turkeys, perhaps a goat to give milk to make your own cheeses, and also to breed kids, most of whom are slaughtered after a few months for food, plus you may have a few rabbits for the pot.

The photos are of next doors livestock, top left is a turkey and hen ,top right two kids playing on our well, nest down on the left is the nanny goat being led out to graze for the day, and below that a couple of goats have just wandered onto our patio for a nibble at the orange trees.
I did make the mistake one year when I went in January, in asking how the kids were getting on and my neighbour replied," they were delicious,we had them on Christmas day."

Even when someone builds a new house, the house looks really good and inside is normally as good as outside, with three or four bedrooms a really nice modern kitchen, two or the bathrooms, cellar(or cave) with bags of space for cars and things, but there will always be a ramshackle shed or two at the back for the chickens and goat etc.

So if you want your taste of the real Portugal just go to Carregal, £199.00 a week all year round, no high season inflated prices.

See more at www.carregal.co.uk, just click on the link.

Door handles and rustic stairs in Carregal

A little diversion this time round.

I was browsing through the photos of Carregal and earlier this year while on holiday there, I took some photos of some of the hand crafted door furniture, and thought someone else might find them appealing as well as me.

This is a hand crafted door handle. The photo above is the handle side on the door and the photo below is the latch side on the door.

When we first came here these were dotted around on quite a few of the doors. Sadly any door that opened onto the outside was pretty rotten, so when they were replaced with new pine doors, as sympathetic to the house as we could manage, then they had fitted modern "double throw" barrel locks. Very efficient but not the same.

The other find was the stairs in the barn. Similar to the typical rustic style stairs in the house , but a slightly different construction as these are "open tread", probably because they are so steep.

Basically they are two pieces of 100 x 75 mm, secured at the top and bottom with treads and the treads are supported with triangular pieces of wood ,the white arrow is pointed at the triangle It is all so simple and effective and wears well.

There was loads of rubbish and loads of things that people from the disposable society would sling without a second thought ,but here most things are kept, they may come in useful.

There also seems to be a love affair with concrete. At the bottom of the"garden" was not fairy's, but a simple mould for making concrete fencing posts with some lengths of steel rods , so that when the concrete is put in the mould, the steel rods are added to reinforce the post when it cures.

Inexpensive but ugly, then again wooden posts rot, and round here people live off the land, it is used to provide food and wine, a means of staying alive, and leisure comes infrequently.

Azulejos at Carregal.How they are made

The tiles in the photo on the left are the ones I had made to order for Carregal

To get the tiles I had a good look round locally.You can buy them in standard panels from 30 euros upwards dependant on colour size and subject from many places, garden centres, ironmongers, builders merchants, and so on, but as usual we wanted something individual and it had to fit the space in the canopy either side.
So back in the UK it was back to the internet to do the usual trawl that can take from five minutes to five hours.

So I found Antonio Cruz based in Pombal a mere hour away from Carregal. www.oficinaceramica.com

The proceedure is a simple one, supply the man with a photograph or drawing of what you want with the sizes and he will give you a price.(No obligation or pressure sales).

The typical blue and white tiles are the least expensive, with colours and more intricate work being dearer. Snr Cruz ships orders to Brazil so no problem sending to Europe.

There are basically three methods used these days, all starting with a blank bisque tile:-

Stencilling

This way of decorating the tiles is as simple as its sounds in theory.
A stencil is placed on the bisque tile and colour is applied with a brush. Should the design use more than one colour further stencills will be need for each colour.


Silk Screen Printing

Normally used when a larger quantity of identical tiles are required. The tiles are placed in a frame and a screen with the multiple pattern is placed over then and paint is dragged over the tiles using a rubber “Squeegie” blade.

Hand painting

Freehand. For simple patterns an experienced artist can just apply the pattern with the brush.

For more complex designs or pictures an outline is drawn on the bisque tile and then followed and infilled by the artist

A design traced on the bisque using a design on tracing paper with a sheet of carbon beneath which leaves the outline of the design on the tile which is then followed by the artist.

Back soon with brief history of Azulejos in Portugal

Carregal Revisited.

As a project it started well but then the next time I sat down to add more the mind went blank. So here we are two years further down the road.

Carregal has improved with time which is not always the case with things,so here are a few up to date photos.

March this year with the sun shining on the rear of the house.
And here we are on the lower veranda have lunch with some Portuguese friends from Azinhaga.

We met sixteen years ago when we were moving from town to town on a whim and got off the train at Mato de Miranda late evening only to find there were no Pensao or Hotels around.We managed to hitch a lift into Azinhaga to the taxi rank and got into this guys Taxi saying "nearest hotel please". This was about 2o kilometers away so off we went chatting away.

Well our friend had just arrived home from Jersey after eighteen years working there ,and as he had good English we were getting on well when he suddenly said, "my house has a couple of bedrooms, would you like to stay with my wife and I for the night and get a train in the morning"
The response was a heartfelt "yes please", the taxi did a u turn and we stayed in a beautiful house with two great people and we we still meet up every year.

The next photo is of the "bakery" so called as the bread oven is here in what used to be the kitchen, but it hac been somewhat altered with a couple of studded partiton walls removed, a new floor, log burning stove in the old kitchen fire with the hugh canopy and at the back we have put some "Azulejos" a panel of tiles in picture form, painted by a local artist in the traditional manner and in the traditional blue and white colours.

Everwhere you go in Portugal you will see them in the stations , town buildings , street signs, churches, in fact anywhere you can stick a tile you will find them, they are absolutely srunning.See some more and a few videos of tiles through the country at www.azulejos.co.uk
and if you want to see more of Carregal as it is the present time go to www.carregal.co.uk.
you are welcome to stay £199..00 per week throughout the year.