January 2018 blog 2 — I can see clearly now, the Mimosa’s gone

Around this time last year we viewed this magical valley where the Rio Seia meets the Rio Mondego for the first time. We immediately fell in love with the land, and ideas began flying of what it could be. Firstly though, the invasive mimosa had to go. It’s not native to Portugal, and a major risk for forest fires. Good news is it’s great for firewood, so we have years worth of it. 

Hikes through the mimosa forest this time last year

Firewood for days...

Last year when we could hardly find the house hiding in the Mimosa

Little by little, with the help of many hands over the last year, and Atlantico Jardins going at what was left of the mimosa we have now a nearly completely clear valley. Most of the mimosa trees are divided into piles — to be mulched for ground cover, to be cut for firewood, and the rotted ones to be used for garden beds. It’ll be a project in and of itself to keep the mimosa away, but as we develop the land and gardens it’ll become easier to manage.

This week we also met with a man who lives nearby, and conveniently also installs solar systems. We discussed what our electricity needs will be for Cara Creek Eco Lodge, and he advised us on what size system we’ll be looking at. 

This week we've also been in touch with more Workaway volunteers, who are interested in coming anytime from the end of January. They all sound like they’ll have lots to offer in helping our project along, and we’re so excited to have them! 

Please point anyone you think may be interested in a work exchange of learning natural building techniques, and off-grid in beautiful Central Portugal our way. Here’s the link to our Workaway host page.

Follow us on Facebook and instagram for more photos and updates! 

January 2018 blog 1 — TIMBER....

After ringing in the New Year in London, we spent the first week of 2018 away from Cara Creek hanging out with family in Edinburgh. We had a little Christmas celebration and adventured around Edinburgh with Rafa, Trina, Matthew and Dylan. When Trina, Matthew and Dylan went home to Ireland, Rory, Rafa and I went on a little adventure to a bed and breakfast on a sheep farm a couple hours outside of Edinburgh. Lots of adventure walks and counting sheep. Plus they had a litter of puppies, ducks, chickens, and some horses to feed… We had a great time!

It’s always nice to step back from the project to gain a bit of perspective. Although rustic life can be challenging at times, we found ourselves missing the sound of the river and the fresh air at night. And we came to the conclusion that our bed in our cozy canvas tent is far more comfortable than any hotel of B&B bed we slept in while we were away. Meanwhile at Cara Creek, our faithful volunteer Gary looked after the dogs and continued strimming and clearing the large slope of mimosa shoots. We’ve been throwing around ideas of possibly getting goats or donkeys to keep shoots from growing back since Mimosa is so invasive.

We’ve had Fred and Rita from Atlantico Jardins working with us to get a couple tricky eucalyptus down, and clear the rest of the mimosa. The eucalyptus were huge and very close to the river, which is lined with gorgeous old ash trees. We decided to get a specialist in to get them down in order to do our best in avoiding any damage to the riverfront. The eucalyptus successfully fell away from the riverfront and are going to be stripped and treated with borax. Then they’ll be the gorgeous beams in ruin #2. 

This weekend we went to check out some highly efficient dutch "Bruno" stoves that have coils around the inside and release heat through the tubes on either side. We really loved the look of them, and the suppliers had just 3 left in stock which they gave us an amazing deal on. We’ll have the biggest one in the large ellipse shaped studio, one in ruin #2, and the third one possibly in the smaller studio. 

Here’s some previews of the latest designs for ruin #2, two new stone house rooms, and a tetrahedron house.

Next week we have our friends from Water Edge getting started on the pool, and renovation of ruin #2 will be in full swing.

We’re recruiting to have lots of hands on deck come spring time which mean lots of volunteers. Check out our workaway page for more details on how the work exchange goes. Share with those you think might be interested in living or vacationing in beautiful Central Portugal at Cara Creek Eco Lodge. I’m available to chat about more details anytime.

Stay tuned, and follow our Instagram and Facebook page for more updates!

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.

December 2017 blog 1 — Learning Curves of Living at Cara Creek

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.

We were also fortunate to have three volunteers from The Netherlands on a “work-holiday” a few weeks back. They helped us strip bark off trees which will be used for posts, and chop and split fire-wood. Gary, being the gardening expert volunteer that he is led us all through transplanting some Oak trees to help them flourish. Come Springtime the tulip bulbs put in around the Oaks will pop up too. 

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.