Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal

Alastair Leithead
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From Our Own Correspondent-style despatches from a former BBC reporter who's now battling to live off the grid in the Alentejo countryside. Selected audio recordings of his weekly blog which began in 2020. alastairleithead.substack.com

  1. 19 APR

    Planting the Vineyard

    For the best part of six years, a crazy combination of ambition, naivety, mis-placed confidence and pig-headed determination has created Vale das Estrelas. It’s living proof that ridiculous ideas which might just work, can actually work. Continuing the theme of doing something which creates far more work than we actually have time to spend...and so utterly outside our comfort zone that it shouldn’t really be possible...we have planted a vineyard. Just a small one...but if you’ve ever planted 1,000 grape vines by hand you’ll know it’s not that small. And we’ve been doing it all against the clock. The only remaining memory of the wet winter is the lush greenery taking over the valley and the flowers now springing into life. The beautiful white and yellow esteva rock rose blooms are bursting out across the hillsides of Alentejo as the race is on to get the good plants in and the bad plants out before everything gets a lot...harder. Summer arrived this week with temperatures in the mid 20Cs, and working outside in the middle of the day started getting uncomfortable again. The weeds which used to easily just lift up out of the gravel paths are now set in stone as the soaked clay soil is turning into concrete and muddy cars become dusty cars. At least the vines are in – and a few trees and shrubs alongside them. Hopefully a few more of the plants and bushes we’ve been buying will be in the ground over the next few days...when the attention will turn to cutting back brush to abide by fire prevention laws. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. Planting a vineyard – it turns out – requires a lot of planning and persuading people with machines to get a series of things happening on time and in order. In the background was always the question of could we afford the time and money of another project, versus could we afford not to convert the dusty big space behind the houses into something beautiful...the first thing people see as they arrive at the Valley of the Stars. We always planned to plant a vineyard of Portuguese grapes – not because we know what we’re doing, but because we like to learn and tell the story. I’d had high hopes for a field blend – a traditional Portuguese insurance policy mix of many different grapes all harvested together when most are ripe and ready and only a few are either green or raisins. But over the last couple of years continuing our wine journey through Alentejo we’ve been seeking advice from all sides...and after deciding this would be the year to plant, the stalking of anyone who would still pick up the phone has only intensified. We’ve been worrying winemakers in the way stray dogs worry sheep. But that’s not all: we’ve been annoying oenologists, vexing viticulturists, aggravating agriculturalists, irritating irrigation experts and getting on grape growers nerves. We’ve stretched “friendly advice” to its limits. We’ve asked everyone what we should do – at least twice – and have been sending a barrage of texts and videos: “Is this how we should water the plants?” I whined. “Is it too much water? Is it not enough? Did they go in early enough? Did they go in too late? Will they sprout? They’re not sprouting. Are they dead? Maybe they’re still sleeping.” And that’s just been the last week of worries for a would-be winemaker. It all started much earlier with a few friends and friends of friends in the know and in the business dropping by to advise us how to grow the best grapes and make the best wine from our cleared eucalyptus forest. The patch of fast-growing, soil-poisoning, water-hungry monocrop on our land wasn’t well maintained and so one of the first things we did was cut the whole thing forest to make way for the new houses. Once Lionel the chainsaw man had flattened the forest for free and sliced the wood up into half meter lengths to sell to bakers, we brought in a bulldozer to dig out the roots...and then another one to cut a trench around the perimeter and bury them. We pondered the standing water in winters, tested the soil, checked the profile and realised we had about 40cm of nutrient-starved soil atop a thick layer of solid clay. It was such a hard layer that the pine trees which had managed to find enough light to compete with the eucalyptus had roots growing sideways rather than down – which is why they toppled over in the winter winds. It was established early on that we would have to break that clay crust to give the grapes a good chance to grow down and tap into the water which would be retained through the heat of summer in the clay. Planting a vineyard isn’t rocket science – it’s farming. Sadly, I’m neither a rocket scientist or a farmer. “Winemaking starts in the field” we were told: in our case a large flat one of about half a hectare. It’s always been my job – and my approach to this crazy new life – to gather information from all possible sides and then either write up the story or implement the findings. But sometimes gathering too much information from too many people can hamper decision making by flooding the zone, to quote a phrase. At the end of it all we had to make the big decisions: which varieties, how far apart, how would they be guided to grow, how would they be irrigated? The winemaking stuff, we have been assured, isn’t something to worry about for at least a few years. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. We are hugely grateful to everyone who has advised us – and apologise here and now to Hamilton Reis, Mauro Azóia, Miguel Mimoso, Ana-Rita Bouça, Niels Ulmers, Carsten Jensen, Dorina and Luisa Lindemann...and the many others involved in the making of this movie...for either not doing what they said, or not doing it well enough. And in my defence, everyone I asked had a slightly different idea of what we should do. We leaned heavily on Hamilton – the famous Mouchão winemaker with his own wonderful Natus Vini winery – who planted not just his own vineyard recently, but also many hectares of the grapes growing in our vicinity over the past 20 years. And on speed-dial was patient Mauro – of Porta 6 fame, but also a wonderful small-production winemaker at Velvet Boutique and Artisan’s Terroir who creates our own-label wine (while we wait for our new guys to get producing). The first big decision was the grape varieties, whittled down to just three: Castelão for the red and Arinto and Alvarinho in the white. The field isn’t square and amid a confusion of measurements and drone photographs I left the geometry to ChatGPT which advised 800 grapes would be sufficient. Once we ploughed and were prepping to plant, by putting in wooden posts and stretching long lengths of wire marked with tape every 1.5m (the distance between each plant), we realised it was nearer 1,000 and so upped our Castelão order to 600, settling on 200 for each of the two whites. The delivery of one thousand grape vines was much more straightforward than I expected. It was a lot easier than receiving the 25 tonnes of compost in a 16m truck, finding a bulldozer with a big enough “ripper” to cut deep through the clay, and much easier than planting 1,000 vines. Like many of the busy delivery people who buzz up and down this coast the woman delivering Plansel’s plants wanted to meet at the local petrol station rather than venturing into our valley. You can listen to the story of how our grape vines were grafted in the third episode of our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure, in all the usual podcast places or here: I’ll be going into a lot more detail about creating our vineyard on The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure blog, so do sign up if you’re interested. I didn’t even need to hitch up the trailer – they came tightly packed and chilled in five small boxes. Of course that was the last part of the puzzle. First of all our local cow king farmer António “O Rei das Vacas” Oliveira, and his fabulously helpful son Gonçalo had to plough, distribute the organic material and plough again...all amid a much-changing weather forecast. Once the ripper did it’s work cutting through the clay in a day it was over to us, to Krishna and José, and with friends and guests Andrew Major and Howard Fenwick, Joanna Hutchins and Paul McGibney. It all took a lot longer than we expected. The grapes languished in bathtubs with their roots under water until we were ready for each bundle of them and five days after arriving all the plants were in. Rather than providing the vines with the usual wire trellis, we favoured “Bushvine” as they call it in South Africa – each plant clinging to its own bamboo stick and growing individually into a little bush. Local irrigation expert and general good-egg Cristiano taught us how best to run the water pipes and gave me a shopping list which he and his brother turned into a working irrigation system in a couple of hours. Automation will come soon, but for now the grapes have been given a good soaking – forcing the air bubbles away from the roots which everyone tells us is important. Now we wait. We hold our nerve and don’t give them too much water so they learn to grow deep roots down through the clay. Let’s hope the plants wake up soon and like their new home. * If you want to escape into the country, get away from it all and check out our new vineyard, next weekend is a great time to visit Odemira – the April 25th celebrations commemorating Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution are a thing to behold. Come and see us! * And it’s your last chance to sign up for the Wine Retreat which we’re running with the Hutchins Wine Academy Thursday 7th May - Monday 11th May. We have just two places left. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscri

