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. 2d ago

    An Endless Summer

    There are official, theoretical definitions of when summer ends and autumn begins, but here in southern Portugal its arrival is a much more practical matter. Meteorological autumn began on September 1st, but that was still the height of our summer. Astronomical autumn equinox arrived on September 23rd, but our astronomical summer continued with blue skies, high temperatures and barely a splash of rain. It’s still Vale das Estrelas summer while the olives and grape vines need water, the Clubhouse fireplace is covered by a TV, and our villa runs underfloor cooling rather than heating. So I guess that means we’re now at least two thirds of the way there. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. It was the temperature one evening that gave it a way: all of a sudden, as the sun set, it got a little chilly. You must remember I’m from Newcastle – this sudden chilliness certainly didn’t make me shed the shorts and open shoes, have me jumping for a jumper, or leaping for another layer. But just a couple of days before the long-awaited Japanese tai chi master Masahiro Ouchi arrived from Tokyo to lead a retreat, it did prompt certain steps that mark the inevitable move towards winter. Firstly, I had to remember how to turn the Coldpump back into a Heatpump – the spirals of water pipes buried deep in our concrete floors have been keeping the villas fresh and cool for months, but now we need to take the thermometers up to 21ºC rather than down. The Clubhouse TV – a hangover from the World Cup – gave way to a dusty hearth, and with it a reminder to get all the dried wood chopped and stacked and under cover before the first major downpour. I’m usually late to that particular party, but we were helped by an absence of the rain which usually gives the plants a boost between actual summer and the sunshine of St Martin’s summer around the saint’s day on November 11th. The plants still need irrigation, but they’ve received a late summer surge by the late arrival of wonderfully nutritious treated waste water...which will hopefully give the vines a bit of oomph to send their roots deep into the clay before hibernation. We enjoyed our last couple of pints at the Sunset Bar before it closed its doors for the winter – business isn’t as brisk when the clocks fall back and the attraction of its title slips from a reasonable 7pm to an indulgently early 5.30pm. And then the tai chi retreat arrived – their sunrise practice jumped an hour earlier half way through thanks to the clocks changing and the fireplace became a welcome addition. But what a show they enjoyed every day. We always say October is the best month of the year – the days are still hot and sunny and the ocean water often at its warmest as currents change. The cooler night air drops into the valleys and creates an ocean of cloud to wake up to and to practice tai chi above – hilltop islands appear before giving way to rising mists and smoke-like wisps as the valleys warm. It was the last big retreat of the year in our diary and it was all hands on deck to keep the group from Japan, France, Portugal and the Netherlands fed, warm and watered. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Krishna delayed his long-awaited trip home to Nepal to keep everything running while Ana cooked up a storm of soups and salads, traditional dishes and desserts, concluding with a crowning cataplana. And with Oda in Poland managing Derek Day’s music tour, we also leaned on José who has stayed on in the region despite his six month exchange programme coming to an end. Now is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the wonderful help we’ve had over the past months – without which we couldn’t have made it through, let alone enjoyed such a successful second summer running our place. Krishna continues to be the backbone of it all – his endless enthusiasm and dedication to our landscaping, cleaning and the day to day attention to everything. It used to take me days to prepare the wood for the winter just for us, but as if by magic it’s already cut and stacked behind the house and into the little sheds Krishna and José have built around the property to make it easier to restock the apartments in the winter. We waved Krishna off at the bus stop for his long journey home to Pokhara to see his wife Babita and two sons Kritan and Krshal after more than three years unable to leave Portugal while awaiting his residency papers. He will be a huge miss for the weeks he is away, but we wish him all the best for some rest back home and time to reconnect with his family. José is helping us out until the end of the year, as he develops different business ideas to stay a little while longer in Odemira. I thought Erasmus was just a student scheme until José Báez got in touch with a proposal – to spend six months working with us to learn by doing. We thought building an off-grid lodge in the Alentejo countryside was hard work with all the infrastructure, the logistics and the bureaucracy. But José is planning to do all this and more 1,700m up on an old volcano crater rim where his family farm sits in the middle of Gran Canaria island where everyone from the solar panel installation workers to the builders will literally have a mountain to climb. The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) scheme pairs up aspiring or newly-established entrepreneurs with experienced owner-managers who have been in business for more than three years. I guess that’s us! And there’s no age limit on the person (just the business) – José is 49 and brought with him decades of experiences in sales and marketing in big companies, and he has no hesitation about rolling up his sleeves and helping us out with everything from woodwork to sign making. And the great thing was that Europe paid. Facilitated on our side by the British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce (BPCC) it’s been priceless for us. The chief executive Chris Barton says they have been part of almost 200 exchanges, but since Brexit it’s been trickier to link new entrepreneurs from Portugal with host entrepreneurs in the UK. So if you know anyone in the UK who’d like to host an exchange partner in Portugal, or any new entrepreneurs in Portugal who’d like to learn from businesses in the UK, please let me know and I’ll introduce you to Chris Barton. And last, but very much not least, it’s a huge thank you once again to Oda for keeping us going while I was off injured, for incredible cooking and cracking cocktail nights that we still talk about in the valley and beyond. My foot is a lot better and with the help of some great local physiotherapy and electric shock treatment is almost back to its original size...pretty soon I’ll have no excuse to buy some new safety shoes and get back to work on the land! Since the retreat ended and the diary opened up, we’ve been working on marketing campaigns and a wine “story tasting” event I’m doing at The Wake Irish pub in Lisbon on November 10th...do come along if you’re in town! We’ve been creating walking and wine packages for people to discover this wild west coast, and pitching to produce a “sound walk” podcast series to accompany the Rota Vicentino long-distance trail. It’s taken me down a Swiss cheese of Portuguese historical rabbit holes – from the local impact of the 1755 tsunami (which happened 271 yeas ago today...All Saints Day)… 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

