The community spirit in this very hidden part of central Portugal is remarkable. Although very rural, there are houses around us with some very lovely neighbours. Down the road is Jenny (it sounds like Jenny so we just call her Jenny) who often drops in early morning to give us bread before she goes to the market to sell what she has baked through the night.
Around the corner of our property is Ricardo, Isabella and their two children of similar age to our lads. They live in Lisbon but return to their Sertá home during the holidays. In the past week they have given our boys two bikes and invited them to watch Portugal V Croatia while having dinner.
And across the road is Antonio. An elderly gentleman who invited us to celebrate his 78th birthday with his family a couple of weeks ago. He seems to have taken to us. A few weeks ago he said that he smelt the paella we were making wafting towards his house so he invited himself for dinner! He often visits for a chat throughout the day, although he only speaks Portuguese and we attempt our very sketchy version of the language. He doesn’t seem to mind.
Lately, he has been coming daily to get his blood pressure monitored. It’s a request from his doctor to get a daily reading and he chose us to help him with this. We are honoured to assist in any way we can. That’s the community way here.
In return he brings us a bag of something that he is growing in his garden. It’s usually tomatoes but yesterday it was figs. Hmm, what to do with figs!
Something we have tried to keep a constant in the mayhem of our lives during the past 12 months is to prepare a smoothie each morning to give us that healthy kick. It feels like, even if the rest of the day doesn’t go to plan regarding a healthy diet (and let’s face it, it doesn’t always) at least we have had a nutritious boost in the morning. Figs, so we found out, made a great addition!
Here’s what we put into the Nutribullet for our smoothie…
Two bananas, five figs (skin on), Greek yoghurt, two scoops of peanut butter and a bit of water.
The results were amazing! Even the kids loved it as it was just like a creamy banana milkshake.
Each day we keep learning about different nutritious elements that we can add to our lives, but the biggest addition to our lives is that of community. A togetherness that, no matter what colour, language or creed, we can all add something special to each other’s lives.
If only the rest of the world could add those ingredients. What a wonderful place we could have.
I make most of my sauces, especially those that demand a spicy bite, in the paella pan these days. I first made an arrabbiata sauce in the paella pan. I found that I could spread the ingredients much easier in the large area of the pan and mix the spices more evenly. I also like to cook and eat with my eyes. The different colours inspire me and I can see them better in a paella pan. It also means that I can batch cook and I am a big fan of batch cooking. It’s one of the changes that I recommended when a client came to me with dietary concerns.
Life can be super stressful at the best of times and after a busy day with work and other errands it is difficult to find time to prepare healthy meals. So I know from past experience that an oven pizza or a takeaway is a convenient way to eat. But if you’ve already got a selection of healthy sauces that you prepared in the freezer then it can be a box ticked off of the stress list. Just cook a bit of rice or pasta and wait for the microwave to ping!
Today I woke up wanting to make an Indian style curry. We don’t have an Indian or Chinese restaurant in Sertá so that itch needs to be scratched occasionally by cooking these meals at home. To be fully authentic and to give a nod to our previous life in England, I would like to put my curry sauce in a tub with a foil lid, place it in a brown paper bag, knock on our front door after an hour and a half and charge £30 for it. But thus far I have refrained from doing so.
Keema, or Qeema in Urdu, is a north Indian and Pakistani dish that literally means ground mince. Today I chose turkey (peru in Portuguese). It’s just what I had in my freezer and it is cheaper meat here, so we often have it available to us at home. It means that with a big jar of passata, a few onions, a couple of garlic cloves, chopped ginger, and a frozen bag of veg, it’s a cost effective meal for the family with the bonus of the batch factor!
My favourite curry is vindaloo or even hotter. I ordered a Phaal in a restaurant once and had the waiters and chefs sniggering by the kitchen door as they watched my head turn bright red as I took my first bite. It was painful and remained so for the next 24 hours, but it was also extremely enjoyable (the first hour, not so much the next 23). I always order vindaloo/phaal, three chapatis and a portion of chips in an Indian restaurant. No shares. Whoever I’m with can’t do any of that sharing half and half shenanigans. It’s mine. I ordered it. Want a chip? Then order some! Every one of my chips has a job to do, especially at the end of the meal when I need to ‘mop up’ the remaining deadly sauce.