    12 min

  2. 29 MAR

    Summer Time

    Dry January is a distant memory, Lent is nearly done, the sun is shining here in the valley, and spring has not only sprung, but is now powering into Portuguese summer time. Personally, January wasn’t terribly dry (because of my birthday...and the weather) and I somehow missed the start of Lent altogether...presumably due to that food and wine binge in Cape Town I told you about last time. But my annual weight-loss programme doesn’t usually get underway until around this time of year anyway. The need to shed pounds was the biggest take-away from my annual medical MOT this week – at least the blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels are in strangely reasonable shape. But it’s a good incentive to get the legs moving with a daily walking routine – all good preparation for the Big Countryside Strim-Off. For new readers...and loads of you have been arriving recently (thanks for following our journey), there’s a legal fire-prevention requirement in Portugal to cut back all the vegetation within 50m of every building. It was tough with two buildings, it got even harder with five, and after such a wet winter it’s going to be a busy one this year. The undergrowth is exploding thanks to all the water in the soil and the power in the sun, so I am currently watching in trepidation as my workload grows by the day. It’s always that balance of leaving enough time to do the work before an usually moving deadline, but not cutting too early...a bit of April rain can bring a second spurt of growth which then needs another round of grass-cutting and a doubling of the workload. Speaking of spurts, one of our agaves has already got a head start on us...and all its chums. The oldest of the plants are maybe 20 years old now and reaching the end of their lives – their last act is to use up every bit of remaining energy and fire a flower many metres into the air. They grow incredibly quickly – this one has done its first metre in under a week. Every year we kick ourselves because the plan is to intervene just before the flower starts to grow, cut out the sugar-filled core of the plant, smoke it, ferment it and distil it into mescal. Every year the buggers beat us to it. There’s already a lot of energy being expended here in the valley – I’m amid a DIY frenzy of getting everything ready in preparation for this year’s high season. I’ve been doing what they always tell you not to do and playing with electricity – as well as plasterboard, plumbing and paint. The weeds have been exploding through the gravel and we’ve been trying to pull them up while the currently malleable clay soil turns into concrete. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The transformation takes just a week of warmth – which we’re now enjoying – and so we’ll be turning to strong vinegar and that electric high temperature zapper thingy I bought last year to keep control of our paths and walkways. Krishna is working like a demon as ever – painting, cleaning, weeding and planting. Pumps and pressure switches have been coaxed back into life or repaired (thanks Cristiano), a few solar panels which flipped over in high winds are back in business and after being some winter neglect, the salt-water swimming pool is back to its gleaming best. And it’s not just getting out the unwanted plants of course – Spring is also about getting all the new ones in! A bag of old potatoes hastily planted in our raised beds has already become a jungle of greenery trying to crowd out the garlic, spinach, spring onions and parsley which are all doing fabulously. We’ll be popping into the plant nursery this week with the trailer to plan some new additions to our landscape, but the big news this year is the vineyard. The Post-It note wall may be full of many, many projects...so many that their very presence strikes fear...but we’ve decided to become viticulturists as well. The 800 plants have been ordered, and despite all the time spent on reading, research and asking advice from so many wonderful people, it’s all happening now extremely quickly. The half hectare we’ve set aside for the vines was first cleared by Gonçalo Oliveira – the Cow King’s Son (does that make him O Príncipe de Vacas?) - before Christmas and before all the rain came along. We delayed ploughing in the organic material needed to boost around 40cm of acidic topsoil exhausted after decades under eucalyptus, and we’re glad we did – the heavy rain would have leached out many of the nutrients. Everything below that thin layer of soil is clay with a crust so tough the pine tree roots spread sideways rather than down...making them teeter in the wind. It’s a juggling act of doing everything in the right order so the young vines can be planted the day they are delivered, and it’s even more complicated because the soil is still wet. We have a narrowing window to arrange the delivery of 25 tonnes of organic material, a tonne of phosphates and whatever lime we can find to reduce the acidity, which all needs to be moved into place and ploughed into the soil. Then we have to decide where the plants are going, arrange for a “ripper” to visit - a bulldozer with a big metal spike mounted on the front to rip lines through the clay crust down to about 1.2m to give root growth a head start. Only then can we place the irrigation lines and plant the Portuguese wine grapes we have chosen: 400 Castelão reds , 200 Arinto and 200 Alvarinho in the whites. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. The clock is clearly ticking – the table grapes which grow near our house are already bud-bursting, and we need to get the vines in before summer properly arrives. The wet winter delayed building and landscaping work across the whole region for everybody, and so there’s a sudden rush of demand to dig and clear and plough and rip, so it’s a challenge...let’s hope we can keep the juggling balls spinning and the plates in the air. With a long to-do list we’re delighted to have a new arrival – Jose Perez has joined us for six months as part of the Erasmus European exchange programme for Young Entrepreneurs. Jose is from Gran Canaria where his young business is to set up an off the grid tourism lodge 1,700m up on the edge of a dormant volcano crater. The programme is about the age of the business rather than to entrepreneur, which thankfully means he’s got a lot of experience in sales and in handywork. I’d obviously heard of the Erasmus programme supporting students for European exchanges, but wasn’t aware of the entrepreneurs scheme until it was introduced to me by the head of the British Portuguese Chamber of Commerce, Chris Barton. I’m going to do a deep dive into the scheme for a magazine article which I’ll share here, but suffice to say the EU is funding Jose’s six months with us and we are hugely appreciative of his help. He’s been diving into the DIY and it’s great having someone with a business mind and fresh eyes moving into the valley. In exchange, Jose will learn about all our off-grid systems and how a new business navigates a scary new world. Jose has English to level A2. I passed my A2 in Portuguese a couple of years ago and have just passed my B1 this month...but his English is soooooo much better than my Portuguese. More speaking practice required, I think, as I embark on the next level B2. It’s unbelievable that Easter is already just around the corner – we have a fantastic weekend planned with sommelier Joanna Hutchins so why not come and join us? Our Easter Sunday food and wine pairing lunch is a dress rehearsal for the wine retreat in May (we still have two places left...and another retreat in early October if you’re interested!). And if cancelled flights have messed with your holiday plans come and stay with us for a few nights. Book online here or get in touch – the 15% Readers’ Discount still applies. Just add the code SPRING26 on checkout. See you soon! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