  2. Oct 10

    Slow Dogs

    There is a spy in the valley. A grass in the long grass, a leak in the lake, an informer on the farmer, a mole who’s out of control. We haven’t yet established who the information is being sold to, or even what value it might have, but everything we’re doing is apparently being recorded and uploaded to the cloud. Before you think off-grid living has got to my head (it hasn’t, the tin-foil hat protects me from that), or that I’m getting over-excited about the new series of Slow Horses, let me set out the evidence. First we were tricked into “rescuing a puppy” by a German friend (perhaps with links to August Hanning) – I mean now it’s obvious: six siblings, cutest one pushed on to us...just happens to be available...immediately. We take him home: he’s smart, starts taking over, pushing the other dogs around, winning our confidence. At first we laugh at how “he’s learning so quickly” and is “so observant,” but then reality dawns. Our snout has a snout, our tail has a tail. There’s a four-legged tout about. It’s the way he stares. We’ve had Ronnie for a few months now and he’s a big personality who has immediately become part of the family. But he watches everything and stares intently at things. We’ve been joking that he clearly has been sent to kill us…or at the very least report back to his robot masters! There is a fine line between cute/inquisitive and creepy. Ronnie crossed it the other day. He stares at things and at people as if he’s searching for their soul. He watches everything then plays dumb by chasing his tail. You don’t fool us. That “play-fighting” with the black dog Albie is apparently more than it seems – the “not now Cato” ambushes are about honing his combat skills – learning how to go for the week spots as he trains for global dog-ination. On a car trip to Lisbon we joked about the awkward way he was sleeping, only realising too late that his nose was pressed up against the USB charger. He was extra-energetic and even more observant on arrival. Most of the time he’s a sleeper agent, but Ronaldo Romulus the First has been selling our data to some form of “Super Intelligence” which apparently it’s now called. Sleeping time is uploading time. As an aside, I’m actually good with the name change – mostly because A-I looks a lot like A-L when typed. Every day I’m reading how AI is responsible for this, and AI has done that. I have done nothing. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. In LA I had to change my Starbucks name from Alastair to Al as they just couldn’t get their heads around it. Missing calls for Alison and Aniston (as in Jennifer), left me with cold coffee and a necessary alteration, but now I have to change it back. I cannot write my name as Al on Zoom calls – everyone thinks I’m made up, or that they are being spied on (which is ironic isn’t it?). In Portuguese, an “-air” ending is pronounced aye-EAR (like the verb Sair to leave or more appropriately Trair to betray), so until everyone accepts the fact it is now S-I, and not A-I, I will be Alast-aye-EAR. Then the Simons will be left to deal with it. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The obvious link to Ronnie’s espionage and the clear connection to the cloud is the new data centre being built in Sines – the port town and entry point for Europe’s main undersea cables. Last year I visited the first of six buildings for a possible story – when data centres were cool and interesting – as opposed to being evil and destructive. It’s amazing how quickly a useful novelty chatbot has become a threat to humanity, but with robots fighting a war in Europe and “Si” solving every mathematics problem known to man (maybe) what could possibly go wrong? Technology is moving so fast that I can’t even work out how to share our Microsoft Office files...or is it just me getting old? ChatGPT suggested I turn it off and turn it on again – something we used to be able to do to them. And it’s Microsoft who use the Smart Campus data centre in Sines for lots of secret things justifying more security than an American embassy. By 2031 there will be six buildings at a cost of €8.5bn which will use 22% of all the power Portugal used on its national grid last year, according to a sustainability group. Quoted by Zeynep Tinaz Redmont in the Substack Lisbon Diaries, ZERO (Associação Sistema Terrestre Sustentável) says the 1.2GW centre operating at full capacity will use two and a half times more water every day than the whole of Greater London consumes. What impressed me was their plan to use the seawater cooling system from the now decommissioned coal-fired power station which used to be next door – and that more than 80% of Portugal’s electricity generation is renewable. But what concerns me is that all our data is now being harvested and uploaded to their servers by our small dog. He’s six months old – imagine what he’ll be capable of by 2031. Maybe I could ask Ronnie to help us with Microsoft Office...if he’s not too busy chasing his tail or using geo-location data to calibrate his LIDAR scanner. And Ronnie being rumbled obviously puts pressure on our GDPR privacy responsibilities. We’ve had to keep him indoors this weekend as our whole place has been taken over for a yoga retreat. As much as we love catering for retreats in the Valley of the Stars, it’s also great when retreat leaders bring their own chef and leave us little more to do than making sure the power stays on and there’s enough toilet paper. After a hectic summer and with my injured foot getting better by the day, it’s been nice to have a little thinking time. We have another big group coming at the end of October – a Tai Chi master from Japan is bringing some of his students and we’ll be all hands on deck to keep them well fed. It really is a wonderful time of year to visit coastal Alentejo. For the next ten days or so we have some rooms available if you’re looking for a sunny getaway. And we’re also plotting and scheming for Christmas. Sadly we said goodbye this week to our daughter Oda after the three wonderful months she’s been here helping us run the place and hosting not just fabulous cocktail nights, but also gourmet dinners. She’s in Poland on a rock music tour with her boyfriend Derek and although we’ll get a few bonus days with her in Lisbon on her way back to LA, we’ll miss her at Christmas. We’re not sure what we’ll be doing as yet, but we’ll be here and we’ll be open to festive guests. So if you’re interested in escaping a northern winter, or want to survive Whamageddon by avoiding cities, shopping centres and music being piped through lamp posts, we promise not to play Last Christmas here until at least December 25th. (I don’t believe I’m talking about this already – it’s only October – but there are only 76 shopping days left until Christmas...or 65 excluding Sundays...or so Ronnie’s search engine tells me). Come and visit…but don’t forget your tin-foil hat. 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

