Is it where you were born or raised? Is it where your family or friends live? Is it bounded by bricks and mortar or is it simply where you are at now?
Over the last four years I have lived in a variety of houses and flats, depending in many cases on the generosity of friends and family who have provided me with safe havens. Yet once I have gone out of my front door in the town which I had called home for nearly thirty years I have not felt safe and I was constantly looking over my shoulder. I realised quite how edgy I had been feeling when I was walking through the streets of Havana on my own in the dark. I felt a lot safer walking down the middle of the road where nobody knew me (or to be precise, where I was confident that AW would not be around) than walking around my home city in the UK in the daytime.
A Cuban woman watching the world go by
Pedestrians keep to the centre of the road because there are no streetlights in the suburbs of Havana and dangerous potholes lie in wait on the pavements – the roads too but they are more visible – all due to the economic situation there.
But people live their lives outdoors. Partly due to the heat as very few people can afford air con, often due to overcrowding in the homes – a side effect of the government policy of ensuring that nobody goes without a roof over their heads and also because for the Cubans people-watching and communicating with friends and neighbours is a free activity and there is a massive sense of community. Cubans sit on their front porches and watch the world go by so in the main, you are very visible and crime is low.
Since giving up the tenancy on my flat and setting out on my adventure I have no physical home of my own. I have a few small items which travel with me and constitute my ‘home’.
Rather like the lyrics in that song which compares a pack of playing cards to a Bible, my little treasures link me to friends and family.
I have my owl key ring which is attached to my smaller rucksack, my lucky Buddha whose size does not correlate to its leaden weight, a couple of pairs of earrings, a red bangle and a friendship bracelet, my silver thumb ring and my worry ring, a couple of cards and letters which I carry, a 5 rupee Indian coin, a green mosaic tile from a swimming pool and my St Christopher necklace. I also have my phone with music and photos of friends on, my netbook with the same and memory sticks loaded up with pictures too. It’s actually no wonder that my rucksack is so bloody heavy! These items were all given to me or bought by me for different reasons. I have other items stored away which I would love to have with me, but short of upgrading to pushing a supermarket trolley around with me (and THAT would be the slippery slope to shuffling around and have kids yell ‘mad bag lady’ at me) those things will have to remain safe in the UK for now.
My treasures
I have endowed some of my treasures with multiple meanings. I am not superstitious and having previously lost many valuable and sentimental possessions I try not to get too emotionally attached to items, but perhaps a little bit of me wants to remain rooted to what, or more specifically who I have left behind.
The Seven Dwarfs – following the tradition of my blog they have been given alibis – which will also avoid the little problem of who should be allocated the name of Dopey.
Golfer Number 1
The Professor
Gel
The Jezter
Sneezy
Fast Car Driver
Tango Man
Once upon a time, early one morning, huddled in a driveway in the Kentish drizzle, Scarlet was introduced to the Seven Dwarfs. Cupping mugs of hot tea the group re-established old acquaintances with insults and jibes
I already knew four of the dwarfs and I was relieved to discover that the other three were just as nice, all with the same crazy sense of humour. Downing our mugs of tea we piled into the cars and set off at a rate of knots for Dover and the ferry. The duo in the fastest car with the satellite system promptly ignored directions, separated from the convoy and set off along the wrong motorway in what was to be the norm for the whole week. Despite having the satellite system they continuously sped away from the convoy – not so bad in the UK but it would be a bigger problem in France with no road maps between the group.
We managed to meet up at the ferry port and got ourselves on-board for the crossing and the subsequent drive down through the foggy French countryside to the tiny hamlet of Manninghem near Montreil-sur-Mer – about an hours drive from Calais.
our little pad in the French countryside
Golfer Number 1 had struck gold with the gite. Sleeping up to sixteen there was ample room for the eight of us in the rabbit warren of rooms, which included a games room with billiards table and table football, four bathrooms a huge kitchen and large gardens. We excitedly explored the farmhouse accompanied by much swearing as we repeatedly bashed heads and other parts of our anatomy on the low beams, narrow staircases and jutting chimney breasts.