    10 min

  3. 16 MAR

    Returning Refreshed

    Portugal’s unusually wet winter put a dampener on everything except perhaps reservoir levels and groundwater reserves. So it was great to swap the “conveyor belt of storms” for a real-life airport conveyor belt as we closed our doors for a couple of weeks and headed south for some southern summer and two glorious weeks in Cape Town. We’ve now returned from the sunshine, a deep dive into South Africa’s wine industry, and the celebration of our daughter Oda’s 30th birthday, feeling like we’d had the first proper break since our crazy Alentejo adventure began. The long list of named storms that hit Portugal was a distant memory in the South African summer, and we thankfully brought the sun back with us. Even my lost bag made its way home less than 24 hours after missing its transfer in Milan with wine and biltong all present and correct. There’s something deeply relaxing and inspiring about the city perched at the end of Africa. We love Cape Town. It was my first posting as a foreign correspondent in 2001 and it’s held a special place in my heart ever since. I was immediately blown away by its beauty, it’s wild oceans and mountains and its stunning winelands where I first got a proper taste for vinho at a remarkably good exchange rate. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. A few years later it was my escape from the chaos of covering the war in Afghanistan; Ana and I made a few trips to the “Mother City” when we lived in Nairobi; and Oda also fell for its beauty, it’s fabulous affordable food and its small city life. It was her boyfriend Derek’s first trip to South Africa and he threw himself into an adventure which included jamming on a township electric guitar fashioned from an oil can, leading a packed field in a karaoke bar and climbing up Table Mountain with me (boy, I’m out of shape). Despite being on a budget we ate and drank extremely well, went to wonderful wineries and rediscovered the city, the beaches and the dramatic coastline. Oda’s birthday lunch was at an amazing place called Salsify at the historic Roundhouse building above Camps Bay and with a view of the “12 Apostles” – the mountains which line up one after another south of Table Mountain. The wine pairing menu was a wonderful blend of tastes flavours with small-production and old vine wines...I’m salivating just thinking about it. It was great to hear more Portuguese grapes are growing in South Africa and even amphora wines are being introduced, but the comparison of the two countries and the direction their wine industries are taking is another story in itself I promise to share. We stayed a couple of nights in Franschhoek, dined at Reuben’s, and I was able to catch up with the indefatigable former BBC cameraman Richard Atkinson whose house building project with the best view of the valley inspired us eight years ago. We missed university pal Nick Spotswood by a couple of hours as he headed to the UK, but his folks Bill and Judith gave us a warm welcome at the family wine farm in Stellenbosch. The view of the mountains from their stoop only gets better, their wine is delicious and the welcome as warm as ever. Luke and Lauren Hirst treated us to a proper braai and we opened some of our wines they’ve been looking after for eight years. The whites had sadly passed their best, but the reds more than made up for our sense of loss. We had a close encounter with a couple of the African Penguins formerly known as Jackasses (after their call), we hung out with some seals at the Waterfront, wandered Saturday and Sunday markets and enjoyed South Africa’s version of the Time Out Market which Lisbon is famous for. It was a great reminder of the similarities between my three favourite places: Cape Town, Portugal’s Alentejo litoral and the Central Coast of California. All have an almost identical latitude, similar climate and vegetation, beautiful light, stunning mountains, wild oceans and great wine. That’s the boxes, and they’re all ticked. While we were living it large our animals were under the excellent care of two fabulous couples. Our friends Rob and Emily who live in Lisbon took the first two week shift to watch over our house, our cats and our dogs...including the now 100 year old Simon who dabbled with incontinence and old-guy confusion before his new liver and thyroid medication properly kicked in. Alan and Margery Gledson kindly took the final stretch and helped us with some Spring cleaning and some building work before and after we returned to the valley. Thanks so much to you guys for giving us the chance for a welcome break which revitalised us as we prepare for our next full season. This week marks the one year anniversary of our tourism licence and our opening up for business, and we’re already delighted at the number of people – and retreat organisers –supporting us for 2026. While we were away a few more people signed up for our first Wine Retreat in May with the Hutchins Wine Academy. There are still a few spaces left, but it’s proved so popular we’ve already set the date for our second “Taste like a Somm” residential course: October 1st to 5th...so if you were one of those people who couldn’t make May please get in touch. In preparation for one of the retreat highlights – the “What grows Together Goes Together” pairing dinner – Joanna Hutchins (DipWSET) will be in the valley at Easter to pair up with Ana to create an Easter Sunday spectacular. We’ve built a whole weekend around it, including three nights B&B, a Good Friday fish braai and an Alentejo wine story-tasting. If you’d like to take the chance to join the party, just drop me a line or go to our website, pick your room for either Thursday-Sunday or Friday-Monday, and choose the “Escape for Easter” plan. It starts from €456pp (based on two sharing). Joanna’s still bouncing between Alentejo and Nuuk in Greenland but has recently launched a great Substack page on wine and we hope to hear more about her Portuguese wine adventures. We eased ourself back into work by hanging out with the Gledsons and it gave us a great reminder of all the interesting people you stumble across in our weird little part of Portugal. We met Nils and Erling together at the Crabstaurant (A Chaminé in Brejão) and got talking... Nils Lou is a former pilot who has a small quinta on the edge of our nearest village of São Teotónio and spends his time between here, native Denmark, and the front line of the Ukrainian war. He has more than 70 years of stories all delivered in a quiet and calm 1950s-style English accent picked up during a stint with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK. He flew all sorts of jet and propellor aircraft, including the first civilian United Nations flight into Kuwait during the first Gulf War, has tales of daring-do in all sorts of odd and extraordinary places, and it turns out he and his visiting pal Erling have a new hobby. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. They drive donated trucks from Denmark to Ukraine to help with the war effort – delivering them where they’re most in need and then finding their own way back. Keep your heads down fellas. I’m going to post another update in a week or so about another character we’ve come across in our neighborhood – I’ve mentioned the international wood architect Prof Alex de Rijke before and I’d love to share a BBC radio programme and magazine article on Portugal’s Wooden House revolution which I produced with his help...but space is too short today. Everything looks brighter after a break and in the glorious sunshine and warmth of Spring. The colourful pointillism painting our landscape becomes at this time every year is slowly starting to take shape, with the first yellows, the white seas of daisies and the tiny blues already bursting out. The energy from the sun and the water in the soil is boosting everything – the olive trees, the succulents...and of course all the weeds. The Spring strimming workout is going to be epic this year. And the real welcome home (apart from the animals) has been all the interest in our place for the summer and the autumn – planning is well underway for our first wedding in June and more yoga and tai chi retreats are blocking dates later in the year. There’s no better time to come and visit – Easter will be fun and it’s such a special time of year here in the valley. And as a thank you for following our journey please book with the code SPRING26 for a 15% reader’s discount for the rest of March and April (not including the Easter weekend). Right...got to go...wish me luck...my final B1 Portuguese exam is tonight and I really need to cram it this afternoon! Até proxima as they say around here, or see you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