  3. Sep 20

    Something Afoot

    They say that the definition of being a grown-up is when you find out that there’s no such thing as grown-ups. But there are some real grown-ups – wise grown-ups – who give good advice, especially when it comes to health and safety, and especially when you move to the countryside and have no idea what you are doing (and they do). It’s been the story of my life for the last six years, since deciding to move off the grid into rural Alentejo, and by necessity of having to do everything myself because it’s so hard, time consuming, or expensive to find anyone else to do it. I arrived here with the sense of indestructability which follows war correspondents who end their careers without even a scratch from a bullet, let alone a piece of shrapnel lodged somewhere, and without being haunted by any deeply disturbing recurring nightmare. But it seems life in the countryside can be just as dangerous – physically if not mentally – although I would be surprised if there were no post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses for those navigating Portuguese bureaucracy. Every three years as a journalist I had compulsory hostile environment training – I know how to recognise the sound of incoming rather than outgoing gunfire (crack-thump rather than just bang) and how to get out of a minefield (very slowly, with a pen or something similar...to push in at an angle to find mines on the path ahead without triggering them). Wearing good footwear wasn’t taught – it was presumed as common sense – and it’s fair to say I was hoist by my own petard (or blown up by my own bomb to give the cliché its literal meaning), both in what I put on my feet and then what went through one of them. I wear metal capped safety shoes for strimming – that annual weight loss programme which sees some of our toughest and most persistent plants and shrubs cut back to avoid fire. I had inadvertently created a minefield of short, sharp, wooden spikes which were waiting for me to stumble into with inappropriate footwear. I’ve had near misses before: safety shoes on a wet tile roof are not safe. After a cartoon banana skin slip and an almost terminal slide stopped just short of the roof edge I realised bare feet are more suitable in certain circumstances. The rip in my trousers left by a running chainsaw mid tree fell should have inspired a safety trousers purchase – but the order didn’t arrive and I never followed up. While cheap plastic shoes are fine inside our Clubhouse, for serving breakfast, or for navigating guests to their rooms on the gravel, it seems there are two very good reasons why they are not suitable for tramping through deep bush. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. One is they provide absolutely no barrier to stop sharp remnants of Esteva rock rose plants piercing right through the sole; the other is the top straps secure the foot nice and tightly so the sharp wooden root can impale the foot as deep as it wants depending on a combination of motion, momentum and gravity. Dancing down the hillside through some scrubland to get some lunch like a fairy elephant, I managed to plunge the full force of my not inconsiderable weight at the perfect angle. The wooden spike didn’t go all the way through, but it wasn’t far off. In the rush of adrenalin and amid the deep sickening feeling of something being seriously wrong, I don’t recall snapping the end off. But after hopping hurriedly down the hill amid the fear of a catastrophic bleed, my initial reassurance to Ana that it was “just a scratch” and to “get some tweezers,” for the splinter faded with the adrenalin. I immediately understood why torturers favour the feet. After years playing rugby, my pain threshold is pretty high, but my sharp inhaling and twitching in the local health centre waiting room over a couple of hours encouraged something of an uprising as my fellow patients urged the nurse to give me some decent pain killers. The next few weeks became a blur of daily tramadol medication and hospital visits from the Algarve to Lisbon, as a series of scans eventually revealed what I already knew: there was half a tree lodged deep inside my foot. X-rays are marvellous for metal but rubbish at plants, and ultrasound couldn’t see deep enough. Only an MRI scan and the highly trained eye of a radiologist identified the size and location of the log jammed between a couple of metatarsals which explained why my foot was still throbbing weeks later. I was mostly just relieved I hadn’t been making all this fuss over nothing. I knew it wasn’t going to get better before a surgeon made it worse, so it was a holding pattern of nasty drugs and waiting – knowing this was not healing time, but just waiting time. The surgery followed, and after telling me how difficult it had been to find the remnants, my fabulous orthopaedic foot specialist surgeon Dr Marta Gomes explained how she “had to stick her little finger in” to find the three pieces of wood – one 2cm long – which she rattled at me in a little jar with a grin as the anaesthetic was still wearing off. The foot is now on the mend – the tramadol weeks a distant blur – but happening as this did in August at the height of our busiest season, it piled a lot of pressure on Ana and daughter Oda who thankfully had come to visit us to help from Los Angeles and kindly extended her trip to keep things rolling. The stitches are out and I’m off painkillers altogether, but as soon as the foot goes back to its usual size I shall be investing in and evangelising about some proper safety shoes – for me and anyone else who will listen. Oh, and I’ll get some chainsaw-proof trousers as well. I did survive a couple of years on our building site in flip-flops, and I suppose I’m lucky this hard-learned lesson didn’t cost me a leg or an arm (the bills were quite reasonable actually). It’s probably the most difficult thing that’s happened so far on this crazy new adventure, but was a good reminder of my own vulnerability, mortality and the fact that I’m no longer indestructible...and of course never was. And it’s not just the greater emphasis on health and safety which comes with grown-up wisdom and responsibilities such as starting a small business at 50 and having to balance the books...there’s also the inevitable part of ageing which adds to the sense of waning immortality. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. It’s something that came up both in conversation with old friends who stayed with us recently, and with the loss of a former rugby playing friend from Newcastle. Stevie Walters was working and living as normal, when out of the blue he got a terrible cancer diagnosis, and then even worse news a week later – it had spread and it was terminal. He posted with advice: live your life to the full, don’t put all that extra time in to your work when you can spend it with your family; use your time well. I wasn’t sure what to do and pondered it for a couple of days. I realised that some people want to talk in these situations and others don’t – the only way to know is to try. Many people are too afraid to call – not knowing what to say. So I decided to give him a ring. When I asked a friend for his number he broke the news that Steve had died the day before – about three weeks after his first diagnosis. It was devastating for his family and shockingly quick. Visiting friends shared similar stories – I guess it’s now the stage of life we’re in. Nick from South Africa had been asked by a friend how many “good summers” did he think he had left? His answer was maybe 15...summers where you’re fit enou… 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