Five of us then piled into the fast car for what should have been a twenty minute jaunt to the supermarket but turned into an epic hour and a half tour of the area. My sides were aching from laughing as we hurtled up lanes only to find ourselves coming back on ourselves ten minutes later. The Professor disappeared into a church for ten minutes – claiming he went to ask the priest for directions but we reckoned that he popped in a quick confessional whilst he was in there, he took so long. I would like to know how ‘go straight along this road’ computed as ‘turn right’ to Fast Car Driver but myself, Gel and The Jezter who were all squooshed into the back couldn’t speak for convulsing with laughter, whilst in the passenger seat The Professor tried to hold it together as kamikaze oil tanker drivers attempted to shave off layers of paint as they hurtled past us. We finally found the supermarket (the wrong one as it later turned out) and bought provisions of milk, bread, nibbles crates of beer and wine to keep us going until I cooked the dinner.
That first meal of chilli, rice and nachos was surprisingly edible and to my surprise they wolfed down the lot. Maybe they were just starving after a long day but I shall credit it to mine and Tango Man’s cooking skills. The guys all settled down for an evening on the Wii – until The Professor realised that he had left a small but vital piece of kit home. Personally I reckon his kids hid it from him in retaliation for him taking their Wii away for a week but without the Wii everybody settled down, dotted around the huge living area in groups, listening to music, chatting and playing card games. Tango Man who towered above everybody else and was very much a man’s man commented on the work of art that was the lace curtains and provoked a conversation among some about the art of lace-making. I felt as if I had been dropped into a surreal parallel universe.
Tango Man – his identity has been preserved
The next morning with Gel announcing that the monsters in the shower were not spiders but housemates, Tango Man, much to my disgust, produced an amazing breakfast as he set the bar very high for subsequent days. They took ages loading the car with the paraphernalia that goes with golf and eventually set off to their first golf course. I was disappointed to discover that there was no internet access, but after tidying the farmhouse and prepping the tea I settled down to my writing. Later in the afternoon I welcomed them back with cold beers at the ready as they hi-ho’d their way home after a long day on the greens. It only needed bluebirds and butterflies fluttering around my head to complete the scene.
After dinner on that second evening the living room resembled a nursery school with the guys fighting and jostling for place in front of the TV as England were due to play. If anybody dared to go and fetch another beer or pop to the loo, their seat was taken as everybody dived for better viewing positions. Eventually, fed up of being relegated to the corners, The Professor, Golfer Number 1 and Sneezy moved the table out of the way, picked up one of the sofas and plonked it right across the middle of the room. Bearing a loose resemblance to a cinema, they were now all relatively happy. Fast Car Driver and The Jezter cosied up in the back row and they all settled down with their beer and nibbles to jeer rowdily at the screen, breaking at halftime for snacks of cheese, crackers and more beer.
The following day I was allowed out of the house and I went with them to the golf course at Le Touquet. I had visited the town a couple of years before, having rented a gite in the same area one Christmas, so I walked the three kilometres into the town from the golf course, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood rather than Snow White as I wound my way through a little path in the forest to the town.
The beach at Le Touquet
Avoiding the wolves I arrived safely at Le Touquet and reacquainted myself with its little shops and the enormous expanse of beach where land yachts were charging around in the howling gale and then after spending fifteen minutes in the street stealing wifi from a butcher’s shop I went and found myself a bar. Following the example of the French, I ordered a beer and sat at my laptop, pleased to have found free wifi, and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Unfortunately, beer on a (mostly) empty stomach got the better of me so when the dwarfs finally tracked me down after their game of golf they were not too hopeful of a decent evening meal. I think that I managed to amaze them by holding it together until after the meal but I vaguely remember being fleeced of my euros as they took advantage of my lack of concentration during the card game Chase the Ace, however it is best to gloss over the rest of the evening!
Attempting to produce a full English breakfast for eight with a storming hang-over was not the wisest move but I made it without the vodka making a re-appearance and I quickly packed them all off out so that I could have some peace and quiet and could lie down in a dark room.
This was to be Golfer Number 1’s pretend birthday (his official one was to be the following week) so I hung some balloons up and stuck some candles into some little buns on a plate and once they had all arrived back we decided to go to the local motel/pizzeria for a meal. My choice of fashion – a maxi dress and flowery baseball boots – was met with complete derision by these obviously not so men’s men as we set off down the road but I had the last laugh when we had to stumble back home along the lane in the pitch black.