    10 min

  4. 7 FEB

    Biblical Weather

    Marta has arrived. After being battered by Ingrid, Joseph, Kristin...oh Kristin...and Leonardo, the sixth named storm of the year has done what only storm systems can do...and is “barrelling” into Portugal. There are certain words and phrases it’s hard to separate from their familiar context. Is anything else dour (pron: DOO-er) except a Scotsman? Only perhaps the weather in Scotland...which is remarkably similar to the last five weeks in Portugal. It’s just a lot warmer here and being up on a hill removes the threat of flooding. As I write, the wind is whipping up a hoolie (that’s the Scottish gale, not the Irish party), all the animals have elected to stay inside, the fire is on and we are sitting in the warm watching the weather apps, monitoring our solar battery levels and hoping nothing too important blows away. Of course, on the news, storms barrelling into the coast often cause “devastation” and in some cases “utter devastation.” It might be a trope or journalese, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. The Portuguese government described this as “devastating crisis” caused by the wave of storms – the state of emergency here has been extended and there’s talk of generational flooding...all with a presidential election taking place on Sunday. Tens of thousands of people were still without power a week after a bomb cyclone and sting jet hit Leiria which is mid-way between Lisbon and Porto quite a way north of us. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. More about those two phenomena later – and about their connection to Britain’s Great October Storm in 1987, Krakatoa, bombing raids to Japan during the Second World War, and the two policemen responsible for sending us British weather. I have organised my life very carefully around avoiding British weather for the best part of 25 years, so you can imagine my current disappointment, even if I haven’t yet needed to change out of my shorts. But we’ve been lucky here in the valley – the worst so far was the departure of a large section of protective glass from its moorings next to the pool, which somehow didn’t break in the fall. A few sections of plastic roof have been relocated and retrieved from the forest, the solar panels deep in the valley have flipped over onto the pillow tank, which have so far avoided puncture despite Daniel’s metal pumphouse roof sprouting wings and taking flight. One gigantic eucalyptus tree has been uprooted and is being desperately supported by one of its neighbouring trees, slowing its journey to the forest floor...we’re already eying that one up to make a bench. Check out journalist Jorge Branco’s latest Substack update on the storms: Many of the tall dead eucalyptus trees on our neighbour’s land that were sheltering in place amid the new growth following the fire a few years ago have taken a tumble making the wood look more like a giant game of Pick Up Sticks. Our track is a little cut up but has been worse as main roads have been blocked by falling trees and firefighting bombeiroshave been busy with their chainsaws. At least 13 people have been killed across the country. And while some communities are still without water, others have far too much. The incessant conveyor belt of extra-tropical storm systems being guided straight into the Iberian coast since the start of the year has soaked the soil, filled up the reservoirs and sent storm surges flowing up the rivers...to meet the runoff coming down. The consequences continue to be dramatic. Riverside shops and homes in Alcácer do Sal were flooded up to the first floor as the Sado River level went up two metres in 20 minutes. Memories of covering hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes as a foreign correspondent have come rushing back this week. The chaos in the French Quarter as Katrina hit New Orleans; the entire bowling alley flattened by a twister in Oklahoma (but with the pins in one lane somehow still standing); Manila under water; and then riskily escaping Madagascar’s east coast by helicopter just ahead of a massive storm. But with the hatches firmly battened down – and lunch plans quite literally rain checked by a downpour that will undoubtedly trap our neighbours on their land until the flash flood has risen and abated – I’ve had time ponder wordplay and meteorology and to have a deep dive into why we’re getting such a hammering this year. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. My geography degree and years of watching weather patterns in our new off-grid home, to understand when to expect trouble, were augmented with a couple of long and slightly confusing conversations with two Portuguese professors. But I think I’ve worked it out, and with advance apologies to the meteorological purists, I’m going to have a go at explaining it...on the basis that any accuracy lost in the act of simplification is all my own fault. It’s the Jet Stream. There we go. You need more? Ok... There are a number of jet streams, but the one affecting us is a fast-flowing river of air flowing west to east at around 30,000 feet (9,000m) across the Atlantic. It’s what planes fly into when going from the US to the UK to save fuel and time...and what they try to avoid on the way back. It’s created as heat from the equator flows towards the poles and is pulled east by the earth’s rotation. It speeds up where the warm air meets cold polar air. Like a river it can run fast and straight at 250mph or 400km/h, or meander more slowly making weather systems linger longer…and it can also move further north or further south. This year it’s further south, broadly bringing icy temperatures to northern Europe, the split of weather we see across North America and more storms to Iberia. The Baltic’s been, well, Baltic. The minus 34.3C in Lithuania is the lowest since 1996 and Tunisia’s had its heaviest rain in 70 years. There’s so much more I want to tell you about the Jet Stream...about how it was noticed after the 1883 Krakatoa volcanic eruption created an “equatorial smoke stream”; about how it slowed American bombing raids to Japan in World War Two, but at the same time sped Japanese explosive-laden hydrogen-filled paper balloons towards the US. (Fo-Go Balloon bombs were the first intercontinental weapons system and there’s a great episode of the wonderful Radiolab podcast all about it). Some blue-sky, moon shot thinkers believe it could even be a source of sustainable power generation (presumably once they work out how to keep an aerostatic wing at 30,000 feet...and get the electricity back down to earth). “They [jet streams] meander around the globe, dipping and rising in altitude/latitude, splitting at times and forming eddies, and even disappearing altogether to reappear somewhere else.” [Source: NOAA] But there’s more to discuss. The jet stream guides mid-Atlantic storms and affects where the “two policemen” direct traffic to quote Prof Carlos DaCamara from the University of Lisbon. The conveyor belt of storms are delivered between the clockwise turning Azores High (in the south) and the anticlockwise spinning Icelandic Low in the north...their position and strength also contributes to pushing six named storms into Portugal this year like on a conveyor belt. Warmer ocean temperatures and a ready source of water vapour arriving on an atmospheric river from the Caribbean...and we here in Portugal have a lot of wind and a lot of rain. Many British readers will remember the Great October Storm of 1987 which killed 18 people, felled 15m trees with gusts of 115mph...and came the night after BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish joked there wasn’t a hurricane coming. He was right – in a way – it wasn’t caused by a hurricane, but by the same phenomenon that caused all the damage in Leiria, according to Prof Pedro Miranda, also of the University of Lisbon. He explained it was years later in 2004 when Prof Keith Browning and colleagues at the University of Reading identified an intense localised wind descending from a great height where you wouldn’t normally expect it in a storm system. They dubbed it a “sting jet” after a noticeable pattern on satellite maps resembled a scorpion’s tail. They happen in “bomb cyclones” – depressions which form quickly and deepen rapidly to produce higher winds and stormier weather. The discovery helped forecasters alert people in Scotland in 2011 and 2012 and it was predicted in Portugal last week...only a bit further north than anticipated. That’s a lot to take it...and if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. There’s so much more to say, but this is neither the right time or place...I need to head up the hill soon to see what these crazy winds have done. With the rain still falling and full reservoirs starting to release water into the rivers, there’s more flooding and chaos to come in Portugal no doubt, but a break in the conveyor belt of named storms is predicted. Somehow, between squalls, our solar panels bring in plenty of power to keep our batteries well and truly topped up. But it’s time to bring on some more sunshine, a little less wind and a less cloudy dramatic view of our valleys and the mountains beyond. Our tanks and our lakes are full...it’s now time for a break in the weather. To learn more about how to visit Alastair & Ana’s eco-luxe lodge Valley of the Stars or Vale das Estrelas, visit the website where you can check availability and book your stay. They’re also running their first Wine Retreat in May with the Hutchins Wine Academy. It’s already filling up, but there are still some places available. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

