Today we went to the land early to try and clear some of the overgrowing plants and finally enter the house. Susie was not looking forward to the last bit after having had an awful nightmare about the house and the "previous" owners still being there (I tell you it was horrendous!!!!). We cleared a bit of the plants and then Glenn decided to face it and managed to kick one of the doors in. There were quite a few remnants of the previous owners, but luckily we saw no bodies or ghosts and unfortunatly no treasure either!!!! The ceiling has caved in though and it is so old it is hard to understand, but it is standing and there was no damp or any wet patches in there even after the heavy rains on Tuesday so not all bad. Saw no living creatures in there either so that was a relief. We found a wedding photo which looked fairly recent so will take that to the estate agent in case the previous owner knows who it is of.
We also met our new neighbours, who seemed lovely. They told us there had been pine trees growing on some of our land which had been sold and how overgrown the rest of it used to be. Well they told us a lot more but this was the only bit we could really work out with our very limited Portuguese, or rather non existing Portuguese. They seemed lovely though and hopefully soon we can communicate a bit better with them!
After our mornings hard graft,we returned to camp for lunch and showers and then ventured into the nearest town (Caldas da Rainha) to look for a wireless dongle for the internet,go to the bank and on the way back try to catch the estate agent (Marco)
Finally got the dongle after several problems with Jersey bank cards here,then off to the bank to change our UK pounds to euros.there is only one small bank in the village so we decided to use this,but were told that they couldn't change money unless we had an account with them,but as luck would have it,the Portuguese lady being seved next to us was going to the UK soon so offered to swap our pounds for her euros at the same rate as the bank,great for both parties no commission for either,what a nice lady,also ended up spending about half an hour chatting to the cashier as he had friends in Jersey
Our final stop was with Marco,to discuss our options re the property,he basically told us that if we choose to renovate the existing property we should not need any planning permission but if we want to start again then we do!!!
So now we have some more thinking and planning to do,all in all quite a productive day
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