The dwarfs’ final day on the green started off quite damp and drizzly. I remained home, cleaned the gite and made a warming beef stew for their dinner. We received our security deposit back the next morning and we set off in convoy for the ferry port – making a detour via Wimeraux to collect a refund of some golf fees which had been overcharged earlier in the week.
Following a group hug we all got into our respective cars for the final leg home in the UK. I had a brilliant week with a fantastic group of blokes and I was very sorry to leave them as we said goodbye but after just one night in Kent I would be setting off for Stanstead airport early the following morning.
After saying our goodbyes at Lisbon airport, I set off on the next leg of my adventure. I was to look after a house in the Catalan mountains. After a long day’s travel and a detour via a supermarket courtesy of Ruth who was a friend of my friends and who had very kindly picked me up from the train station, I arrived at my destination. I settled in with my shopping and I prepared for a three week stay on my own.
The owners of the house were my very good friends Julie and Phil and they had gone back to the UK for the summer. They had generously offered me sanctuary in their beautiful finca in the Catalan mountains but it was a long way from anywhere. The old me used to be afraid of being out in the dark or of being out in the countryside by myself. I liked people and street lights and noise around me., it made me feel safe, so I wasn’t at all sure how I would cope with living in such a remote place and I was very apprehensive as I locked up the shutters for that first night alone. I chattered away, busy trying to convince myself that I was way too far out of the village for any trouble makers to wander my way and I also reminded myself that an extremely small proportion of females who live alone come to a sticky end!
all alone
Luckily, after spending most of the day travelling, sleep came quickly and before I knew it, it was morning. Over the next couple of days I was a little jumpy if I heard a car or a tractor approaching but very soon I adapted and I embraced the remoteness of the area. The day came when I had to leave the mountain to buy some fresh food. I had to get down to the village and civilization before I turned into a gibbering idiot. You can only talk to yourself for so long before you get frustrated at the lack of response, but I had a dilemma.
I had a stallion of a Land Rover at my disposal, but there were problems. It looked enormous and very solid like a tank and I had never driven it before. I also had to drive it down a scary, steep, rough mountain track with plenty of hairpin bends and steep drops with no crash barriers – and most of all with my very real fear of heights.
But the new adventurous me couldn´t be stopped now so I set off to walk down to the bottom. It took me over an hour and I stopped frequently to check the bends and the width of the track. All well and good but it took me a lot longer to hike back up in the sun. I then started the Land Rover and I set off very slowly. I stopped at each bend, put the handbrake on and talked myself through the process. I love to drive but I was terrified of the steep mountain sides. After more than half an hour I arrived at the bottom where I promptly burst into tears of relief. Going back up was a lot easier, and now, years on, my personal record is eight and a half minutes top to bottom and the track holds no fear for me.
During that summer time in my friends’ beautiful house I worked on some online courses and I obtained a higher level TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification. I did some gardening and I harvested and bottled the tomato crop as it ripened. I went to the beach a couple of times and I spent some time in the little village at the bottom of the mountain. One highlight was attending a local fiesta when the entire population of the village gathered to celebrate a saint’s day. Trestle tables were placed under trees strewn with fairy lights alongside the river and we danced into the night. I swam daily in the pool and every morning I woke with a massive grin as I realised how lucky I was.
There was just one day of rain in those three weeks. The heat at night was suffocating but I do like to be warm so that didn’t bother me too much. With zero light pollution I would lay down on a sunbed and watch shooting stars pepper the sky for several evenings as I was treated to jaw-dropping displays from the annual Perseids meteor shower. It was magical.
simply stunning
The sunsets and the views were spectacular and due to the ever changing light, I found myself constantly amazed at how the perspective of the mountains altered. Some days they loomed forbiddingly over me with their peaks lost in swirling cloud and at other times they leant back into the horizon and my valley appeared to open up. The palette of colours changed from monochrome as all colour was bleached out of the landscape, through lilacs and pinks to the richest of reds and terracotta as the sun set.
Up in the clear air the insects seemed louder (they were certainly larger), the flowers brighter and the bird life more exotic. I was captivated by a pair of eagles which would hitch a ride on the thermals each day and soar high above me. There were the European bee eaters which would tumble noisily around the sky and the humming bird moths with their dusky pink and brown bodies and their long beak-like tongues which probed for nectar in the flowers. The snake was an occasional interesting visitor as was the tiny little mouse which staggered out from under the washing machine one day and of course, there were countless little geckos which darted everywhere.