    12 min

  5. 18 JAN

    Backing the Booze

    For a recovering news addict, the daily barrage of bad news breaks over me like the Atlantic waves on our wild west Portuguese coast. The inundation of daily briefings, updates and newsletters which arrive from the various trusted outlets from different sides of the widening political divide are a deluge to duck below, wait out and then resurface in calmer waters. Of course, the next swell is already building...it won’t be long before another crest crashes over. Take your eye off it and you’ll be washing-machined in a tumbling turmoil through the surf and delivered prostrate on the beach. The game is trying not to get washed up by this relentless surge of warmongering, right-wing rhetoric and utter indecency (mostly coming from America)...and the distasteful giving of tributes to pander to a deeply flawed king. (Really, María Corina Machado? You really think he’ll give you Venezuela now he’s styled himself as acting president). BUT...occasionally something pops up which makes riding the swell worthwhile. This week it was a nicely written piece in The Economist about how the business of wine reflects changes in society. It’s about isolation, loneliness...and the lubricating antidote which oils the wheels of social interaction. It struck a real chord because it falls in line with what we’re trying to do here: bringing interesting people together with a glass of wine, sharing a meal and a story. It reflects what we love about wine, and how it helps put storytelling at the heart of our off-grid lodge. Hopefully this link will take you to the full article, but if not, you’ll get the gist as I’ve decided to pull out some quotes, tease out a few thoughts and pick it all apart. Of course, I could have chosen mixed martial arts for my news metaphor, which for some reason I’m inundated with every time I dip into some passive doom scrolling, alongside an inundation of rugby tries, woodworking demonstrations, DIY tips and Australian dad jokes. I guess it could be a lot worse. Algorithms have become our personalised shadows following us around the metaverse like the daemons of the Philip Pulman fantasy novels and TV show His Dark Materials. But nevertheless I am slightly fascinated by the surprise flying kicks, back-handed punches and sneaky use of elbows-to-the-head in the MMA clips...yet another good allegory for world politics. Talking of inundations, we’ve been having an amazing amount of rain – the 200,000 litre rainwater tank is full to almost overflowing, the lake’s outflow stream is back and we now know exactly where to put the drainage channels in the new vineyard. Although I’m still not wearing a jumper (I am from Newcastle don’t forget), the chillier temperatures mean we can put on a lovely fire, reach for a warming Alentejo red and (with thanks to the anonymous Economist author of “Falling wine sales reflect a lonelier and more atomised world”) let the story begin... “The long, dark days can lower people’s moods” On the one hand it’s a great idea giving up booze for January, but on the other it’s a terrible time to deny yourself something nice to warm up the longer nights...especially when the act of drinking takes you to a nice cosy bar. But straight off the back of the festive season with bulging belt buckles it seems like the right thing to do (“the exhortations of do-gooders to forgo...” as the writer elegantly puts it!) Ana and I have cut back this month...but more in the realisation that running a tourism lodge around wine and joining in with every guest is going to kill us pretty quickly. I’ve never suffered from the SAD (seasonal affective disorder) short days depression, but that’s mostly because I’ve organised my life around living in places where it’s still warm and sunny most of the time. SADly alcohol sales are on the wane through a combination of a GenZers drinking a lot less (presumably as a form of revolution against the grown-ups who set such a bad example during their childhood) and the various studies citing the health detriments of booze, but the Economist interviewees say there’s more to it than that. “Wine’s decline reflects something deeper: a fraying of the social fabric that once held Western societies together.” That’s what Andrés Pérez thinks. His family runs the Alyan vineyard in Chile (which looks amazing by the way) where “Wine tasting...is more a carefully curated social event than a lesson in tannins.” I said exactly the same thing presenting this week’s wine story-tasting for 43 people...well, perhaps not quite as eloquently or directly, but it’s what I meant... it’s less about fancy language and more about enjoying what you like. Yes, you read it correctly, wine tasting...for 43...that was a first! We had a fantastic group staying on their corporate retreat, or ‘off-site’ as we’ve learned is the new word for it. In collaboration with nearby yoga centre Orada (and with huge thanks to David for asking us to be involved), we hosted the Verto Eduction management team for the week. Our solar system once again brilliantly navigated a full house despite the rain as the study abroad programme staff gathered from all over the world and cosied up in the Clubhouse to hear a little Portuguese history through wine. We treated them to our favourite Vicentino white blend, a Gerações de Talha introduction to Alentejo’s amphora wine world, some Esporão Reserva 2022 and Mouchão’s stunning 2017 Alicante Bouschet. Alyan apparently “once offered hour-long tasting sessions. Now they last four. By the end of the visit, strangers are swapping numbers and shaking hands.” While I didn’t bang on about Alentejo wine for four hours the volume of conversation certainly increased as we ticked off the wines. “Anthropologists see the decline in communal eating as part of a broader social unravelling.” We’ve loved hosting a family-style meal around a long table on the terrace when we’ve had the time in this first year of being open. (Running this place is sometimes a bit like the Trump presidency...it feels like a lot longer, but it still hasn’t been a full year!) It’s been great to bring people together over a fish braai or some grilled black pork with lashings of Alentejo wine – ideally from a flagon – to get the conversations going. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. “People across the rich world increasingly live, and eat, alone. As a result, more people now eat and unwind in front of screens.” Now that’s an easy one, We encourage guests to the valley to let their phones have a holiday too: to switch off and take it easy...ideally from the comfort of a locked box (the phones, not the guests). Phil Davies – friend and BBC cameraman from Nairobi always swore we needed to go on safari at least once every six weeks to give our eye muscles a workout. After all the close up reading we do in front of screens, he argued, we periodically need to scan a distant horizon to maintain the flexibility to switch to long vision. It’s also great while on safari with friends to be practiced enough to know the difference between a lion and a rock that looks like a lion at 400m. Our views are vast, there’s a old windmill on a hill to focus on and we do have a few rocks that look like Iberian lynx...and of course a big library of books and shelves of games for quiet days. But of course off-grid doesn’t mean always offline as there’s a need to keep in touch. “Generation Z...drink differently, increasingly seeking out quality and novelty.” Tick. Of the 350 different grapes grown in Portugal, 250 are indigenous. And nothing says wine novelty more than Antão Vaz and Arinto, Trincadeira, Tinta Miúda and the two Touriga’s (Nacional and Franca). Quality and novelty are a draw with young drinkers on the basis that the reason the hipster burnt their mouth on coffee was because they wanted to drink it before it was cool (buh-buhm-tshing). Alentejo is of course home to the original natural wine – talha, or amphora wine made the way the Romans made it...and made that way in a few places ever since. And it’s perhaps the main reason our lower, or Baixo Alentejo, has been awarded European city of wine for 2026. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “For some people, drinking is an isolating addiction. But for most it is a social indulgence. And that, increasingly, is what people are missing.” I’ve always loved a bit of social indulging. I have been known to socially overindulge, but only occasionally. And that’s the inspiration around a few of the things we’re planning for this year. The main one is the Wine Retreat we’re doing with the Hutchins Wine Academy in May...people are signing up for that already and it’ll be a lot of fun…there are still places left, so join us! Seventy wines, some amazing meals and winery adventures and you leave it tasting wine like a sommelier! Our Detox/Retox days of exercise then alcohol are perfect for February and March when the shoulder devils and angels both get their way...on the same day. And that plan to run a regular open house wine tasting every Friday is taking a step closer to becoming a thing. We might even host something fun on Sunday February 1st...a sort of goodbye dry and welcome back wet rest-of-the-year...let us know if you’re interested. The EU is providing “funds to uproot grapevines in order to reduce the bloc’s wine glut.” Of course they are. So obviously we’re planting half a hectare while everyone’s getting money for pulling it up. Speaking of which, I really must get my wellies on, take to the field and start counting up how many plants we need...I don’t trust my geometry (or ChatGPT’s). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subsc

