December 2017 blog 2 — 'Tis the Season!

Gorgeous waterfall just a 5 minute walk from the Creek

Just a few days before Christmas we received our most exciting news yet, and the best Christmas gift we as Cara Creek Eco Lodge could’ve wished for. All the architectural plans got the final stamp of approval by the regional council with only a few very reasonable stipulations to fulfill in the final submission. The local council’s approval depended on the regional council’s approval, so it was a huge relief, and celebration that the regional council approved. Rory will be working with an engineer to prepare the final “technical” drawings to submit; however, the approval of the architectural plans means that now we can start building and renovating the existing ruins per our plans without any worries. 

General Topographic Plan

In addition to our faithful and longterm workawayer Gary who is happy and willing to brave out the (not all that harsh😉) winter months with us, we had three additional lovely German girls from www.workaway.com spend a few days with us just before winding down for Christmas. The 3 girls were such great workers, helping us with our endless amounts of mimosa trees to be moved and chopped and split and stacked into firewood. They enjoyed the nature of the work, camping out despite the cold, and spoiling Hank, Hugo and Harvey. Then they spent their afternoons off exploring the trails along the rivers using the bicycles and hiking up to the waterfall. It was a pleasure to have them and we're looking forward to the Spring when we plan to have a lot more!

Come March we plan to be prepared to host up to 15-20 workaway volunteers. Read more about it on our workaway page here, and please spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested. In short it's an exchange of free rent in Central Portugal on a river, optional morning yoga/meditation, and 3 meals a day for 5 hours per day of help Monday through Friday. By Springtime there will be lots of fun jobs, not to mention lots of learning about natural building! Please spread the word to friends who might be interested and put them in touch with me as I'm beginning to recruit people now to come volunteer for Spring, Summer and Autumn of 2018! We welcome any length of time from a week or so to a few months -- family and friends included as always😉 !!

Some of the building work to come now that we have approval include the renovation and extension of ruin #1, the renovation of ruin #2, a natural swimming pool, five new small accommodation homes and a new building (my personal favorite) — an ellipse shaped yoga studio with an unbelievable view of the river and valley. All will be built, renovated, and extended with solely natural materials — stone, clay, lime, cork, hemp, wood, earth, and sand. Once built we’ll remain totally off-grid — solar for electric power and water heating in the summer, our own water mines on the property for drinking water, the river and rain water collection for irrigation, and wood burners for heating and hot water in the winter. And eventually we hope that the food will solely come from our garden.

Our plans for the ground level of ruin #1 include a cozy seating area, the office/reception and small area selling local goods. On the middle level we’ll have the kitchen and dining area which will extend out in wood, and have the capacity to fit 30 people. And finally, we’ll also be going up one more level. We’ve tossed lots of ideas around for that space, which will have a gorgeous view. For now we’ve settled on a larger indoor area which can be used as another nice space for meditation, workshops, or to just chill out and read.

Ruin #2 is going to be renovated into the largest accommodation we’ll have. Probably to start out we’ll graduate from the canvas tent to that. But down the line it’ll be large and luxurious accommodation for guests and/or for teachers/instructors bringing their clients to Cara Creek Eco Lodge for retreat weeks. For now though we have our canvas tent very cozy and comfortable! Hugo thinks it was set up just for him😀...

Living on the property continues to give us better perspective and insight into our designs and ideas. We’ve been brainstorming designs for the natural swimming pool together, and also had a rethink about the area where we originally planned for it to go. Rory and Gary have been clearing mimosa trees from that area so we can get a better vision. And come January we'll be collaborating again with our friends from Waters Edge who will be developing our ideas and beginning constructing it. 

What will make it a natural swimming pool is that the filtration of the water will be done by plants in a pool the same size as the one for swimming. Our latest idea is to make the 2 pools symmetrical in the shape of a leaf. The swimming pool “half of the leaf” will be an infinity pool looking off one of the terraces down into the valley. Of course the water going off the edge will be re-introduced into the filtration system. The “stem” of the pools will be the steps down into it. Some of the sketches have been based off images of leaves like this one, but stay tuned for this idea evolving as it is one of our newest ones:).

Besides buzzing off of the approved planning permission we had a very quiet Christmas spending it with just the two of us and the doggies… We had lots of time to day dream about designs and all that is to come in 2018. It was also nice to have some time to reflect on 2017 as we approach the end of our first full year in Portugal. Many times we felt like we wanted our property hunt, our plans, our dreams to move faster, but everything has worked out so far in it's own way. 

Thanks for following along with our adventure, and we wish you all the happiest and healthiest of new years! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more photos and more frequent updates of how building is going at Cara Creek Eco Lodge.