The Wellbeing Centre Project


Here we are, Louise and Shay, proudly holding our new Alojamento Local sign. You’ll be able to see our failed DIY attempts at putting that up outside our guest house in the UK TV programme A New Life In The Sun on series 10 in January.

We’ve been in Portugal since the 31st of October 2023 (almost a year!) During that time, we bought a beautiful property in Palhais, Sertã that just needed a bit of TLC. It’s been a journey and we can’t wait to see what happens next.

Louise is a massage therapist who worked to build her business up in Scarborough and had a fantastic customer base, many became friends, and dedicated her time to provide the best service possible to those who came to visit her.

Shay is a personal trainer who has worked as a freelance PT in Leeds and Scarborough as well as online coaching and lifestyle blogging. His fun and energetic workouts meant that exercise became something that his clients wanted to do rather than endure. Both Louise and Shay are qualified meditation guides and find this a useful tool in the wellbeing for themselves, their children and their clients.

Our aim is to welcome our guests and to experience our version of tranquility. We offer the services mentioned above and also have a small snack (petiscos) menu for our visitors, but we are equally happy for our guests to just enjoy their surroundings without any other service.

Centro De Bem Estar And How I Got Here

Louise asked me to go to a meditation guide with her. I politely said no.

This was 9 years ago when we lived in Pudsey, Leeds and Lou had just given birth to our second child. She needed a moment each week to be able to find some head space away from a toddler, a baby and a husband spending hours at the gym trying to pick up new clients as a fledgling personal trainer. Lou was a full time mum. The hardest job in the world.

I said no because I felt that I had my therapy in the form of working out at the gym. I was obsessed with not just what it gave me aesthetically, but the endorphins it released. It was my natural drug. My focus. I explained this to Lou but meditation with a qualified guide was something that she wanted us to try together.

In an effort to support her and to show an interest in something that had positively touched her life, I eventually went to the meditation guide with Lou. It was in a wellbeing centre in Pudsey. I can’t remember the cost exactly. Maybe £30 or £40 for the hour. I was sceptical about it. I mean, how could it affect me in the same way it had Lou? My therapy was in a gym!

Yet strangely, as I reflected on my first experience of the meditation session, I found many similarities to that of the gym. The gym is where I can shut out the noise of the world. In fact, I disliked gyms that had a radio playing with hourly news broadcasts. For that moment in my life I didn’t want to hear about financial crashes, wars or politics. The only problem I wanted swimming around my head is how I engaged with the particular exercise that I was performing, be it a deadlift, bench press, squat, whatever. That is all I wanted in my mind.

Similarly, as I gained more experience in meditation, I found that very same focus in this practice. I only wanted to focus on my breathing and feeling my chest rise and fall as I did so. Clutter would leave my head, instead I visualised health, success, future goals and happiness.

I began to realise that, although the gym was my happy place where I could feel safe, adding meditation into my life was like a superpower! A gym routine and regular meditation was a superpower. My breathing during exercise became better, not just during exercise, but in stressful situations. I could remain calmer under pressure. I focussed even closer on my life goals. I dwelled less on missed past opportunities and began mapping out a future for me and my family. Together, my training and meditation routines did that.

I’m so glad that Lou went to a meditation session all those years ago and I’m relieved that I eventually went with her. I have just finished filming with A New Life In The Sun for this season in my home in Portugal. I’m looking out at the forest, the swimming pool, my gym space and the massage room and I practically visualised this exact picture for years in my mind during training and meditation. My aim was to help others achieve their goals and that is what I’m now doing through the wellbeing centre (Centro de bem estar).

However you choose to gain focus on what matters to you in life, practice it consistently and believe in it. Become obsessed by it. Tell the universe that you will do it, no matter what. And then live it.

Ready For Our Guests

Here’s a little tour of our alojamento local! We’ve been getting it all ready for our guests tomorrow and we will have the added pressure of welcoming our guests in front of the A New Life In The Sun TV cameras.

We have been busy trying to get our massage therapy room ready this week but have found that the electrics need a bit more attention, so stay tuned for updates on that!

I hope you enjoy the video!

The Easter Egg

Some movie directors don’t just make great movies. They know that what they produce will be a master class, but it is the ease in which they can add their subtle in jokes, social commentary, artistic influences or homages to other bodies of work without distracting the audience away from the story.