But at home I’m a little bit more relaxed with my choices and my sharing habits. I’m fine with making a curry less spicy for my wife and kids and I’m ok with cooking rice. I usually leave out the chips too for a healthier meal, but I do provide wraps or chapatis. It’s still important to mop at the end, right?
So here’s the final result! All plated and ready to eat! Let me know your favourite meals to cook and, importantly, tell me if you’re a sharer in a restaurant or not in the comments.
We have been so busy dealing with all other aspects of the property we bought, we haven’t given our own house much TLC. On the day we got the keys we ensured that we made the inside of our house liveable for us and the kids which we did straight away. It is a comfortable space with extra outdoor areas such as an outdoor kitchen and sitting room that can be utilised for most of the year due to the weather. We have also created a TV room/games room and utility room in the downstairs areas. But the façade needed work.
The building is an old farm building. It will always be rustic. But it was all looking a bit too tatty for our liking. This week we set to work on improving its look. Here’s a few before and afters…
After a jet wash
So obviously it didn’t look as bad as this before the jet wash, but we needed to get the flakey paint off.
A primer coat
After applying a primer we were happy with the progress.
A first top coat has been applied, plus the doors have been painted.At night
We still need to apply a few decorative bottles with lights and stuff but, as you can see, our house looks much better after a week of work on it.
How do we gauge our success? What time limit are we supposed to give ourselves? Do we ever truly see our success? I mean, is it supposed to come in the form of money? Great relationships? A fit bod or thriving business?
I’ve found all four of those at various stages of my life, but I’m also good at losing things, so I take nothing for granted.
But success, what is it? At this very moment in my life I think I had the only bit of success that could’ve made me happy this weekend. Not even Liverpool beating Utd tomorrow could top this one.
At 6:30 this evening we had a phone call from another local business person asking if we had a vacancy for their friends. As I spoke to them, casually flicking through my empty diary, I replied that we could fit his friends in for the evening. In my head I was Jurgen Klopp fist pumping to 60,000 scousers at Anfield. But I stayed calm.
From landing in Sertá on the 31st of October to this day, it has been ten months. We have our first booking. Success.
Success can be going for a walk to clear your head. Success can be scoring goals for fun in the Premier League like Haarland. Success can be having a special moment with your partner. Success can be getting a PB in the gym. Success can be getting your dream job. Success can be buying the Oasis reunion tickets. Success can be winning the lottery. Success can be getting your first guests into your holiday home.
It’s different for everyone. But have a think about what has brought you a little bit of joy today. You might not think that its life-changing, but it could be just the seed that needs the chance to grow. Cherish that bit of success. The more you notice it, the more it happens.
This week the UK government said that it wants to ban cigarette smoking in pub gardens, outside nightclubs and around children’s play parks. Now, it would be hard to find a reasonable argument for being allowed to smoke in or around a kids play park, but I’m not sure about elsewhere. Here’s what I think…
I am living in central Portugal. Cigarettes are still sold in cafe vending machines. Supermarkets have Tobacaria shops inside them and even cafe bars attached to them. Doing your weekly shop, stopping for a smoke while downing a beer or wine before loading your car and driving away is common.
I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore but do occasionally vape electronically in private. I haven’t openly smoked anything since becoming a dad and a Personal Trainer. Smoking while doing either of those jobs is not cool. But I don’t begrudge anybody else smoking. In fact, seeing people sitting around a table outside a cafe in Sertá, chatting and laughing in different languages makes me feel happy and truth be known, before I moved here, it was one of the images that I went to sleep imagining. The cafe music, the different languages and the server bringing out olives and wine on a sunny day, all under a cloud of Marlboro is all very European. That appeals to me.
Some of my best memories of holidays abroad haven’t necessarily been on a beach or doing karaoke at an all inclusive, but visiting an art gallery or castle in Europe. And it was always followed by sitting outside a cafe to talk about what I had discovered, either with my family or with complete strangers.