I needed this time to recharge my batteries because soon I would be heading back to Portugal where I would join my family in a hotel for a holiday, but this alone time was giving me space to think. I was learning that it was permissible to move on and that I had a choice to put my past behind me. I knew that I could and must allow myself to grieve and I must search for a deeper meaning in order to understand the events that had brought me to this point in my life. This would subsequently take many years but my time in the mountains was very definitely the starting point.
I met a kindred spirit who kindly took me to the beach one day and we talked for hours about our similar life paths. I didn´t know it then, but that was the true beginning of my healing process as Debs and I shared stories and I was able to begin to process what I had been through. I met some amazing people during those three weeks – some of whom I know that I will be friends with for ever, and I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity to stay in that house in the mountains.
Moving on – back to Portugal
After my three weeks in the Catalan mountains and the start of what was to prove to be my regenerative process I flew back into Lisboa airport and then took the bus to the railway station. I was glad that my rucksack weighed considerably less than that first day a few weeks previously as it was a very hot day.
The train to Cascais followed the coast out of Lisboa, passing the now deserted wasteland where the Optimus Alive Festival had been held a few weeks previously, and the track skirted the beaches which were still packed with holiday makers at 6pm. Cascias is just forty five minutes from Lisboa on the train and my dad was at the station to greet me and show me the way to our hotel.
Situated at the top of the town, the Hotel Cidadela was more than adequate for our family holiday. It was quiet and informal with plenty of sunbeds around the large pool and the rooms were spacious and clean. Over the next week I understood why my parents continued to return to Cascais which is a lovely seaside resort with a very similar feel and atmosphere to Lagos in the south of the country which I had loved. The town was hosting its summer festival while we were there, so every evening we were treated to several musical bands or singers on the large stage in the main square and on Sunday we watched a religious parade through the town and of course the wine was VERY cheap and VERY drinkable.
One of the benefits of joining the oldies was that over the years they had done their homework and they had found some real gems of places to eat. That week was to prove a gastronomic delight. We usually ate out at small unassuming back-street restaurants that were patronized mainly by the Portuguese and which specialised in local, traditional dishes. Fish was plentiful and fresh, beef stews were served in dinky little saucepans and we often ended the meal with a complimentary ginja liqueur.
We ate at a Brazilian restaurant one evening when waiters circulated among the diners carrying long skewers loaded with different types of meat. They would come over to your table if you tipped your indicator over to green (these were little wooden blocks with one end painted red for ‘hold fire for five minutes’ and green for ‘feed me now’). This was a great system because you could continue with the task of eating and you didn’t have to worry about getting anybody´s attention.
think that our favourite restaurant of all was the Melody Bar in Cascais which looked like a cheap cafe from the outside but the food, service and friendly atmosphere were quite special and it won a landslide vote when we were deciding where to go for our last evening.
Late one night when my sister and I were evicted from a bar at 2am (because it was closing time and not because of our behaviour) she wondered aloud where we could go next. Some guys overheard us and told us that nowhere else would officially be open BUT we could go with them to a small, unadvertised bar if we liked. We decided that if things turned out dodgy we could run faster than any of them so we decided to risk it and followed them out into the deserted night.
Several streets away from the main square we came to an unmarked wooden door and after knocking for some time it was opened by a mountain of a man. Stairs led up and noise and cigarette smoke billowed down. My sister went up to check it out while I stood guard outside, but it was fine. The bar was packed with people and it was obviously THE place to be. The atmosphere upstairs was loud and smoky but friendly. Dumpy bottles of beer were delivered to the tables in large metal buckets filled with ice which had bottle openers attached by a chain. We know that it was a good night because we didn’t get back to our hotel until 5.30am!