Think Hitchcock with his cameo appearances or the use of Starbucks cups in almost every scene of Fight Club. These are known as Easter eggs that the viewer can hunt during the movie. Other hunts to look out for is the use of Tarantino’s very own imagined brand of cigarettes throughout his movies, Red Apple. Or the use of oranges in The Godfather trilogy. If you spot an orange in one of those movies, it is likely to lead to the death of a key character.

Fincher added the Starbucks cups as a metaphor for the corporate influence in everyday life.

These aren’t meant as a distraction maybe in the way that a Macguffin is (I’ve written about that too!), but more of a signature from the artist. It is something that can be detected throughout their work. It is uniquely theirs.

Well, although I’m not in Hollywood and I’m not a famous movie director, I want to be a great in the art of movie making. It’s just that this movie will be of my own life.

We’re all making our own movies. We can create the ups and downs of a drama, the twists and turns of a thriller. We can create the laugh out loud comedy moments and, like it or not, direct our own horror.

And a great director can tell the story and even add in the Easter egg too! But it isn’t about being accepted by others. A good director will create something that they want to create, not what is expected of them. Kubrick, Hitchcock and Tarantino are three of my favourite directors, but have never won a best director Oscar. Sergio Leone was never even nominated.

But what do that all have in common? They are blaze trailers at what they do and not just followers of a common theme that satisfies the masses. Sure, they became popular from making great movies. But them ripping up the genre rule book is what made them great, not because they were trying to be popular. This, it seems, irritated mainstream Hollywood to the point that it overlooked some of the greatest directors of our time.

We can still be great directors of our own lives without satisfying everyone. I’d even go as far as to say that, if you don’t piss a few people off you’re not doing it right.

We need to hire the best actors and extras onto our set. We should experiment with different scenery. We can write our own script. And we can do it all without having to please everyone.   But remember to spice things up a little and add your own Easter egg hunt. It keeps things interesting!

Every orange scene in The Godfather.

Three Rusty Nails

I didn’t think I’d find a TV series about ‘Detectorists’ all that interesting. Billed as a comedy, I wasn’t sure where the laughs would come from watching two blokes in a field with metal detectors. But then these two blokes were Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones. Also written and directed by Crook, the series was always going to be not just funny but poignant too. Lou and I enjoyed it very much.

Perhaps we had other motivation to watch the series. Just this summer we had bought Finlay a metal detector for his birthday. We thought it was a fun activity for us all to do together and with so much land to detect on it seemed a good idea. Although, during the height of summer, the land was so hard we could not dig it up! Now it has softened, we can begin to hunt for treasure.

Another motivation is that Lou and I miss one particular thing about the UK and that is a charity shop. They aren’t very common in Portugal. As we walked along Scarborough high street we could never resist popping into a charity shop. “Shall we see if we can find some treasure today?!” I would ask.

That treasure would be an old book that smells like, well, an old book. Or a board game that would bring back memories of family holidays. Or a lamp that would remind us of it sitting in our grandparents house in the 80’s. Or a tea set from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, a particular favourite of Lou’s. A couple of big boxes came over on pallets full of tea sets. They all survived the trip.

Of course, we never expected to find a book or indeed a tea set intact on our land. Maybe an old farming tool. But Finlay had grand ideas of finding a pot of gold. What we found was three rusty nails all located in different areas. The buzz of the machine detecting metal is quite exhilarating, even if it was just a rusty old nail. What have they been used for and when? I like to imagine their journey to when we found them. But for Finlay, as happy as he was to have found something, it wasn’t the pot of gold that he was hoping for. It got me thinking.

We could try to seek our treasure for the rest of our lives and keep finding little more than a few rusty nails. But what did finding those nails do for us? Well, it brought us together to work as a team. A detectorist and a digger. We all took it in turns. We were in nature. During our adventure we found wild boar footprints, beautiful butterflies and dragonflies and new wild flowers appearing. We were tired. A few hours walking and digging is great exercise. And it got the boys off of computer games. Something the modern parent often has to battle against.

Finlay didn’t find gold, but he and the rest of us found a golden opportunity with much more wealth than any coins could ever give us. It gave us a moment together to witness all of this. And if a rusty nail is all that we ever find in the soil, I know that we’ll be discovering so much more about life together whilst we do it.

Parent Guilt

I’ve recently watched a comedy/drama programme called Breeders. It was created by Martin Freeman who also plays the stressed out father in the show. In one episode he says to his 13 year old son “As a parent you make over a hundred decisions a day and you just hope that you get them right.”

Of all the decisions I’ve had to make in my life, those on the behalf of my kids have been easily the most challenging.