  4. Aug 22

    Atlantic AC

    While we knew it was a good spot we’d found here on the west coast of Portugal, we hadn’t realised just how good until the heatwaves hit Europe. We love oceans – especially big ones like the Atlantic – mainly for the stunning coastline carved out by wild waves and crisp cold waters. To me, a dip in the Med can feel a bit like soaking in soup, and although here it’s sometimes quite bracing, the North Sea it ain’t and the ocean’s a wonderful 20C+ at the moment. One of our early options – as we searched for a place to call home in Portugal – was a move to the interior of Alentejo, closer to the winelands that nestle up to the Spanish border. The rolling hills and castles and monasteries streuseled around the countryside were a huge attraction, were it not for the swealtering summer temperatures. Half an hour or so east and the mercury starts rising...further still and the thermometers can head 10 to 12C higher than here on the coast. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. We found a place we could afford – far enough up from the Algarve to avoid stag dos and hen nights and south enough of Comporta to steer clear of Clooney and Kidman, the French designer crowd and the super-wealthy arrivals who have followed. It might be the busiest time of year here, but our definition of crowded isn’t Mallorca – there’s always space on the beach even at high tide and especially in some of our more secret spots. We feel the moderating influence of the ocean in the winter as well, and this year the natural air conditioning of our prevailing NW wind has created the kind of microclimate we are grateful for every day. While the rest of Europe has been sweating it out under heat domes, the only thing we are properly toasting is our decision to move here. The 300+ days of sunshine was the attraction – especially when moving somewhere off the grid – but as climate change starts messing with everything, it seems we have found a sweet spot. And thankfully I can report another so-far-so-good summer where some fascinating people from all over the world have somehow discovered us, despite our still embryonic efforts at marketing. Discretion is the best part of valuing a hidden getaway like ours, but without giving too much away we’ve welcomed a South African constitutional court judge, an ambassador, a two-time Oscar nominee who works with Ridley Scott, a former Cambridge Analytica employee turned screenwriter, an author and journalism professor, a top Dutch musician and a huge number of fabulous and fascinating folk from all different walks of life. The calendar is full of colour, including patches of red which indicate people arriving into rooms other guests are leaving on the same day. We’ve found some cleaners to help take the pressure off Krishna who also has to keep an eye on the irrigation system and make sure the vineyard stays alive. A patch of vines took a turn for the worse and the prognosis from our friend Niels was mildew. After a bit of treatment, green shoots are emerging from plants I’d written off and being dead, and hopefully the bulk of them will survive the summer and thrive enough to store up some umph to see them through winter and a start the Spring strong. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The calendar is still looking pretty hectic, but we do have a few gaps in the last week of August...if you’re tempted to swap a heatwave for some Atlantic waves and pay us a visit. There’s still some space on our next wine retreat at the start of October as well, and with a few retreats in our diary we have no complaints in just our second year of business. Well, apart from my foot of course… Spiking it on a sharp root, deep in the forest while wearing highly inappropriate footware was clearly my own fault, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Two weeks and a couple of courses of antibiotics later, and it’s still curbing my usual enthusiasm. I can understand why torturers like to focus on the feet. The MRI scan came back this week and thankfully proved I’m not going soft in my old age and there is actually a piece of wood 2.5cm long lodged deep in my foot between a couple of metatarsals. If it had been nothing more than “heavy bruising” I’m not sure I could have got away with putting my feet up and abandoning Ana and Oda to the daily breakfast routine and the regular runarounds for recycling and re-supply. But despite it all we’ve continued to fire on all cylinders, keeping our people in pancakes and our clients in croissants, cakes and coffee with thanks to the irrepressible Krishna and the fabulous José. There’s much more to write about the brilliant Erasmus young entrepreneurs scheme which brought the man from Grand Canaria to our door, and every project his season has had José’s hand in it. Oda’s bartending experience in Los Angeles has also brought a twist and a shake to proceedings with her weekly cocktail nights. We hosted guests and friends for an Eclipse viewing party, and while only 93% totality it was still quite a spectacle through the special spectacles I’d ordered through Amazon. I particularly like the way the light slipped into the perfect smiley as the moon made its way across the sun. We always try to celebrate the Perseid meteor shower every year as well, and the peak of the performance was the same night as the eclipse, so one thing slipped easily into the other as we turned off the lights – cocktails in hand – and watched the shooting stars criss-crossing the sky. And everyone has been enthusiastically tucking into our new white wine – Mauro’s fabulous blend of Arinto, Fernão Pires and Gewũrztraminer with its label lovingly designed by Oda. It depicts our favourite beach, Garfunkel and the recently departed Simon staring out to sea and is a lovely tribute to our much-missed mutt. It was a big space to fill, but somehow Ronaldo Romulus the first is managing to fill it and remains just cute enough to get away with an astonishing level of puppy destruction. 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

