No posts for some time so I appologise to avid readers of this blog – you’ll probably have deducted that I’ve been a tad busy and you’d be right.

We took the long-dreamed-of decision a couple of weeks ago to jump one rung up the ladder of self-sufficiency and turn ourselves completely over to solar water heating, so I’ve been up to my elbows in bricks and mortar recently building the new solar house which’ll store all the complicated equipment and which’ll have the panels on the roof. Now it’s finished and we wait for the panels and heat exchangers to turn up and be plumbed in …



Tarmac-depth-P6210013, originally uploaded by Paradise in Portugal.

What else is new? Well, Portuguese TV came down and interviewed us about the road and quick as a flash there was a crew down here digging up the road and filling in the worst holes, but now they’ve gone again and left us with long stretches of road that’s flatter, yes, but with no tarmac at all. Plus ça change … You can see why the roads around here constantly fall apart by the photo above … 8 ton eucalyptus lorries thundering along on top of 5 cms of tarmac with no hard-core at all …

Now I’ve got to get cracking on the lecture I’m giving at the Birdfair in Rutland next month. Submission date’s today so I really must get on, but I’ll leave you with a lovely article written recently by the On-Line Travel Journal, so read all about it here …