We all had a day trip into Lisboa and we covered different areas to that which I had explored with my friend just few weeks previously.. My parents knew Lisboa and they took me and my sister to some great places. We lunched in The Cervejaria da Trindade which was the city’s oldest beer hall that was situated on the site of an old monastery where I had cod cooked in a salt jacket and we had a drink in what I think is the oldest bar- the Brasileira Cafe. We visited the Mercado da Ribeira (market), rode the Elevador/Ascensor Da Bica (funicular), the bottom of which was tucked in behind a little doorway and which clattered woodenly up the incredibly steep hillside and then walking higher up we were treated to a dazzling display of wealth inside the church of San Roque. The side chapels were all decorated with gold and silver or perhaps gold leaf which shining out from the gloom was quite a surprise. We rode the rattling trams up and down the winding narrow streets and we explored the plazas and bars before heading back to our hotel in Cascais on the train late in the evening.
Our journey back to the airport was in a stretch Mercedes, driven very sedately by an eighty year old gentleman. He told us that he was the oldest cabbie in Lisbon. I guess he is probably the oldest cabbie in Portugal, but he must also be one of the most travelled and had been to more than forty five countries in the world. At that point in time I couldn’t even dream of equalling that number of countries but as the next few years were to show, I would do so and more. We all caught our plane back to the UK by the skin of our teeth due to delays at passport control. They were closing the gate and I had one foot inside the plane and one outside whilst my family hurtled along the long corridors to reach me. I very nearly boarded alone. On an an extremely tight schedule I couldn’t afford to miss my flight but I reckon my dad was secretly disappointed that they made it as it would have given him the excuse to stay on another few days. They were only heading for home but I was on my way to Kent because two days later I was off to France.
I believe that the hotel that we stayed in is now an apartment block but internet searches show that the Melody Bar is still there.
This article was written whilst I was in Portugal right at the very beginning of my travel adventures and it was an occasional reoccurring theme over the next few years – thanks in part to the emotional baggage that I was dragging along with me.
Are all of your friends just like you? Are they of a similar age? Do they all work in the same occupation or come from the same social background? Can you ever be too old for them?
When I was studying for my degree in my forties I was repeatedly told that I was wasting both my time and my money and that there was no point in continuing to study as I was too old to change things.
Once I holidayed with a friend who just happened to be twenty years younger than me and I was informed that this was classic behaviour for somebody having a mid-life crisis!!
Whilst I was married I was often told by my husband that I should act my age – however I couldn’t actually win as I would either be castigated for acting too childishly (e.g. having fun) or if I were being too serious I was acting too old. Part of my nomadic journey was to discover my own identity which had been manipulated for too many years.
So here were were in Portugal and we were chatting to an elderly gentleman whom we had met in the bar which we had adopted as our local in the Algarve during our work exchange. This man explained that he would be going out for dinner that evening to a small bar/restaurant in the next village. Nothing fancy but the food was usually very good, and then he said that if we would like to join him he would pick us up in his car about seven’ish.
We said that would love to accompany our new friend to dinner, despite only meeting him a couple of hours ago; we were after all already sat in his kitchen at this point, drinking wine and sharing an amazing sheep’s cheese with him. As one of the parameters of my trip was to have fun and to just bounce and go with the flow it didn’t seem an odd request at all and I certainly didn´t have to think twice before accepting his invitation.
Prior to this moment in his kitchen we had seen Keith in our local bar in Bensafrim a couple of times. A smart gentleman, obviously well liked among the locals, he would come and sat at a table on the terrace in the afternoon to read his kindle whilst he drank a coffee and one of those ubiquitous tumblers of red wine. We already knew that he was English and then earlier that afternoon he opened up a bit more to us.
It turned out that he was an ex-policeman who had moved out to Portugal with his wife some years previously, but sadly she had since passed away. Despite suggestions from his children to return home to the UK, he had declined and he chose to remain in the village where they had made some good friends. Keith has a good social life which included both Portuguese and British friends and he was one of those people that you just ‘click’ with; so earlier when he had asked if we would like to leave the bar and go and see his home and join him for some more wine it didn’t seem strange at all. We settled our respective bar bills and we wandered over to his beautiful home with him which was a blend of English and Portuguese styles.
What was surprising was that it turned out that Keith knew the family of one of my friends who lived back in the UK. Who needs further proof of the Six Degrees of Separation theory? It is a very small world indeed. My travels were always full of coincidences and connections like this one.
