Autumn has briskly turned to winter at Cara Creek Eco Lodge — just in time for us to settle into living down here full-time. Despite some frosty nights, we’ve only fallen in love with the property more being down here day in and day out. Brainstorming and tweaking our ideas comes even more naturally since we’re on the site pretty much all the time. And the excitement of what it will be is a constant.
Because Cara Creek Eco Lodge’s valley is South facing, we’ve found it to be lovely, sunny and warm on the top terraces even on the chilliest of days. We fully understand now why they built the existing house where they did. It’s the first spot on the land to see the winter sun in the morning and the last spot to bid it farewell in the evenings. Good news for our soon to be renovated and extended kitchen/dining/reception building!
Settling into our upgrade — a large canvas tent with a wood burner — has better acquainted us with the property. First, we set up on one of the lower terraces close to the river. Although it was lovely sleeping so close to the sounds of the river, we were waking up in the morning with frozen dew settled on our top blanket. With the lower winter sun, the bottom couple of terraces aren’t getting much sun these days, so the tent was never really thawing out. Plus we realised that it’s definitely a few degrees cooler at night near the river.
We spent a couple of hours last Sunday moving the tent up to one of the top terraces which thankfully is not so frosty. We had the help of additional work-away volunteers who were here for the weekend from Porto. They were here over the Summer and are very interested in our project as they’re studying uses of natural resources in University. We love having them, and so does Hank for some extra attention! We hope to have them back again on their summer holidays.
A lemon tree and orange tree have also been planted on the terrace directly in front of what will be the kitchen/dining/reception. In the Springtime we’ll be planting an herb garden along the edge with some flowers to cascade off the terrace wall. We’re fairly certain about the hot tub going on that terrace as well since it will be convenient and sustainable to easily heat the water from the stove in the kitchen. Plus the view of the river now that more trees are cleared is breathtaking! But every plan at Cara Creek Eco Lodge is evolving as we go so we will see.
Speaking of plans — preliminary plans from the local Council have been approved, and soon we’ll hear back from the Regional Council. Come the new year things should be full speed ahead on building. With the help of our accountant, we were kept busy over the last several weeks preparing our application to submit for a “Rural Tourism Grant” which will help fund building of our project if approved. It was especially fun writing up the “memoria descritiva” as it’s called here, in which we described what makes our project unique. We described the natural and sustainable ways of how it will be built, and also how we plan to function as a retreat centre once we are open for hosting. Fingers crossed that they’ll be as excited with our ideas for Cara Creek Eco Lodge as the cork manufacturer we’ve been in touch with.
We met with a couple of representatives at Secil — Portugal’s leading Cork manufacturer — to discuss our project and plans to build with 100% natural building materials. They loved Rory’s vision and ideas for building Cara Creek Eco Lodge, and showed us some samples of cork and lime materials which can be used for insulation, walls, and more. Rory’s going to spend the next couple of weeks experimenting with some of the options. It was also really interesting to hear about the 0 waste that goes into producing the materials at Secil’s factory. We’re excited to use some of the materials produced there in the upcoming year of building.
2018 is looking like it’s going to be a busy one here at Cara Creek Eco Lodge. Thanks for reading, and for more frequent updates follow our progress on Facebook and Instagram.
Fecking fantastic
ReplyDelete