And although in the beer garden at Wetherspoons there was plenty of alcohol and smoking, I never did get onto the subject of how the Duomo bell tower was constructed with its customers.
Outside a cafe in Sertá
Ah yes. Wetherspoons. Where you can openly shout about hating foreigners while drinking Belgian beer. After that, you can go for a Turkish kebab, watch American TV or cheer on a few Africans in your favourite football team on your Japanese TV while sitting on a Swedish sofa. In the morning, you can drive your German car and if you have an accident you will be seen by a Spanish nurse. Once you are better again, you can go back to Wetherspoons and shout about those ‘bloody foreigners’ in a building most likely to be funded by the European Union. Just remember to wipe your feet on the way out.
And before you start criticising me for being down on Britishness, Wetherspoons is and continues to be a very big factor in what is the cause of a loss of Britishness on the high streets. The Wetherspoons franchise has slowly dismantled the great British pub. You can’t get your piss stained peanuts from a bowl at the bar while drinking a pint of Best at the local Fox and Hounds anymore because Tim Martin came along with his cheap drinks and all day breakfast.
Traditional pubs are ceasing to exist anymore and for all we can blame smoking bans and energy costs, the fact remains that Tim Martin will always be able to make his food and drink way cheaper than Sandra the landlady at The Fox And Hounds.
‘But what about this new smoking ban, Shay?!’ I hear you all ask. ‘Surely it is better for our health and will be less of a burden to the NHS?!’
Smoking is not the number one factor in what causes the two most deadly killers in the UK (heart disease and Alzheimer’s). In fact, everything else they sell in a pub or nightclub are by far the major reasons. That all day breakfast? The Belgian beer or the pint of Best?
In 2022 there were just over 10,000 alcohol related deaths. Obesity causes 30,000 deaths each year. Food and drink related deaths are on the rise and will soon be above smoking related deaths in the years to come. I’m not saying that smoking is better, but it does seem to be the scapegoat when the government talks about unburdening the NHS.
When I watch UK TV I am bombarded by adverts telling me to eat fast food and drink alcohol. Not only is fast food or alcohol not banned but perfectly celebrated as the stuff we should be doing, promoted on national TV!
So eating and drinking crap in a pub is fine, but dare to step into its garden and light up a cigarette and you’re a pariah. You see, it makes no sense.
When I became a PT I wanted to give a different message to what I was seeing and hearing from mainstream gyms and media. It is also how I’ve continued to work at our health and wellbeing centre in Portugal. The misunderstanding from gyms and the media is that health and wellbeing is all about physical health and wellbeing. But I think a little differently.
If society (or your PT) is constantly berating your lifestyle choices such as what you eat, drink or smoke, then this is not going to be a positive contribution to your mindset or your life. You don’t employ a PT for them to tell you that lettuce is better for you than a pizza, or water is better for you than a gin and tonic. Nor should you employ a PT to tell you that not smoking is better for you than smoking.
Balancing these better for you things and the not as good for you things, for me, is the much better position to be in regarding our mental health. This, in turn, can contribute to a more active lifestyle and produce better physical results.
Smoking ten cigarettes a day instead of 20 is a fantastic start. Having a fortnightly takeaway is better than a weekly takeaway and drinking a few beers three nights of the week instead of five is going to positively impact you further.
No bans. No stress. No guilt. Just small things that we call balance.
So, my conclusion and my two penn’orth in the smoking debate is this…
Keep cigarettes, takeaways and alcohol and get rid of Wetherspoons. Society in the UK will seem like a much brighter place.
It might seem excessive to be creating a car park (estacionamento) at our property for ten cars. After all, so far we only have one holiday rental home with one bedroom. But we are in the process of readying ourselves for the bigger picture.
That picture involves private parking for our own vehicles, the guest’s vehicle, space for the private gym and massage therapy room and small group training. There’s also an opportunity to expand the holiday rental side with another small building which is probably way down the line. We need to make the first one work first!