  5. Jul 5

    Whirlwind wedding

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: journalists, more than most, really need a deadline to get stuff done. And I, more than most journalists, really need a deadline. And there’s nothing like hosting a wedding for the first time – with 100 guests – to focus the mind. “Sure,” I waved, “we’ll build a deck there, and throw up a shade over the front of the Clubhouse for the meal, no bother.” It’s all so much easier said than done...but once committed, the plans had to be drawn up, the materials decided upon and delivered, and the drilling, cutting, hammering and screwing all performed around visitors here for a peaceful getaway. There’ve been many deadlines already this year: removing weeds, planting trees, shrubs, herbs, vegetables and grapes in that little window between clay soil being mud and it turning concrete. There’s been some building work, running repairs ahead of the season, raised bed making, container beautifying and competitive grass cutting, all complicated by the conflicting demands of an early start early to avoid the heat, but not wanting guests to wake up to the far-from-soothing sound of a two-stroke engine. And so began a whirlwind month of woodworking and physics to create a deck suspended over the hillside and a shade to withstand the wonderful wind from the Atlantic which – even in a heatwave – air-conditions our valley every afternoon. A hundred guests sounds a stretch for an off-grid place like ours, but with a fabulous caterer taking care of the meal service, a top audio engineer to make the most of a very talented DJ and a brilliant barman to keep the drinks flowing...I think all would agree it was an absolute triumph. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! This post is public so feel free to share it. I’ve built decks before, but every time I start on a new project it’s like I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever learned and have to start all over again. I have to throw myself back into the YouTube videos and reconsider all the options for how to secure the foundations, which screws and supports to use, and how strong everything needs to be. The first decision was to make the platform a lot bigger than was needed for a wedding ceremony – so it could be repurposed as a starlit-sky dining deck, a yoga platform or a performance space. There was sloping ground to contend with, hard clay to drill into and planks of wood up to 5m long to manage. In situations involving structural integrity I always go overboard...something we didn’t want the bride and groom doing off the back of the deck and down the hillside, and so a rope safety barrier was added to the design. Amid a flurry of back-of-the-envelope calculations and help from Eduardo at the local farm supplies store, Krishna, José and I juggled string and stakes, spirit levels and cement to create a new space with a stunning view. But that was the easy bit – the shade over our calçada cobblestone deck proved to be even more of a challenge. When we built the place, the Clubhouse was designed around an uninterrupted view, requiring a gigantic reinforced concrete beam to support a 9m span without any posts disturbing the skyline. So we needed something strong enough to support more than 48 square metres of coconut fibre sails...but which could also be removed in the winter. Not wanting to dig up our beautiful cobbles we decided to use wine barrels filled with gravel to anchor the two posts which couldn’t be dug half a metre down. And after experimenting with different sized pipes and tubes, I discovered the joining sections of 110mm wastewater pipe was just the right size to provide a concrete-secured hole for the posts to be temporarily wedged into. With thanks to our winemaking friend Mauro Azóia for sourcing the barrels, our Stirling Architecture prize-winning pal Alex de Rijke for integrity of structure...and Isaac Newton of course for his underrated work on equal and opposite forces...we somehow succeeded in creating something both beautiful and effective. The guests appeared as if a fashion shoot had arrived in the valley. They watched the ceremony in the shade, they lunched under cover, they partied into the sunset and danced in fading light under a full moon. The VIP toilets trailered in for an off-grid celebration were fabulous, but Ana’s idea of us building a luxurious “loo with the view” to help us with big events was a great take-away. I do love a project...I wonder what YouTube has to say about that? With thanks to Chef Maria and the whole amazing catering team; Maria’s friend Lotte and her husband Auke who helped deliver a wonderful service; to Anton’s bar; Ricardo on sound...and of course to the beautiful bride Ina and dashing groom Niels for trusting us with their big day. Their guests were brilliant, dressed to the nines and we were flattered and humbled by the kind comments from their group of friends we were lucky enough to host at Vale das Estrelas for the whole weekend. We learned so much and were filled with inspiration about what we can create in the future. Sadly we didn’t need to make a speech filled with such a long list of thank yous at the awards gala we attended – despite all the votes we received from our wonderful readers we didn’t take the top prize. But we were delighted just to be there – to be nominated for a media award for our podcast series about wine – at the Portuguese Association of Hotels, Restaurants e Similar (AHRESP). It was a fantastic night out at the Estoril Casino outside of Lisbon – the place which inspired Ian Fleming’s Casino Royal – and an interesting gathering of the great and the good of Portugal’s hospitality industry. It was a great chance to dress up for the city instead of the countryside, to catch up with a few good friends and to pick up the much-needed wine barrels...and our new own-label white wine. Yes, with Mauro the winemaker and Oda the label designer (and before the labels have even arrived) we’ve already been wowing guests with our new white wine which is a wonderful blend of Portuguese grapes Arinto, Fernão Pires and the wonderfully flowery Gewürztraminer. And while I’ll be writing more about our wines and our rapidly growing vineyard in my other blog about Portuguese wines, here’s a plug for the next two wine retreats we are running in collaboration with the Hutchins Wine Academy – in early October 2026 and in April/May 2027. Please join us...and if you can’t make it, please spread the love among all your friends – the first one was amazing. And finally...and in our spare time...we have been introducing Ronaldo Romulus the first to the household. The little mutt of a dog who was born on April 1st is no joke to the other animals – asserting himself with the confidence of a small dog with big paws to grow into. We were introduced to “Ronnie” at just six weeks old – one of a litter of unexpected arrivals to a Portuguese farming couple near São Luís. He’s a cute little demon with sharp teeth who loves to chew...and he’s brilliantly turned everything upside down. Oda named him (I asked permission to add “the first” as I liked the way it sounded), but in Portugal’s first World Cup football match we were worried that Ronaldo might not be as popular a name as it used to be! The ups and downs of the tournament and Portugal’s ageing superstar are a constant cause of concern for our small dog and the reputation of his namesake, but he’s … 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