Since becoming a father I have changed. I see the world very differently now and, in many ways, I try to see it from their perspective. It is them who have to live in this world now. True I’m not old or ‘passed it’, but I also think that I’ve had my day. If I died tomorrow I’d be happy. I’ve seen enough. I could be greedy and want to see more, but look at what I’ve achieved already.

I survived school. I had loving parents. I went on caravan holidays and ate those mini choc chip cookies in my pajamas with about 8 other family members squished into the van. I felt that funny crush feeling when the ‘girl of my dreams’ walked past me in the school corridor. I also felt that crushed feeling when she never acknowledged me when I said hello.

I fell in love, out of love and all the different emotions in between. I’ve met good people along the way, some not so good. I’ve had some great jobs, eventually finding my vocation. I married my soulmate. Fathered two beautiful boys. I learned a new language. Moved to a different country.

I’ll carry on making memories, but my point is that if it was all to end tomorrow I would doff my cap to the Grim Reaper and bow out gracefully. The Grim Reaper doesn’t scare me, you see, he’s never been too far away. And anyway he’s a pussycat really. He can only take my shell. My energy will be around forever. My energy (or spirit if you’re spiritual) might even turn up to my old crush’s house to write sinister messages on her bathroom mirror!

But now it is my boys turn. They’ll make their own memories and a fair few of them will probably resemble mine, just like yours will. And as a parent I feel that it is my responsibility to prepare them the best I can. That means making decisions and hoping that I can get them right. Most of the time anyway.

I’m currently having to use my eight year old’s aftershave. He enjoys gelling his hair and dressing smart so a couple of years ago we decided to get him a set of aftershaves, a comb and little mirror. Nothing too lavish or expensive. But we recognized that he was very different from his older brother, who much prefers the ‘just got out of bed’ look.

Finlay wafting his aftershave at me

I don’t have any aftershave at the moment. I could buy some quite easily from the supermarket who do a nice selection. But along with socks and undies, I don’t feel like buying my own aftershave is my responsibility. It is that of the gift giver on my birthday and Christmas. I currently have holes in my socks with my undies swiftly catching up and I am creeping into my eight year olds bedroom to nick a bit of old spice. This will be the situation until November when I’m hoping a gift giver will replenish my underwear stock and Eau de Toilette on my birthday.

My point is that, now, I don’t ask for much. I need my kids to be happy and grow up feeling loved. That’s it. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t leave the house without spraying half a bottle of something expensive on me and it would have been a disaster if I had to get dressed in the gym changing rooms wearing holy socks and undies. But priorities change.

My kids will see many wonderful things, but I won’t pretend to them that life is a fairytale either. As they grow older they will see the ugly sides to life too. Maybe that was the purpose of us moving to a different country. Within three months of finishing at their school in England, they were in a school in the Portuguese countryside where nobody spoke English (apart from the English teacher). My wife and I pretty much pushed them into the water and said ‘There you go, swim!’

I want them to have chances in life and to help create opportunities for them, but I don’t want to make it too easy for them.

I’ve always felt parent guilt. You know, that feeling that in some way you are letting your kids down. Was I around enough for them as babies? Did I teach them well enough when we had to home school? Is taking them away from their only home that they know in England the right thing to do?

Taking Jonas out of his football team was one of the most difficult things. He was proud to play for his home town. Bloody good he was too! And the guilt continues in that I haven’t pushed for him to play for his new home town yet. Jonas is the timid one out of my two boys. Only last Monday he sobbed at the school gates on his first day back after the summer holidays because he didn’t want to go in. And there’s been a few occasions where he has not wanted to join in activities during the summer due to his anxieties of leaving us. So I’m not sure a new football team is right for him just yet. I want him to get a year or two of school under his belt first.

Jonas. The thinker.

But does my decision help me sleep at night? No. Parent guilt taps me on the shoulder as I’m just dozing off and says ‘Oi, you smelly, tatty socked sorry excuse of a dad. Let him play football or he’ll resent you forever!’

But I’ll prove parent guilt wrong in what he says, because from November I’ll have no tatty socks and I’ll smell like Paco Rabane!

AirBnB New Listing

The link below is our new listing on Airbnb. Promotions are available on this platform but you can also contact me directly if you are planning a visit to this beautiful part of the world!

I’m also in the process of starting my new Time Trial season which will hopefully run from October to April. This will involve boot camp style training in and around the forest! Stay tuned for more on that in future posts!

https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/1244820126770901900?viralityEntryPoint=1&s=76