On the home stretch…?

It has been a while since we updated the blog. Mostly because we are just living our life at the moment with not many really exciting things to share. We promised, when we invited people to subscribe, to not spam them, and we wanted to keep that promise.

Nobody needs to read about our boring (but wonderfully relaxing) weekends spent at home, and if we do venture out for some medium-level exciting things like drinking beers and port wine, we do update our Instagram stories and account on a regular basis.

But, as August comes to a close, time feels right to start sharing another blog post, as all of the ‘medium-level’ interesting things seem to be adding up to something exciting. Our looking for a home in Portugal is taking shape.

Between our last post and today, we have increased our house-search-levels from ‘just having a peek on Idealista’ to ‘let’s go check some of them out in person’. Starting to search more seriously now means that we are giving ourselves the opportunity to leave it at the two years of our current rental contract, but at the same time, we know that there is some flexibility and leeway in all of this too; exactly what we wanted. We didn’t want to be or feel rushing in making what is quite an important decision.

Sleuthing

Between May and July/August we’ve visited quite a few homes across quite the extensive geographical area. These road trips, weekend trips and even a holiday helped immensely in trying to figure out what it was we wanted, and what we really didn’t want. We didn’t book any actual official viewings to start with as we mainly wanted to get a feel for the area and have a look at some homes from a distance. If we saw something we wanted to know more about and have a look inside, we could always come back.

For privacy reasons, not many homes advertised on Idealista have the exact location mentioned. Still, with our exceptional sleuthing skills we managed to track down many of the exact locations of the homes on Google Maps/Earth. That first step already eliminated some homes from our long list before we even decided to pay an in-person visit.

The garden overlooking a motorway exit… nah… A quarry across the road? We’d rather not. A garden with no single square metre being flat…? Not really what we were looking for. Sometimes, we think that privacy reasons weren’t the only reasons for not disclosing the exact location directly.

Road Trippin’ in the Douro

Once we had weeded out the straight no-gos, we got on the road and made some wonderful trips for a day, a weekend, a holiday. We drove through the wonderful western Douro region with its wonderful views, the glistering Douro river visible from many spots. It was green, lush, and of course there were vines as far as the eyes could see.

It really gave us that ‘holiday feel’, and made us want to make sure we both got back on a motorbike soon again, as the winding roads were mesmerising. The holiday feeling, however, was also the thing we knew we had to be careful about. What is great for a holiday might not be to live in, to have to settle and work in.

We saw some wonderful homes, as well as some that we didn’t even have to get out of the car for to make a judgement. But overall, in this area, the feeling of it becoming our ‘home’ simply wasn’t there. It was great to spend a weekend, a day on the motorbike, but it was too crowded for our liking as all the homes were built in the few areas that weren’t far too steep.

We also saw a few homes, that, in a similar holiday feel, were wonderfully remote. The peace and quiet were astonishing, and really tempting at that. However, thinking about the practicalities of a 1-mile dirt track from road to house… We soon realised that perhaps that level of seclusion wasn’t the right fit for us.

A weekend around Sertã

On a slightly longer trip to test out our new tent we decided to travel a bit farther South. We stayed on a small campsite near Pedrógão Grande for two nights, close to a big reservoir. We spent two days on the road visiting as many homes as we could. The area already felt a lot more like something resembling ‘home’ than the Douro area.

It was quieter and there was more space as there wasn’t a big river to carve out a massive valley. It was a lot greener than we remembered, and there were various towns with amenities. Overall the homes in our budget seemed to be in a better state compared to the Douro area too.

Still, there were quite a few homes that we knew, as soon as we approached them weren’t it. Whether it was location, or state, or just the feeling; some things you can only judge once you’re there. From that trip we returned with two ‘potentials’ out of 10 that we might want to have a closer look at. Might. Perhaps. Still, no very overwhelming feeling of ‘THIS IS IT’. And that is the big thing, isn’t it. It should be ‘yeah, I could live here’. It has to be ‘I really want to live here. I can see myself living here. We will be so happy here’. That’s the aim with which we set off for Portugal, and there’s no point in rushing ourselves into making a big expensive mistake.

Back to our first love

So… We wanted to go back to our first love. The Serra da Estrela region. We visited first in late 2021, and hiked for a few days in the mountains, based on a small campsite near Manteigas. The weather chased us back into Spain that holiday, but we knew that this was something special. It just felt right and ticked so many boxes.

So, in 2022, we returned and stayed longer. We started in Covilha, and after a few days headed to the Western side near a town called Oliveira do Hospital. Again we hiked, enjoyed and marvelled. The campsite and its Belgian owners (and beers) did help, surely, but the area… it was just so… ‘us’.

In July we headed back to that wonderful campsite near Oliveira. Not in the least because of the promise of Belgian beers, but also to visit the potential homes on our list there. For a week, we walked in the wonderful hills and mountains, we visited a great variety of homes, and drank quite a few beers to help us evaluate what we had seen. While, still, not every house was destined to be our home, we were in the right area for sure. We knew for sure when we visited one house near Seixta da Beira where we could REALLY see ourselves living. So much so, that we arranged an actual viewing on the last day of our holiday.

The house… it had so much potential. The views of the Estrela were glorious. We could see ourselves enjoying a wine or beer at the end of the day overlooking the majestic mountains. The house was sizeable with good home-office rooms, and came with a lot of outbuildings. There could be a brewery, a guest house, and a lot of storage. It also came with a lot of land. That last bit, was, in the end, what kept us from making an offer (and we were REALLY close to making one). 12 hectares of land it had.

We walked around it, joked about making a running track along the edges; it would be around 3km long I believe. And then we got to talking about maintaining it. Schedules, zones, wildfire prevention. It started to look a lot like taking on another significant job next to our full-time jobs, and that wasn’t quite what we wanted to get ourselves into… So, we walked away, dreaming of what could have been. We hope someone can do that home justice!

Getting ready for one final road trip?

Even though, at the time, it kind of hurt a bit to walk away from that one, we knew that we had found the right area for us. The area is open and really breathes space. It feels friendly and quiet, yet with small bustling towns and many, many little cafes. The mountains are so close so we can explore all the wonderful trails there on any given weekend after just a short drive.

The small but bustling well-situated towns have all the amenities we might need, but still there are many homes available that are somewhere in the middle of those towns, giving us the perfect combination of nature and convenience. On top of that, it’s on the right side of the Estrela and for friends and family visiting it wouldn’t be too daunting a journey from Porto or even Lisbon.

When we had officially let go of the ‘almost’ home, we set out to narrow down our search and again removed a lot of other homes from our long list based on what we had learned. That left us with another short list that had us set off on a road trip with some viewings.

Our wonderful estate agent Carina helped us with trying to get as many actual visits planned in one day as we could to save ourselves the trouble of an overnight stay or some more 4-hour round-trips than necessary.

And off we went… but I’ll leave the findings of that trip and its outcome for another blog in the (hopefully) very near future. Stay tuned.

Spoiler alert: our house search might have come to an end…!