  6. May 31

    Simon’s Rainbow

    “It’s how we’re related to Drew Barrymore,” is how I’ve always started Simon’s story, so it’s a good way to also bring it to a close after 14 and a half years. As a hack I do like headlines. “I met Ana playing tennis with her husband...but we got together through clowns and fire,” is a favourite introduction to our love story. More about that another time. Oda and Ana found Simon cowering under a table at a fabulous little dog rescue place called Bark n’ B*****s in Los Angeles in early 2012. Having arrived in LA from Bangkok six months earlier we had made a few attempts to adopt a dog directly from a shelter, but baffled by bureaucracy which made it extremely difficult to find one, the girls looked elsewhere. Bark n’ B*****s was a strange blend of animal accessory shop and zoo, where the dogs were all off leash to hang out with each other and interact with the hopeful foster parents looking for their soul mate, or dæmon if you’re a Philip Pullman His Dark Materials fan. It was a chaos of yapping and blurred movement, all with one member of staff on hand with a mop and bucket to deal with any accidents and an air-lock style double door to stop escapees racing out into the Fairfax and Melrose traffic. But the dogs could be themselves, not frightened or over-compensating animals alone in a cage at the pound, competing with their neighbours to be rescued. I was working away and we wanted us to decide on a dog together...but Simon was incredibly cute and the owners warned he’d soon be snapped up, so after a quick call, the adoption was agreed by all parties and the small ball of fur was brought home. We don’t know much about the first three months or so of his life – we picked November 15th as his birthday – but for years he was petrified of metal dustbins and Hispanic men. I presume you’re still wondering where Drew Barrymore comes into all this? Well, she adopted a dog called Oliver from the same place the next day...so Simon had almost certainly sniffed the ass of the Golden Globe-winning actor’s dog. I mean we don’t send each other Christmas cards or anything, but we’re close like that 🤞and definitely related. And so the only American in the family learned to walk off-leash with Ana on the streets of LA, not to beg and – honest to his Hollywood roots – learned to perform a series of tricks from “high five” to “bang” where a finger gun persuaded him to play dead. (The initial trigger word for training was “die” but I questioned that one, as Ana and Oda were shouting it over and over again while rolling him over and popping treats in his mouth. I feared the police might be called). He developed his jaunty walk in Los Feliz during the four years Oda spent at the nearby High School and we all lived in California together, and surprised himself – and us – one day when a nearby LA fire truck siren sent him into an involuntary howl and look of confusion which we forever tried to recreate elsewhere through YouTube. These wonderful little animals are so interwoven with our lives – constant companions – and it’s only after they have gone that you realise all the moments, big and small, that we shared together. Simon was part of almost half of Oda’s life thus far, and was well-travelled, moving from LA to Nairobi, from Nairobi back to northern California via a summer in Sweden, and then to here in Portugal in the middle of COVID. The story of Simon’s life is the story of most of the time Ana and I have spent together, and it’s a long story...too long to write about here...and amid a grief that is deep, I can do little more but share some memories. Oda used to joke Simon was my son, and this is certainly the hardest blog I’ve written so far. It’s