    12 min

  6. 21/12/2025

    Happy Holidays!

    One of the great things about being married to a Portuguese Swede is also one of the great things about being an only child: it really pays off at Christmas. As a kid I was the spoilt brat with no brothers or sisters to share the gift space on Santa’s sleigh; and as a grown-up I get to celebrate twice...or some might argue, three times. Since Ana and I met, Christmas has officially begun on December 24th with a julbord of pickled herring and smoked salmon, glazed ham, meatballs with red cabbage and potato bake, special seasonal dark bread and crispbread wheels of Vörtbröd alongside cheese...to make sure nobody goes hungry. It’s all finished off by saffron buns and gingerbread...and washed down with lashings of glögg mulled wine, laced with spices (and vodka). Tack. Then to continue the excess, the 25th kicks in with turkey and all the trimmings, sweet mince pies and a Christmas cake which spent the first few months of its life soaked in brandy. And, of course, British celebrations come with the bonus of Boxing Day for turkey and all the trimmings (round two) fried up in a bubble & squeak and then a thick soup to make sure we don’t go near a turkey for another year. Musical Odemira: it was great to see the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra play at the opening concert of the Estação das Artes in Santa Clara/Sabóia presented by Miso Music Portugal This was part of a fantastic medley of Christmas songs (hence the hats!) - great to have such an amazing performance in our region Where I still love the Christmas specials on British TV and the King’s Speech, Ana loves the decades-long Swedish tradition of watching Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul (From All of Us to All of You) - an animated best-of-Disney special which was first shown in 1958 and they’ve been watching it at Christmas in Sweden pretty much every year since. But with us still knee-deep in learning marketing (as I mentioned last time) and the occasional guests to attend to...and with it being just the two of us for Christmas this year we’ve cut down on the decorations and the inevitable food mountain. All those Swedish and British specialities are bad enough when shared with a dozen people, let alone just us and the animals...even though the animals might disagree. Normally we go Christmas-crazy...imagine an explosion in a tinsel and fairy-light factory. But having lost so many old and treasured glass baubles to the wrong kind of Christmas tree harvested from our own land with their non-stick branches we’ve decided to go tree and tinsel free this year. The nearest we get to a white Christmas here is fields swathed in daisies after the autumn rain, and although the weather’s not as unseasonally strange as a southern hemisphere December (Joburg also celebrates Xmas in July don’t you know), we’re still enjoying temperatures in the mid-teens Celsius by day, and not much less than 6C by night. It did feel a little more Christmassy in Lisbon this week. We had a little end-of-year business to do with our amazing accountant Madalena, talking all things wine with our friend Mauro, and recording a radio story I’m doing on Portugal’s wooden house revolution. And we were also invited to a fabulous event organised by Stephen O’Regan and his People of Lisbon...at André Pinguel’s secret wine & dinner club Flores. An amazing gang of interesting people gathered – including magician Magic Douglas and the famous performer Lamb Chop...assisted by ventriloquist Mallory Lewis (daughter of Shari Lewis who created Lamb Chop in the 1950s!). We visited a few Christmas markets, discovered another of the old-school amazing bars in the Pavilhão Chinês family, and took Simon the dog to all his favourite places including the Jardim da Estrela where he picks up his Lisbon pee-mail. Garfunkel remains less convinced by the big city. The only two safe spaces in town for the big dog are our flat in Estrela and “The Big Red Box of Freedom” (Cassie the Hilux) which he knows is the only way back to his monte in Alentejo. We visited a couple of our favourite old-style Portuguese lunch and dinner places and treated ourselves to a few fun desserts. And it’s been a good week for Portugal on quite a few end-of-year measures which are usually published this time of year. Not only did TasteAtlas name Pastéis de Belém the best “sweet pastry” in the world, it also awarded it third place along with all the other pastel de nata makers in Portugal. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I do love a Pastel de Nata – and we certainly consider the ones from Belém in Lisbon the original and the best. And in the cake category – it was a straight one/two for Ana with both her countries taking top honours. In second place was the Swedish rich chocolate cake kladdkaka which our daughter Oda has mastered. First place in the cake charts went to Pão de Ló – a famous creamy egg-yolky sponge cake which I had never heard of...let alone tried...until just this week when our winemaking friend Mauro gave us one for Christmas. He also handed over another car-load of his own fantastic Castelão red wine and some wax for us to put Vale das Estrelas labels on and seal ready for the year ahead. We also tried a white wine – an Arinto – which he thinks could be a good one for us to stock...or perhaps a white blend he’s still perfecting...so we can have a Vale das Estrelas red and white wine next year. The only problem is we need a label...are there any artists we know out there? (I’m thinking of you Ed Sumner and the Cheese & Wine Painting Club!) Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. And speaking of cheese, TasteAtlas awards Portugal the world’s third best cheese, with its Queijo de Azeitão semi-soft sheep’s cheese from just up our coast in Setúbal. Portugal also claimed top spot in the Economist’s end of year measure of which economy did best in 2025. Topping Spain’s performance to take last year’s honour, the magazine praised Portugal’s “strong GDP growth, low inflation and a buoyant stockmarket.” And there has been some good news in terms of big investment coming to the country, and some great news as far as we’re concerned – with tourism heading for a record €30bn year. There are two sides to the story of course – although the government announced the minimum wage would be increased by €50 next year, it only takes it to €920 a month. It goes some way to explain why it might be the best performing economy, but again in the Economist, it’s only in 40thplace for living standards. And the European Commission estimated house prices are overvalued in Portugal by more than 25% which is contributing to a lack of affordable housing here. All figures which make my story on the rise of the wooden, modular house in Portugal even more relevant...I’ll let you know when it’s out. But for now...all the very best for the holiday and the year ahead...and don’t forget the reader’s discount code when you book to come and see us (XMAS25 )...and our first wine retreat in partnership with the Hutchins Wine Academy in May. We hope to see you here in 2026! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

