Outside the box: Friends’ dream home almost goes up in smoke

By Suzanne Harrigton

Two friends of mine do something they’ve long dreamed of. They buy some land in rural south west Portugal, pack up their urban lives, and drive to their remote hillside in a big truck carrying some pared down possessions, a digger, and their cat, who is from Portobello Road and not that keen.

Their only neighbours on the new hillside are eucalyptus, geckos, woodpeckers and owls.

They plan to create an off grid rural escape for themselves, and once they’ve set themselves up, for others.

This is exactly what they do. Living in their truck on the hillside, they dig a well, and pipe water uphill with a pump.

They cover the truck’s roof in solar panels, get satellite wifi, and build compost loos with a panoramic view.

They build a little house, with the help of workaways, and plant vegetables, fruit trees, flowers. They get a dog, and then another.

They erect a series of bell tents overlooking the valley, and build a yoga platform. Hammocks. A pool. All of this takes two years.

Friends begin to visit. Then friends of friends who want to escape city life, do yoga at dawn, star gaze at night, swim off the vast Atlantic beaches that nobody ever visits because everyone is down on the Algarve tourist resorts. Up here, it is close to heaven.

Their nearest town, Monchique, is 40 minutes down the mountain through empty winding roads. It is pretty as a picture, Monchique, with its population of 6,045, its clean high altitude air, its cafes with their delicious custard tarts, its local health spa flowing with alkaline spring water. It is the very defintion of ‘sleepy’.

You may have heard about Monchique this week, because it has been violently shaken awake. Wildfires have been spreading so close that the whole town had to be bussed out, evacuated. “Like a war zone,” my friends message.

They have to leave their hillside homestead, packing their dogs into the car with some basic belongings, and driving to the coast to escape the blazing, out of control walls of fire. (The cat has run away.)

So far, the fires have bypassed their land. They are praying for rain, praying the wind will not change direction, praying the cat is safe.

They drive back to their hillside once the roads have been temporarily unblocked, to make cups of tea and cheese sandwiches for the exhausted firefighters, who are overwhelmed in their heavy uniforms, their breathing apparatus.

Neighbours a few kilometers up and down the road have lost everything, their homes destroyed by the fire. My friends are shattered, but also aware that so far they have been lucky.

Everyone back here awaits their Facebook updates with trepidation.

It’s like breaking news, except from real people in the thick of it, their only agenda to stay alive and let their friends know they are safe. So this is climate change. This is the new normal.