Anyway, later that evening we wandered down to the junction at the bottom of the hill to meet Keith who rolled up in his smart cabriolet sports car and with the top down we cruised to the next village. At the Caramba restaurant and bar I had a lovely grilled swordfish and my friend had beef stew. After being plied with complimentary drinks by Marco the waiter we decided that the night was still young so Keith drove us to the home of a couple of his friends where more wine was quaffed. Following that, Keith drove us home the long way, stopping off on the cliff road to show us the views of Lagos and the coastline by night before leaving us in the lane close to our farm.
It had been a lovely, impromptu, fun night out but something that Keith had said was bothering me. He had asked us a couple of times during the evening whether it was cool to be seen out with him. I had been very quick to reassure him that we loved his company; he was full of fun and very interesting. I worried on his behalf that he was worried about us wanting to spend time with him (are you keeping up with this?) My friend Chris, who is always very insightful, pointed out to me that I was the same and that I often worried about whether my younger friends really did like my company, due to the head-worms that had been planted in my brain over the years. Chris asked was Keith’s age was ever something that I had considered before agreeing to go out with him that evening. I replied of course not, it had never even crossed my mind. So, Chris continued, you should stop tormenting yourself with self-doubt when you go out with your friends who are quite a few years younger than you. They don’t see an older woman; they see someone whose company they enjoy.
If you enjoy somebody’s company and get on well then it doesn’t matter how old or young they are. One lady who I really admire is in her seventies. She has led the kind of life that I would like to have led, but what is amazing is that she is still doing it. She taught English as a foreign language in Kuwait after the first Gulf War, visited deepest, darkest Africa by herself and she still travels to some amazing places and refuses to slow down. She is a professional house-sitter moving to new places for weeks at a time, is interesting, funny and well-informed. If I achieve half of what she has achieved in her life I would be very happy.
Keith – you asked us if it was cool to be out with you. It was VERY cool to be out with somebody who is eighty one years young and hats off to you and to everybody who refuses to let life slow them down. I hope that I can be as friendly, outgoing, interesting and just as nice as you are for a very long time yet.
If you enjoy someone’s company and get on well, it doesn’t matter what age they are. Life is far too short. We owe it to ourselves to enjoy every minute.
Rewriting this article has made me smile! Over the following decade I met and travelled with people of all ages. I was dragged out partying in Rio de Janeiro with a group of twenty year olds, and many times during the fiestas in Spain I am amongst the last ones standing as the party and the music winds down and the sun rises over the mountains. I am convinced that my attitude has kept me young both in body and soul; to the extent that my partner is quite a few years younger than me!
If you sign up to my account on the Buy Me a Coffee platform you can keep up with my travel stories and discover where I headed off to after Portugal and you will also be able to read in a later article about some of the (thankfully) very rare cases where I experienced ageism. I hate all types of discrimination and whilst the world currently seems to be entering a new era and one where certain politicians are doing their best to divide and conquer, I will continue to advocate kindness, tolerance and acceptance.
Click on the button below to go to over to that platform.
Don´t be misled by the name because you don´t have to buy me a coffee or subscribe in any way (but I do like coffee!), but it is a platform where you can read my posts and one where I can also store and make available my other writings and information.
We arrived in Lagos for our break from the work exchange scheme but finding our room for the night took on a whole new direction when deep inside the labyrinthine back streets and alleys which make up Lagos’ old town, my friend´s mobile died. We had been making our way to our reserved room navigating by GPS, when suddenly it spluttered and went dead. Luckily, and because I don’t always trust technology I had jotted down the address just before the phone gasped its last. I vaguely remembered from the map that the street ran parallel to the old town walls, so with a lot of luck we ended up in the right street.
Knocking at number 22 we were met by Maria, a diminutive lady who spoke no English at all, however she shepherded us to a house a couple of doors down the street. That front door opened into a tiny little room with the steepest narrowest staircase that I have ever seen outside of a medieval castle, and she led us up to some tiny rooms on the third floor, which included an en-suite bathroom and a narrow balcony.
We met the occupant of the room below us as we set out to explore! She hadn’t been as lucky as us and her bathroom led directly off the landing! We met her as she was cleaning her teeth. There was actually no room for her to stand and clean her teeth and shut the door at the same time. The only way around it (I suspect) was that she should sit on the loo but who knows; maybe there wasn’t even the space for that!
We then set out to do some exploring and ended up at the bottom of some steep rocky steps in a tiny little bay where we did some sunbathing and swimming.