taken me a few weeks to put down on paper. Simon was ring-bearer at our friends’ outdoor LA wedding...complete with a tux, top hat and small ring box attached to his collar. Ana dispatched him down the red carpet towards the happy couple whom he knew and loved, I lured him offstage with dried chicken jerky and it’s only by the grace of dog that a squirrel didn’t distract him and throw the whole ceremony into a human/dog/squirrel farce. In the heat of one Palm Springs summer we had to buy some emergency protective rubber shoes which turned him into Spider Dog at the nearby Joshua Tree boulder park...leaping between rocks he defied gravity for 15 minutes until they were worn through. We tried to instil in Simon our love of fancy dress, but as he aged and understood we were laughing at him rather than with him, he developed a very effective strategy for countering such humiliation. Dressed as a T-rex, a lobster, a Christmas elf...or in any of the other costumes we acquired...he would simply stand still and look miserable until we took it off. Only the matching Kenyan shirts Ana bought for Simon and I were acceptable...probably because they were quite nice shirts. It was a full life: he was kidnapped by the FBI, was almost killed by a tick in Kenya which left him with a weak liver which is probably what got him in the end. We hiked the Hollywood hills of Griffith Park, ran the tracks of Karura Forest, and explored the Portuguese countryside and coastline together...although he was always more comfortable in Lisbon checking his pee-mail, inhaling gasoline fumes and being the city dog he was born to be. Ever the California shade monkey, on the beach he would race ahead to steal a stranger’s towel while they swam, and after cooling off would check if they had any chicken. I prolapsed a disk helping him fight off a slum dog in Kenya, and during our year at Stanford he delighted (almost as much as I did) in pooping on rich people’s lawns in Palo Alto...and developed a brief desire to act like a dog and fetch a ball. It didn’t last long. At our Nairobi house parties he would slink upstairs for an early night, despite our bar being named after him (the “Dog and Hound” sign beneath a clock bearing our faces always prompted the question “which one’s the dog and which one’s the hound.”) A week before he died, with faltering health, eyesight and hearing, he dragged himself all on his own up the hill from our house to join a late night party...his last. He died a little before 8.30 in the morning on the last day of our wine retreat. As he was breathing his last, our neighbour Daniel took an amazing photograph of a rainbow in our valley. A weird wind whipped through the house as he slipped away. After our retreat guests had left, we dug as deep a hole as we could in the hardened clay...and then we dug it a little deeper until our hands were sore. We went to buy an olive tree, stopped off at one of his favourite beaches to take some time to remember, and then came home to place him in the ground and plant the tree above his grave. The spot we chose reflected our happiest memory of headstrong, independent Simon – that same jaunty walk developed in LA, tail wagging, as he made his regular morning trips up the drive to visit our neighbour Daniel, where he would bark at the door for a better breakfast than ours. Tree planted, we sat back to pour a little beer on the soil, say cheers and thank you to our wonderful little dog – our Sssssssimon, our SiFi, our puppy – for all the wonderful years of companionship he had given us. We hung his Kenyan, bead-work rainbow collar on the tree and as we looked up a huge rainbow spread across the sky. B… 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