Here are a few pics of me clearing some space by the road side and filling it with stone dust. Also, we have recently dug up the stretch of land (with the help of a man with a tractor) which is a football field long and home to fruit and olive trees. It is also a great space for the boys to ride their bikes!
Today was another ‘lifestyle’ shoot with A New Life In The Sun. We decided on a trip to one of our favourite cafes, Cavalha, to get a few shots of us sipping wine and drinking coffee. The long coffee drink in Portugal (as opposed to the espresso shot) is called an abatanado.
It was also an opportunity to film along the Ribeira da Sertá, which is a stunning, clear river running through the centre of the town. We never tire of this part of Sertá. It’s where they held their four day Festa just a couple of weeks ago, it’s where the very safe play park is for the kids, it has cafes aplenty and it is the go to place for when Lou and I want to sit by the river after dropping the kids off at school. Many plans for the day have been drawn out sitting by the river before we head back to our property to begin work.
Lou and I haven’t managed that headspace for a couple of months now though. The boys broke up from school in mid June and they’ve still got 3 weeks left of their summer holidays. School summer holidays are long in Portugal. This will be fantastic when we are established, but this year has been tough to fully appreciate our times together.
Also, filming can become a long, stressful process too! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a box to tick in life. After all, ANLITS is the most viewed programme on Channel 4 in the UK and is repeated on various platforms. Last night I spoke to a previous contributor of the show who moved to Portugal to set up a glamping business on series 7. We agreed that while filming is fun and it will give a business much needed exposure, it can also take up a lot of time out of the day. And when there are the obvious pressures of starting a new life and business abroad to contend with, sharing an ultra stressful day with the world on camera can be difficult.
Our biggest stress at the moment is about getting our first booking for the holiday home. We recognise that we have missed most of the summer and people usually plan ahead when booking such places, so we’re hoping for scraps in September. But I refuse to become too anxious about this. We are brand new. It will take time for people to know that we actually exist. As long as we follow the process it will be fine.
I also appreciate the quote from writer Kahlil Gibran, who said,” Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to to control it.”
I much prefer to think about the future than become bogged down by past mistakes, but it is important to know that I can’t always control the outcome of the future. Sometimes, once I know that I have done my best, I just need to ‘let it be’.
I also remember the Field Of Dreams quote. “If you build it, they will come.”
Although I much preferred the Wayne’s World version!
The next planned filming is scheduled for our first guests arriving. ANLITS, if you’ve seen the programme, like to film this exciting and nerve-wracking occasion for the participants!
My hope is that this next filming won’t be too far away. After all, we’ve built it, surely they must come!
Below is a guided meditation transcript that I’ve been working on during my time at Trizio lake. I’m currently looking for a new platform to record my meditations for others to enjoy.
My name is Shay and today I’ll be guiding you through a meditation that can be beneficial if you are currently struggling with stress, anxiety or worry and I am grateful that you decided to spend your precious time with me.
Before we begin I’d like to invite you to find a quiet space where you’ll be able to sit or lay for 15 minutes or so, so that you are giving yourself the best opportunity possible to find that moment of peace.
And as you settle into a comfortable position it’s important to remind yourself that, with or without the aid of a guided meditation, just to be able to find this quiet space now and again is crucial to your health and wellbeing. This can be your time to think, rest, plan and recover from the demands of the outside world.
This moment is for you to quiet down the noise that has pursued you throughout the day and allow yourself time to recover, recharge and to find a place of stillness in your mind. Negative thoughts serve no purpose to you right now. Let them go. If, at any time during this meditation, you find your mind wandering then know that this is absolutely fine. It is normal. Just refocus your energy back onto my words when you are able to.
Now you can realize your breathing pattern as you begin to surrender to your environment and the floor, chair or whatever it is that supports you right now. Take one deep breath in and feel the positive energy that you are creating fill your body. Slowly release. And once again you can continue with your usual breathing pattern. If you haven’t done so already, close your eyes and become witness the way your eyelids feel heavy and how your shoulders begin to lower as if they are melting away the stresses placed upon them.