Praia de Batata
This tiny little bay was the epitome of the Algarve with its golden rocky outcrops and sandy cliffs and caves. Lagos itself had a lovely feel to it – it was busy but not overly so, touristy but had an attitude about it that it didn’t give a stuff what you thought – you could take it or leave it – and it was full of tiny little craft shops selling some very tasteful products
The usual leaflets and tourist information had been left in our room and one entry caught our eye. The Nah Nah Bah reputedly served what had been voted one of the top 50 burgers in the world and as my friend and I were both partial to a PROPER burger we decided to check it out. Just a few streets away from us and located in backpacker hostel-land (Lagos old town), the Nah Nah Bah was bursting at the seams. We certainly didn’t mind waiting so settled down on bar stools for some rather splendid mojitos and watched the action.
There were a few small tables at the back, but the majority of customers were seated at long trestle tables. Reggae blasted from the DJ’s box in the corner and large portraits of Bob Marley and Che Guevara peered down on diners from the walls. We were soon sandwiched between a family from the UK and a couple of backpackers from Australia and settled down to order our burgers. I am pleased to report that the meal did not disappoint and it was so perfect that we actually returned the following week just to check that it hadn’t been a fluke.
Fully satisfied we set off to find out what bars and night life Lagos had to offer and we were not disappointed there either. Several bars and far too many mojitos later I climbed the windy staircase on my hands and knees and feeling like an over-sized Alice who had eaten the cake labelled ‘eat me’, I crawled into the miniature room when I had a perfect night’s alcohol-fueled sleep.
Death stairs
The next day we visited the old Slave Market following a recommendation from a friend. This was in a small building with an even smaller exhibition (small appeared to be the theme in Lagos) but despite its simplicity, the exhibition was very moving as it described the horrific slave trade from Africa to the sugar and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean.
Back at the farm we continued working on the land and swimming in the eco-pool. We were also asked by Willem to sand and then oil the ends of the beams which held up the roof of their amazing house. Well, get me – I am afraid of heights but I was up and down the ladder with my brush and only a little bit nervous. My new approach to life at that time was to stop being such a pussy and just get on and try things which would serve me well when things were a little trickier in South America.
For our final night, Sol cooked us an amazing meal of black pork which we ate as the sun went down and we then all sat chatting until late into the night. To start the meal, we had chorizo which she cooked at the table on a little terracotta dish with flaming alcohol, grilling it slowly. Listening to the frogs and watching the stars, we didn’t want to leave, but the adventure had to continue and the next day we got the coach back to Lisbon. My friend and I parted company as I was now heading to Spain. My plane was delayed and eventually took off just three minutes under the time when I could qualify for compensation under the European rules. But eventually I was on the way to my next destination – this time all by myself. Finally I would starting my adventure proper and I would be travelling solo.
This article was rewritten and updated in February 2025. It seems that the Nah Nah Bah is still trading and I would love to know if it still has the same awesome vibe as it did ten years ago. Let me know if you have visited it more recently and if the burgers are still worth of their prize. I really hope so.
If you would like to support my writings and musings you can head over on this link and buy me a coffee ( at Spanish prices)
‘We shwim with the nature here. If you would like to shwim with the nature too with no clothes on then that is all right by us’. Those rather worrying words were spoken by our host who had just picked us up in his car from the side of a deserted lane in the middle of nowhere. He had introduced himself as Willem and he was driving us to his farm and what was going to be our home for the next two weeks. I didn’t dare look at my friend as I felt sure that I would have a fit of the giggles and I didn’t want to offend our host at this early stage of the game.
Earlier that morning we had set out from Lisbon on the intercity coach to Lagos and then caught a local bus to Bensafrim. I was a little worried because we didn’t have an address for our destination. Apparently rural addresses in Portugal can be problematic and our bus driver had no idea where our stop was either despite it appearing on the timetable. We were left on a grass verge in the middle of nowhere and hoped that we could get a mobile signal so that we could contact our hosts or we would be stuffed!
Luck was on our side and Willem soon appeared in his car. He was large, loud and Dutch and we joined him in the car to be bounced down dusty tracks to his farm where we were introduced to his wife Sol who was quiet, petite and Portuguese.