  7. May 17

    Retreat, retreat...real treat

    Before we start, I would like to ask you a favour – it won’t take long and it’ll really help us out. Portugal’s main tourism and hospitality association AHRESP has shortlisted us for a media award for our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. We’re in the final five and the winner is decided by popular vote - your vote. Please could you vote for us? ONLY TWO DAYS LEFT - PLEASE VOTE TODAY!!You just need to click here, put in your name and email address (so they know we’re not cheating), we are the third category (“Media & Comunicação no Turismo”) and we’re the first option. Click on us, scroll down and admit to not being a robot, before clicking the big button to register your vote. Oh, and if you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, you can find it here, or in all the usual places. Thanks! The word “retreat” gets bandied around quite a bit in these parts, usually preceded by the words yoga, tai chi or tantric. But ever the mavericks, we went out on a limb and chose wine to prefix ours. And so the first Wine Retreat at the Valley of the Stars was held last weekend...and it was a rip-roaring success. We had a full house of guests from self-proclaimed wine beginners, to a couple so obsessed with vinho that their dog’s called Pinot (Noir)...and we even had a qualified sommelier join the course which was held in partnership with the Hutchins Wine Academy. Joanna Hutchins led the daily and sometimes twice-daily masterclasses, teaching participants how to “Taste Like a Somm,” blind-sampling “noble grapes” on her way into the wonderful world of Portuguese wine – with its 350 grape varieties, many of which are a lot easier to drink than they are to pronounce. Would-be wine aficionados used Joanna’s wine compass to learn how to talk about what they’re tasting, before learning which Portuguese grapes relate to the famous varieties they’ve had before. There were what-goes-with-what classes and a wine-pairing dinner along the lines of “what grows together goes together” and then participants were encouraged to define “their core wine identity” at the end of the four day retreat. We kept everyone well fed and entertained between classes, with a Portuguese wine story-tasting and taking them all to the nearby Vicentino for a tour of the vineyard and new winery by its fabulous winemaker Ana Rita Bouça. Thanks for reading Off-grid and Entertaining in Portugal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. We tried to give everyone a chance to enjoy the peace and quiet and explore the region, hiking down the valley to our friend Jorge’s medronho distillery for a tour and a tasting. Ana was queen of the kitchen, creating three fantastic meals a day and pulling out all the stops to keep the tasters on track I did my best to keep the charcoals hot for black pork and grilled fish, and we were blown away by how so many people from such different backgrounds bonded over the (many) bottles. Aged from 30 to 90, participants travelled from as far away as North Carolina and Shanghai to this wild west coast of Portugal’s Alentejo and tasted well in excess of 50 different wines. Among them was Prof Bob Lauterborn – one of the original Mad Men (“I drank beer rather than martinis”) whose academic work led him to create the famous marketing discipline of “the four Cs” (Consumer, Cost, Convenience & Communication). This was a joint 90th birthday and pre-wedding trip with his grandson Evan. We had ex-journalists – a former BBC colleague – business folk and a fabulous American couple who have recently retired to Portugal from the US. It was a first for us all, but we were delighted with the way it went...and the wonderful feedback we received from the pioneer gang of wine retreaters. We enjoyed it so much we’re already getting excited about the next one we will be hosting in October. Running from 1st-5th it’ll be even better...we already have a few folks interested, so if you’re keen to join, please drop us a line for the details as we suspect the next one might be a sell out! And while wine is definitely our thing we also have a couple of yoga and Tai Chi retreats coming up later in the year...and a wedding as well...off grid? Absolutely...and entertaining! And as spring marches ever towards summer and the weeds increase my land-cleaning workload by the day (yes, I am definitely starting the strimming this week!), the wine retreat was just one highlight of early May. We had a big 50th birthday party celebration featuring some of our favourite friends from Bangkok days – a fabulous festa of pig spitting, oyster shucking, Portuguese champagne popping and silent disco dancing. We are so grateful that our pal Isabell Poppelbaum picked our piece of Portugal to celebrate her birthday – and it was amazing to spend time with her and all the old friends she brought along for the weekend. We hiked the coastline to build up an appetite for a lavish lunch at O Sacas – our favourite restaurant in the region – and had loads of extra help from our friends here in the area so we could join in the celebrations as well as keeping the guests fed and watered. And this weekend we welcomed the winners of the Sovereign Art Prize Gala silent auction to stay with us here in sunny Odemira for a crash course in coastal Alentejo. With thanks to the legendary Howard Bilton for inviting us to donate a prize, we were delighted to hear stories from Hong Kong and from around the world from the winners. Canadians David and Liz even brought their lovely friends Carey and Kimberley along for a weekend of winetasting, walking and exploring...and we hope they’ll be back soon and spreading the word among their friends in Lisbon and beyond. It’s only mid-May, but we’re delighted how things have got off to such a busy start. July and August are always crazy here, but with 30C predicted for the week ahead, now is a great time to come and see us. The flowers are in full bloom, our young vines are starting to get themselves properly established, and everything is blooming thanks to all the sunshine and all the winter rain. Come and see us – we’ll offering a special discount for all our readers from now until the end of June. Just book on our website and enter the code JOYOFJUNE to get 15% off. * And don’t forget to vote for us and help us win an award. Here’s a video to show you how… 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

  8. Apr 19

    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… 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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