    9 min

  7. 07/12/2025

    Marketing 101

    We have already learned a lot of new jobs in this new career path, and for the past two weeks we’ve been trying to learn another one: marketing. Having just about got to grips with off-grid living (first basic, then advanced level), building site project management, landscaping, interior design (Ana, definitely not me), accounting and basic small-hotelier-ing...we’ve reached the next rung on the career ladder. We built it and they came – in the summer – and now we have to keep them coming back in the quieter seasons too, telling their friends to visit, and drumming up some new business on the basis this is a remarkable place we were very lucky to find. For now we have to do what we can until Adelin arrives – a Swedish communications undergraduate (and Oda’s cousin) who is doing a work placement with us early next year to take control of our social media and play the algorithms at their own game. Until then, we are diving into the world of pricing structures, discount deals, combination packages of rooms and meals...and retreats. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. We’ve been emailing travel agents, contacting friends of friends who are retreat leaders and working out how to use our website properly...including all the data and marketing information it can provide us. And, dear reader, we do have a couple of things coming up which might be of interest...primarily an introduction to wine by a sommelier, marketing exec and author – our friend Joanna, whose Hutchins Wine Academy is hosting its first wine immersion course at our place in May. She has a coveted Wine & Sprit Educational Trust diploma and is a qualified wine educator…we’re going to have a lot of fun with this in May 2026. First come, first served! Check it out...it’d make a great Christmas present! (see, I’m learning!). I had always considered myself to be quite entrepreneurial while working at the BBC – in selling stories to my editors in the competitive world of limited money and airtime. I’d often get extremely excited about a particular idea and go all-in to sell it hard – often to different TV and radio programmes and online outlets to scramble together enough cash pledges to afford the trip. I didn’t always succeed, but did get a big safari series commissioned in Africa and managed to secure a not insubstantial amount of cash for an ambitious six-week trip on the Congo River filming in Virtual Reality and recording binaural sound. (I still love the fact that in the world of short attention spans and “you’ve got to grab them in the first 5 seconds” our 45min TV doc on the DR Congo on YouTube has more than 20m views!). Having sold the story, our team then had to deliver it...and that often took even more effort to make things happen with a limited time and budget in difficult places. As British military officers in Afghanistan often told me: “no plan survives first contact [with the enemy].” I’ve discovered there are at least a few transferrable skills from journalist to small business co-founder, but dogged determination and bloody-mindedness stand out as perhaps the most useful. Accounting comes into it too: I would often have to keep up with long lists of expenses in a range of random currencies while on assignment. Thankfully the amazing producers I worked with were very good at that...as well as all the other things they don’t get the on-air recognition for, such as securing access and interviews, editing, and managing the “flesh puppets”...annoying correspondents like yours truly. There were times when I had to manage big-ish budgets and I understand why one fellow journalist, on discovering a receipt for $50 was missing, attempted some creative writing while on a flight out of a Middle Eastern war zone. Sadly, the ploy of copying some random Arabic script for a hastily scribbled receipt was uncovered by an Arabic-reading accountant back at head office who queried the $50 claim for a “Your lifejacket is under your seat.” Special Offer for all readers: * 15% off for stays at Vale das Estrelas for all blog readers * Valid between now an April 1st (no joke) * Book before the end of January * Use code: XMAS25 on our booking site Having just logged one thousand receipts and more than two hundred invoices for 2025 in this latest accounting job, I think I’m doing OK, but the “sell, sell, sell” mantra of marketeers isn’t as straightforward. For a start there’s the barrage of self-declared influencers looking for a freebie to navigate: “we’d need at least three nights to truly capture the essence of your lodge,” one wrote. There are so many travel sites out there who for a reasonable annual fee will feature our property on their website...but we can’t justify signing up to all of them and it’s a bit of a lottery. We’re happy to be working with Sawday’s and Further Afield, and hope to have more collaborations in fitting with our ethos of sustainability. I’ve been writing a column for the Resident magazine (formerly known as the Portugal Resident) for a while now and they’ve just started a new podcast. I was delighted to chat to Carl Munson about our story. With all the disruption going on in the world – not least in the USA – I’ve done a few interviews telling the story of our dramatic decision to change lives before 50, give up our jobs and retrain in lots of new ones…and hopefully that will bring a few extra guests to our door! Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The price of promoting things on social media seems to be going up all the time, and we need to learn how to target audiences better, but that all takes time. We were delighted to be invited to donate a luxury two night package to the Sovereign Art Foundation’s annual Gala auction – and even more excited about being invited along to the event. We were pleased to see it was a very competitive auction and we’re looking forward to welcoming the winners in May! As well as working on making posts and programmes, we’re also learning about how to measure what’s going on through data. I’ve written before about the challenges of managing Booking.com, AirBnB, Expedia and our own direct-booking website...and I’m only now starting to understand how they undercut prices and also pay us a lot less after taking their cut. I’ve also mentioned the desire to host more “retreats” – package trips for groups based around yoga, or painting, or reading (or wine!), corporate get-togethers that are now known as “off-sites” apparently. Even Better Offer for our Pioneers: * If you are one of Our Pioneers and have stayed with us before, we’ll give you and your friends an even better discount * Book before the end of January * Valid throughout 2026 as long as the rooms are available! * Drop us a line and we’ll send you the secret promotional code. The title “retreat” does conjure up the idea of 5am yoga sessions, cleansing shakes and a large amount of wellness. We’ve joked for years about how rather than detox, RE-tox is perhaps a better fit for us: the Retoxification Institute of Portugal, perhaps, or R-I-P for short. At our daughter Oda’s suggestion I can officially confirm we are starting a Detox/Retox package for those who like a balanced diet of healthy morning activities, followed by plenty of wine and a fabulous meal to finish: Detox, Retox, Rinse and Repeat. Would you buy one? Do let us know. We’ve already learned about the seasonal nature of tourism on this coast, and it’s certainly quieter in December. But apparently it’s not just us: for real data you need to speak to the cheesemaker. Queijaria do Mira receives real data from real people in real time…and knows when occupancy rates are down...because they know exactly how much cheese the tourist lodges are buying. Low cheese sales mean low occupancy. Blessed be the cheesemaker and her buying barometer. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