We were given one of the cottages on their farm which was spacious and cool and whilst it was sparsely furnished, it was perfectly adequate. It had been empty for a while but my friend was a darling and swept out the majority of the cobwebs and their occupants before we unpacked.
Willem then gave us a tour of his land which consisted of several large fields, a dozen chickens, and a handful of holiday cottages which are rented out to tourists. There was also a swimming pool but this was no ordinary swimming pool. It was an eco-pool which meant that it had no chlorine or chemicals in it and it was cleaned by nature i.e. frogs, newts and water lilies. Willem reiterated that guests often like to swim naked in the pool and if we chose to also ‘feel free’ at quiet times that would be fine with them. It´s so funny how things change because now I regularly visit a nudist beach where I even stand at the bar with no clothes on or have a massage totally naked but back then I wasn´t quite so daring. You can go to this link if you would like to know how a series of personal challenges to myself led me to end up on a beach with no clothes on!
Their home in the main house was stunning; all high ceilings and beams and windows and light. Sol is a designer and had worked wonders on their home as well as on the other cottages with innovative colour schemes and mosaic tile displays.
We were here as volunteers on a work exchange scheme. The deal was that we should each work 25 hours across seven days in exchange for bed and board. This is the standard as recommended for this sort of scheme with Workaway although they do vary from placement to placement. In our case, Willem and Sol would provide the ingredients for meals which we would prepare ourselves although they would sometimes invite us to eat with them. That first evening we joined them on their terrace to a lovely lamb casserole; the second evening we cooked for ourselves but I was given a plate of freshly grilled sardines hot off the coals. My friend dipped out as he doesn’t eat fish and received nothing.
After oversleeping the next morning and hurriedly reporting for work at 11am our first jobs were to weed the large pebbled perimeter path of the pool and to cut down the waist high grasses from the bank. We weeded and scythed and then we raked the cuttings down into the field.
Our next task was to clear the algae from the pond. There was very little but it had to come out and Willem demonstrated his well established technique for dealing with it. It floated hazily where it had been blown down one end of the pool but it was deceiving in its mass. The trick was to insert a finger into the water and gently stir in a circular motion. Like stirring a cloud the translucent substance would wind around your finger and gather there like candy floss and then it could be pulled out of the water. Where it had caught around the stems of the water plants you could carefully comb it out through your fingers. There was the continuous chirripping sound from the frogs that hopped and plopped into the water loudly every few minutes which sounded like birds, not like frogs at all, but very musical and which brought to mind the Paul McCartney song the Frog Chorus.
swimming with frogs
Day two and we creaked out of bed following all the physical work the previous day. We managed to wake earlier so that we could work in the cooler hours and were first asked to weed a large flower bed. Sol loved her flowers and colours but the wild boar had recently got into the beds and ripped up some of her plants. We weeded for several hours until we disturbed an ants nest and I got several nasty nips on my toes whilst my friend was happy to finally establish the difference between a plant and a weed and proudly announced that ‘if it came up easily it was a plant’.
Willem and Sol had three adorable dogs who appeared to have adopted us and spent all their time following us around or lazing under the enormous bougainvillea tree on our terrace. There was a small simple bar just fifteen minutes down the hillside in the village although it took twenty five minutes to haul ourselves back up to our cottage after a couple of drinks; but when three pints of the local beer and three VERY large wines cost less than seven euros it would be rude not to wander down. The second time that we went down to the bar the four locals who were sitting on the terrace and watching the world go by shared their bar snacks with us. No idea what they were – sort of like giant salty sweet corn kernels but very nice too and it felt good to be accepted as a part of the gang despite the language barrier.
We spent the third day in the vegetable garden;, weeding between waist high rows of corn, pruning olive trees and preparing a raised bed to plant out lettuce seedlings. I did intend to plant the seedlings out in the cool of the evening but we got home too squiffy to tackle that delicate task!
Over the next couple of days I planted out those eighty baby lettuce plants and we pruned the olive branches. We also double-dug (is that word?) a raised bed in preparation for sweet potatoes and there was more sitting in the waist deep water at the edge of the pool in my bikini to clean the algae.
And then….we had achieved our twenty five hours so we could take the rest of the afternoon off. And the following day we set off early to catch the local bus to Lagos for a well deserved break.
This article was first published in August 2013 but has been updated as I re-tell my story of living a nomadic lifestyle
