Another
Day in the Algarve
I'll Buy It
The following day I started my search for a new home. I climbed into Geraint's battered old car and we drove off to look at some likely properties. I didn't want to buy a ready-made house, I wanted to build my own. It would be much cheaper, and I thought it would be more fun. That meant I was going to look at ruins or building plots. However, all the building plots were in built-up areas, which didn't appeal to me, so that cut the selection down to about five ruins.
There was one up in the mountains near Monchique which I had been to look at myself, and rejected as being too wet and chilly for winter living. It was up above the cloud line, and that wasn't exactly what I was looking for.
So Geraint took me thru a couple of small villages and out across a bumpy camino to look at another one.
"That's the plot up there," he pointed across the hillside. "There's a sea-view from the top." And he turned off the dirt track onto what looked like a goat path. We bounced and lurched up the hill, splashing thru puddles, skirting boulders, and brushing the bushes which covered the hillside.
We came to a halt at the top, and there in the distance was the sea. "But where's the ruin?" I asked.
Geraint pointed down the hillside to a small stone building about three hundred yards away.
"And how do we get to it?"
"Um. Difficult. Do you really want to? It's just a pile of stones."
"But what about access?"
"You'd have to put in a driveway, probably across the bottom there, and over that stream."
"Do you have anything easier?"
"Yes, let's go and have a look at the next one."
The next one was along another camino for about a kilometre or two. We turned off onto a cart-track and stopped. "It's up there." He pointed up a steep hill.
"No access again?"
"Not yet."
We struggled up the steep hillside for about a hundred yards until we came to a couple of walls. That was all that was left of the building. The view ranged right across the property's own land down to the river. I liked it straight away. There were four hectares of land, and about two hundred metres of river frontage. The land was covered in orange trees, lemons, alforabas, and trailing across the ground under some almond trees were a whole patch of courgettes that had grown to an enormous size.
The only snag was that the property was a bit expensive, but it really was rather fine. I stared across the land down to the river, dreaming of what it could become. I think I heard myself say "I'll buy it."
So we went back to the office to look at the paperwork.
Almost immediately there was a problem. The building was about 24 feet by 20 feet, and the planning rules state that you can only rebuild over the original footprint. But how on earth can you build a house in only 400 square feet? There would be a kitchen-cum-dining room downstairs and one bedroom and a bathroom upstairs. For a £50,000 plot that was ridiculous.
Apparently the owner was in consultation with the camara (town hall), and was optimistic about getting permission for a larger house. So I left it with the agent to check what the current status was, and went back to look at the place on my own.
I paced all round the plot. The view from the top was superb, right down the valley, with a large stretch of the river visible, winding away towards the sea.
Down at the bottom of the hill was a boggy area which I decided could be dredged and turned into a pond. And beyond that was the river, which I discovered was still tidal. I rummaged around and found out where I could put a boat-house, and decided I would buy a boat to get to the town and the beaches.
I was quite optimistic. Things seemed to be coming together quite well.
A meeting was set up with the owner, and the next day he came into the office, shook my hand in a very perfunctory way, and proceeded to say in a loud voice that he had not managed to get the camara to change their mind about the size of the house. We suggested a suitable reduction in the price of the land. He said that was out of the question, that it would have been even more expensive if there had been permission to build a larger house. So I got up and ostentatiously started looking at details of other properties.
The meeting ended with lots of shoulder shrugging, and it was clear that the deal had juddered gently into the ditch. I went back to the hotel feeling very pessimistic. Things were not coming together at all.
The following day it rained, and we stayed in all day. During the night the rain absolutely belted down, and continued throughout the following day. Things had definitely taken a turn for the worse.
Halfway through the following morning the rain eventually stopped and we went for a drive. For masochistic reasons I decided to go and have another look at the site.
We turned off the main road onto the camino, and drove up the slope, and looked down at the field alongside the river. I couldn't believe my eyes. I stopped the car. The whole field was completely under water. The river was flowing under the bridge at a terrific rate of knots. The banks were completely overwhelmed, and part of the river had simply driven thru the undergrowth and burst straight across the field. The orange grove on the other side of the road was growing out of a lake where the river had burst its banks. All the lower branches were under water.
When we got to the site we found the whole of the lower part was completely under water. Here was yet another reason not to pay a high price for the plot as it was obviously part of the flood plain. I wondered whether the courgettes were swimming in salty water or not.
The following day the waters had subsided quite a lot. But the boundary hedge had changed color. It was now a bright red. It cant be fish, I thought. Or can it? When I got closer I realised the color was coming from the thousands of stranded oranges caught in the bushes.
Later that day we found thousands more washed up on the beach. And for days there were oranges everywhere; on beaches, in hedges, by the sides of the roads, in ditches, caught in the woodwork of bridges, stuck in the lower branches of trees, and in flower beds.
The news from the camara did not improve, and I eventually decided, regretfully, that I would have to withdraw my offer.
"What else have you got?" I asked Geraint.
"There isn't much else," he said. "But there is the building site on the opposite bank of the river."
"Which one's that?" I wondered over to the wall to look at the picture.
"It's not up on the wall. It isn't officially for sale."
"Is it for sale?"
"I'm pretty certain it's for sale. I can check. Do you want to have a look at it?"
So we drove out to look at this new site. It was up a steep hill (aren't they all?), and covered in horribly oily cistus plants. But the view from the top, among the plants which ripped at my trousers, was superb, with the river winding away along the valley below.
It didn't have the immediate appeal of the previous site, but it was almost half the price, and looked pretty good to me. "I'll buy it," I said for the second time that week. And we went back to the office to look at the paperwork.