    9 min

  8. 23/11/2025

    Storm Surge

    On the rare occasion the entire Portuguese power grid goes down for a few hours we are positively smug, but the other side of the coin is keeping everything running when a big storm hits. And all of us on the western edge of Europe have had some kind of encounter with Storm Claudia (as Spanish meteorologists named her) over the past week or so. As any household relying on nothing but solar power will know, there’s only one drawback to having 300 days a year of sunshine in Portugal – and that’s the other 65 or so without. When we first moved into the Valley of the Stars we very quickly learned which power-hungry luxuries to save for the sunshine. For example, one never makes toast while blow drying the dog (not that one would necessarily ever want to...I rarely eat toast). Relying completely on renewable power means learning how to carefully monitor exactly what is being used where, and deciding on contingencies as each cloudy or stormy day arrives. And as we have increased the number of buildings, guests, pumps and water treatment units, the more power you use and the greater the need for planning and backups. We sort of fell into the off-grid thing without really thinking about it and looked into the figures for connecting to the Portuguese grid when we were planning our construction. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. It turned out the combination of inverters, pylons and cables was going to cost almost the same as a brand spanking new solar set up. So our decision to go the sustainable route was aided by the idea of having one very large electricity bill at the beginning and free power after that. Having dodged the late October storm courtesy of a big mountain getting in the way, we were battered by Storm Claudia like everyone else. Anything coming up towards us here from the south tends to hit the mountains of Monchique and Fóia peak first, leaving us in the rain shadow. The apps often predict we’ll get many millimetres, but weather from the Algarve usually ends up dropping far less rain on us than the apps predict. Of course in dry times that works against us, rule one is “never complain about the rain,” however much there is, because we depend upon it to fill our lake and our giant 200,000 litre pillow tank for mixing into drinking water. Thankfully there were no tornados to report like the one which Claudia brought to the Algarve, but as always, the first big storm of the autumn helps us switch back into ‘winter mode’ of carefully monitoring all our energy consumption...and keeping an eye on the weather. There’s a lot more at stake than knowing whether or not to take our brolly, or if I should make the move from shorts and sandals to trousers and sensible shoes (I believe that time has now come for this year...but that’s not bad given it’s nearly December). As far as weather forecasts, most predictions for our valley are at very best only half correct, and so I channel my inner weatherman, hark back to my Geography degree and start muttering about cold fronts and barometric pressure. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. Our favourite weather forecasting apps are Weather Underground and Ventusky which provide us with a broad outline, real time radar and some big-picture predictions as the various models plot expected rainfall and front movements by the hour. Our friend Niels – who has sailed around the world and records climatic data in his vineyard – put us on to Ventusky and also introduced us to Weather Watcher on YouTube, which gives great regular summaries of Europe for the committed weather nerd. After five years I am starting to learn some patterns, but it’s tough with everything becoming more unpredictable and extreme thanks to global warming. Storm Claudia was a tricky one – she hung around a lot longer than the average storm thanks to being sandwiched between two areas of high pressure in the Atlantic and over mainland Europe. And she also had a nasty habit of bringing rain all day, and then clearing all night – perfect for star gazing but not great for our solar system. I’m not sure of the science behind it, but we usually get more rain overnight and at least a little sunshine during each day...and thankfully we don’t need much to boost our batteries and regenerate our confidence. When designing off-grid systems, Solar Iain told us there’s no limit to how much power we can generate and store, it’s just a matter of how much we are prepared to invest. After estimating how much energy 22 people might use and expecting expansion we built a system that is way bigger than we need for most of the year. We swan through summers barely looking at the solar read-out, blessed as we are by enough solar panels to happily ensure the batteries are full every day before breakfast is over – despite the pumps, the power use and all the people. And even when the days get shorter, we have confidence in our 84 solar panels which still bring in power when it’s overcast. But when a storm hits and the clouds persist, we really earn our keep as an off-grid resort. That is when power monitoring becomes an obsession. Our first port of call is the Victron app on our phones which immediately shows us how much power is coming in and how much is being used on each of our three phases. Battery percentages are notoriously inaccurate, but we’ve found voltage level to be the best measure keeping everything going – once it drops to 48V the power goes off. The key is staying above 50V – something easily achievable with some tight management and a backup generator. Going the next level down to monitor individual buildings and pump houses took a fair bit of research, but we went for Emporia Energy from the US. The sensors clip around cables to measure how much electricity is moving through them. Sadly, some cost-cutting by our electrician left far too many things crammed into one small box...confusing even him. He grumpily clipped on the monitors and even managed to wedge the box shut, but at one point the car charger circuit was using the most power, which is confusing as we don’t have a car charger yet. Having switched the labels around we now get a pretty good idea of what’s going on, even if I need a few more hubs from the US to give us the full picture. Now I’m ordering some internet-connected switches to save me running up the hill and turning things off manually in the rain. Despite the days of rain we stayed well out of the danger zone, and as we watched the sun rise and its rays start reaching our panels...despite the forecasts...our overall outlook became even brighter. The first test is always the toughest as we tweak our pumps and get back into our power-saving routines, but once again our system passed with flying colours. Speaking of flying colours we’d love to find a decent but affordable wind turbine which can integrate into our Victron solar system...anyone with recommendations, please get in touch! With the batteries filling up fast, our trip to Vila de Frades and Vidigueira for the talha opening celebration weekend was back on. Driving into the interior Alentejo the skies cleared in front of us, the storm headed off into Spain and we entered an adega packed full of some of the most exciting wines and interesting winemakers It was Simon the dog’s 98th birthday (14 human years x 7) and if I ever make it to his age I’d be more than happy with a day like it: McDonalds lunch, a load of excellent wine, a huge amount of attention and a late night dance party to finish. We’ve got the power. And now the storm has passed we’re enjoying crisp cold nights and beautifully clear sunny days with bright blue skies...and yes, I am still wearing the shorts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alastairleithead.substack.com

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From Our Own Correspondent-style despatches from a former BBC reporter who's now battling to live off the grid in the Alentejo countryside. Selected audio recordings of his weekly blog which began in 2020. alastairleithead.substack.com

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