As promised, the builder and his men arrived on Monday 11th January to start work. An auspicious day as we had first seen the house exactly 8 months previously on May 11th and arrived in Portugal to live on September 11th.

At the end of the day they had completely removed the main roof and started demolishing the bathroom. This had been a fairly recent extension to the original farmhouse and wasn’t constructed very well so we have decided to replace it.

Meanwhile, we continue to work on the garden. As promised here is a photo of our first cloche and the space set aside for the shed.

As discussed previously, it’s been pretty cold recently. In this photo you can just see some flecks of snow but I can tell you at one stage it was a complete white-out. However, none of it stuck. It also continues to remain bloody cold in our rented house. We’ve hung impromptu blanket/curtains up in an attempt to stop the chilled blasts coming through the window frames. Here’s Jackie huddled up next to the gas fire. Roll on summer.