Using your third eye now, in front of you, you can see every colour imaginable swirling and spiralling creating vivid shapes and dances. You watch intently as slowly they begin to create a pathway. A multi coloured pathway leading far into the distance.
Barefoot, you step onto the beginning of the path. It feels warm underneath your feet and radiates to you a great sense of comfort and happiness from this. You begin to walk along its path.
Although you don’t know where this path leads, you don’t feel the need to know right now. It just feels right. The warmth of the path reaches the tips of your fingers and all the way to your forehead as you realise that you are no longer walking on the path, but floating above it.
As you glide above the glowing coloured pathway you see a gate. The gate is a field gate made of pine. You descend towards it and gently land by its opening. You raise your hand to push the gate open but before you enter you turn to thank the wonderful vibrant colours that have brought you to this point. You then begin to smell the meadow that lays beyond the gate. As you walk through the gate you feel the grass on your feet making direct contact with the Earth’s energy. The crinkling sound of the grass as you continue walking reminds you of a care free childhood summer.
You look around and see flowers that bask in the sunshine and butterflies, bees and birds flutter and hop through the meadow. Beyond the fern and aurora a watery trickling sound catches your attention, to which you feel drawn to. Slowly you make your way towards a small cove which presents a vast lake. Deepen your connection to this place by realising the colour of the water as it trickles towards your feet. Notice how the radiation of the sun interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and creates the bluest of skies. Feel the gentle breeze touch your face and feel the warm sandy ground between your toes.
You sit cross legged by the edge of the lake. You can see hilltops in the distance across from the lake with different shades of green foliage covering them. A bright orange glow appears into the sky line as the sun slowly descends behind the hilltops.
As the sun sets further behind the hilltops. This is the perfect moment for you to repeat this mantra, and please, if you have your own mantra then you are welcome to repeat your own words.
I am calm
I am in control
And I am always able to find solutions.
Repeat your mantra as you gaze at the sun disappearing behind the hilltops.
I am calm
I am in control
And I am always able to find solutions.
Continue to repeat.
It’s time to thank your visualization now. The gate, the meadow, the cove and the lake, the hilltops and the sun. Thank them for allowing you to see such tranquil beauty at this important time to you.
And now it’s time to meet your conscious self once again, in your quiet space. Take a deep breath now and repeat your mantra once more.
I am calm
I am in control
And I am always able to find solutions.
When you are ready to, open your eyes. Make yourself aware of your surroundings and, just for a few moments, reflect on your experience from the past 20 minutes or so.
When you are fully happy to leave your quiet space then you are able to continue your day with optimism, love and calm in your heart and mind.
Held like we’re holding the mixed doubles plaque at Wimbledon, here’s the sign for our Alojamento Local rental property that we need to display to show that we are a registered guest house!
And it feels like we’ve had a few epic matches to reach our finale, but we are officially on booking sites such as Expedia, Booking.com, AirBnB, Hotel.com and Holidu.
It’ll take time for the bookings to start coming as we are towards the end of this summer and most people have probably planned their stays already, but we’re still hopeful for September and the winter months. Also, it’ll be nice to receive bookings way in advance for next summer and prepare the rest of the business!
Indeed, we haven’t won any trophies yet. We’re just a couple of wildcards new to the circuit. But we usually do well when we support each other, making us a formidable doubles team, even if the odd racket gets broken through frustration along the way.
This week we signed up to a site that will promote our holiday home on several platforms. Although they said that it will take up to ten days to be on all of their participating platforms, we have been getting informed when a platform is showing our property online already. So far we are going live on Travel Nest and Holidu. Here’s a link to Holidu…
We are still working and developing the interior and exterior, so the photos aren’t perfect, but we just needed to get the property up and running. We will be updating our pics as we keep putting stuff in place (I never knew how much brain power it would take to decide on where to put a coffee machine).
And when I say several platforms, we are literally going to be shown everywhere. So much so that I expect the Mashco Piro tribe in Peru to get an alert once our pics are updated.
We still have a massage therapy and shop to reconstruct, plus a possibility of a second holiday home on the property but, for now, for the sake of our sanity, our first job is complete.
Never Give Up PT 